> On Jan 15, 2017, at 11:50 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > > Gary F., when Peirce in Harvard Lecture 6 says that "the totality of all real > objects" is a "singular", he is pretty clearly discussing that which he > elsewhere calls an individual. Jon A.S. was discussing singulars in Peirce's > other sense of "singular," that which can only be at one place and one date > and occupies no time and no space, i.e., that which some nowadays would call > a point-instant. Peirce did not always adhere to his terminological > distinction (e.g., in "Questions On Reality" in 1868 > http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/logic/ms148.htm > <http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/menu/library/bycsp/logic/ms148.htm> ) between > "singular" (short for "singular individual") and "individual" (short for > "general individual"). In another example of his shifting between > "individual" and "singular", Peirce defines "sinsign" as an individual that > serves as a sign - I mean that he did not require sinsigns to be > point-instants - yet he uses the "sin-" of "singular" rather than some root > related to "individual" or the like in order to coin the word "sinsign >
Language isn’t terribly consistent on these points either. (No pun intended) I suspect part of the issue is that how we consider the entities over which a general may apply we can always construct some bound and call that an unity. That is the extension of the general. Effectively that’s all Peirce is doing in the Harvard Lecture. Extending that one can apply it in more narrow ways where one logically considers the extension of any general. Conceived of in sets we end up with the set containing the properties or entities of the general as a singular. The second sense is of course, from a modern physics conception, a tad more complex. Primarily because the reality of point particles fell out of favor despite attempts at salvaging it such as with Bohmian mechanics. I think Peirce here is quite helpful. While it’d be a mistake to say he anticipates this interpretation of quantum mechanics, his process approach certainly has many harmonies with it.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
