Ben, List: BU: This rule-style of formulation reflects a major difference between Peirce's generals and Peirce's qualities of feeling which are generals when reflected on but are not rules and are not formulated as rules.
I am not convinced that there is a significant difference here, at least when it comes to applying the pragmatic maxim in order to ascertain the meanings of our concepts of qualities--as *monadic *predicates embodied in *actual *things--at the third grade of clearness. As with generals, we define them using a subjunctive conditional that is true regardless of whether the relevant test is ever actually performed. "For all *x*, if *x* is hard, then *x* would resist scratching." "For all *x*, if *x* is red, then *x* would primarily reflect light at wavelengths between 620 nm and 750 nm." The difference is that qualities are also real as *medads*--possibilities not predicated of anything actual, but simply being what they are independently of anything else. BU: At first I thought I knew what you meant, but somehow it's become less clear to me, I can't even recapture what I at first thought you meant. I'm trying to put it in the context of your regarding the use of the word "general" as evoking the possibility of exceptions. It was not really about that; more the idea that a general as a continuum whose multiple instantiations are *different*--even if only infinitesimally *distinguishable*--seems more plausible than a universal whose multiple instantiations are somehow supposed to be *identical*. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 4:52 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon S., list, > > _*Universum*_ in the sense of the whole world goes back at least to > Cicero in the 1st Century B.C. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ > hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Duniversus > > You wrote, > > Note also Peirce's stance that universal propositions do not assert the > existence of anything. So "if a cat, then a mammal" could be true even if > neither cats nor mammals exist. > [End quote] > > Yes, that's my point about "if a cat, then a mammal" - as a compound term > in the form Cx→Mx, it's true of absolutely everything in the world (the > actual world, at least), and this is reflected by the usual kind of logical > formulation "For all *x*, if *x* is a cat, then *x* is a mammal" (i.e., > "For all *x*: *x* is not a cat and/or *x* is a mammal"). This rule-style > of formulation reflects a major difference between Peirce's generals and > Peirce's qualities of feeling which are generals when reflected on but are > not rules and are not formulated as rules. With the conditional form > "Cx→Mx", Peirce's generals are maximally general in a sense, just not > pertinent in all cases. As you note, it doesn't entail the existence of > anything, at least not of anything in particular (in Peirce's view a > universe of discourse smaller than two objects should be ruled out, so the > existence of at least two objects is automatically, if not always > relevantly, entailed by any term or proposition in a Peircean universe). > > You wrote: > > Peirce's identification of generality with continuity leads me to think > that every general is a continuum of possibilities. Hence multiple > instantiations of the same general are not identical, just different parts > of the same continuum, which is why they are continua themselves and not > necessarily distinguishable from each other. > > At first I thought I knew what you meant, but somehow it's become less > clear to me, I can't even recapture what I at first thought you meant. I'm > trying to put it in the context of your regarding the use of the word > "general" as evoking the possibility of exceptions. > > Anyway, your idea that Peirce chose "general" because it suggests the > possibility of exceptions remains appealing. One could extend the idea to > include the possibility of growth and evolution (as of a genus, and as of a > symbol); the idea of the "universal" true of absolutely everything seems > somehow more static and uniform. Mathematics could get away with it because > of mathematics' having its counterbalancing imaginative freedom, but for > the other things "general" seems better. > > Best, Ben >
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