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 [2] - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[3]
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
[1]
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
Links:
------
[1]
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Duniversus
[2] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[3] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
