Clark, List: CG: I think the big break between Peirce and the nominalists is because a general can’t be limited to any collection of actual entities.
I strongly agree with this, and just came across an interesting passage that seems to confirm it--and also corroborates my comment to Edwina this evening that a logical subject need not be something "existential." CSP: The universe of a logical subject has always hitherto been assumed to be a discrete collection, so that the subject is an *individual *object or occasion. But in truth a universe may be continuous, so that there is no part of it of which every thing must be either wholly true or wholly false. For example, it is impossible to find a part of a surface which must be all one color. Even a point of that surface may belong indifferently to three or more differently colored parts. But the logic of continuous universes awaits investigation. (CP 2.339; c. 1895) Presumably the RLT lectures a couple of years later--especially the final one on "The Logic of Continuity"--were the results of Peirce's efforts to undertake such an investigation. In my limited experience, rather than collection vs. continuum, the nominalist will want to focus on the question of how a universal/general can be identically instantiated in multiple individuals. Conceiving a general as a continuum addresses this, in my mind, since no two instantiations are truly *identical*--they are *different *actualizations, even if only infinitesimally so, such that there are *potential *instantiations exceeding all multitude that would be intermediate between them. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 6:24 PM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote: > Just to add, I think the big break between Peirce and the nominalists is > because a general can’t be limited to any collection of actual entities. > This is obvious in mathematics if we talk about a general like “even > integers.” Clearly that’s an infinite collection. But if you say something > like “white horses” you don’t just mean all white horses but all possible > white horses. You can limit things more, but generals by their very nature > have this connection to continuity. > > While I said in practice there isn’t as big a practical effect between > nominalists and Peirce’s realism it’s because nominalists are fine to > potentially quantify over future experienced entities. That is the way they > conceive of possibilities is much more in an Aristotilean fashion. > Potential is just an openness to new finite entities. Peirce is thinking > much more logically. So it’s with his pragmatic maxim that I think you see > his thinking regarding nominalism develop most. > > The original pragmatic maxim starts with meaning be how you do measure > something. But that’s clearly problematic as a rock is hard whether you > measure it or not. He then moves to a moderate realism by invoking > counterfactuals. It’s hard *if I could measure it*. But he keeps thinking > through these questions of potentialities and realizes he has to deal with > a continuous set of possibilities. Further that an entity’s properties are > independent of what I think about it. That is when I ask about a property > scientifically I’m not merely making a claim about a future measurement but > a claim about the entity itself. > > It’s at that point that I think the traditional nominalistic tendencies, > especially within science, start to split off. In one sense it doesn’t > matter because all we can test are potential measurements. Yet the > significance of those measurements are the properties of the thing itself. > > This is also where I think Peirce (and later Dewey) chart a third way > between the traditional poles of realism and idealism such as were found in > the early 20th century. Especially in the United States. > > I bring all this up because my sense is that it’s to the pragmatic maxim > we have to look for all these terms. >
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