[Inquiry] Re: Doctrine Of Individuals -- Commentary

[Jon Awbrey]

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DOI.  Commentary Note 3

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I would like to go back to Peirce's critique of
the "doctrine of individuals" and draw out a few
of its implications for the question of identity.
I will break the text into more digestible chunks.

| In reference to the doctrine of individuals, two distinctions should be
| borne in mind.  The logical atom, or term not capable of logical division,
| must be one of which every predicate may be universally affirmed or denied.
| For, let 'A' be such a term.  Then, if it is neither true that all 'A' is 'X'
| nor that no 'A' is 'X', it must be true that some 'A' is 'X' and some 'A' is
| not 'X';  and therefore 'A' may be divided into 'A' that is 'X' and 'A' that
| is not 'X', which is contrary to its nature as a logical atom.
|
| Such a term can be realized neither in thought nor in sense.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 3.93

First off, Peirce is talking about terms, which go on the sign side of the
Object/Sign ledger, and he is examining their capacity to serve as logical
indivisibles or logical atoms, that is, their ability to determine genuine
individuals as the objects of their denotation.  What he declares here is
very revolutionary -- we do not hear its like again until the outbreaks
of the Information and Computing Revolutions -- but perhaps it is not
so surprising to hear from a person who has just five years earlier
already discovered the initial elements of a subject that he calls
the "Theory of Information".  In the language that would later be
used quite a bit, he is remarking on the information-theoretic
capacity limitations of signs.

Peirce comes to this point in a perfectly straightforward Kantian way.
In accordance with the "hypothesis of reality", there are the objects
in reality, and then there are the manifolds of sensuous impressions
that represent these objects, and finally the utility of concepts is
in helping us to connect the manifold "data of the senses" (DOTS)
into configurations that correspond to real objects.

Now, Peirce does not admit that the objects in themselves are unknowable,
but allows that they are knowable in the forms of their representations,
and this knowledge, as mediated by a representation, is always partial.

Two of the immediate consequences of this observation are these:

1.  There are no such things as absolutely individual terms, properly speaking.
    If you have things that you find it convenient to call "individual terms"
    in a particular discussion, then one thing that they do not do is denote
    or determine absolute indivisibles.  This is the reason that Peirce,
    when he is being precise, will speak of "particulars" instead.

2.  If you seek the "difference that makes a difference" among individual terms,
    particular terms, and general terms, it will not be an absolute or essential
    difference, but rather an interpretive or discourse-relative difference.

Jon Awbrey

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