[Inquiry] Re: Doctrine Of Individuals -- Commentary

[Jon Awbrey]

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DOI.  Commentary Note 4

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Our texts for today:

1870.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-January/002320.html
1883.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000403.html

Let me emphasize the following statements from Peirce's 1870 "Logic of Relatives":

1.  The logical atom, or term not capable of logical division, must be
    one of which every predicate may be universally affirmed or denied.
    Such a term can be realized neither in thought nor in sense.

2.  In thought, an absolutely determinate term cannot be realized,
    because, not being given by sense, such a concept would have to
    be formed by synthesis, and there would be no end to the synthesis
    because there is no limit to the number of possible predicates.

3.  A logical atom, then, like a point in space, would involve for
    its precise determination an endless process.  We can only say,
    in a general way, that a term, however determinate, may be made
    more determinate still, but not that it can be made absolutely
    determinate.

4.  It is a term not 'absolutely' indivisible, but indivisible as
    long as we neglect differences of time and the differences which
    accompany them.  Such differences we habitually disregard in the
    logical division of substances.  In the division of relations, etc.,
    we do not, of course, disregard these differences, but we disregard
    some others.

5.  There is nothing to prevent almost any sort of difference from
    being conventionally neglected in some discourse, and if 'I' be
    a term which in consequence of such neglect becomes indivisible
    in that discourse, we have in that discourse [that the number
    of stipulated individuals that 'I' denotes is exactly one].

6.  This distinction between the absolutely indivisible and that which is
    one in number from a particular point of view is shadowed forth in the
    two words 'individual' ('to atomon') and 'singular' ('to kath ekaston');
    but as those who have used the word 'individual' have not been aware that
    absolute individuality is merely ideal, it has come to be used in a more
    general sense.

Jon Awbrey

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