On 2/4/2017 11:10 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
I have been reading up on Peirce's version of scholastic realism and his
opposition to various forms of nominalism. He seems to have consistently
preferred the term “general” to “universal” (e.g., CP 2.367); has anyone
ever tried to figure out why?
The word 'universal' had become overloaded with centuries of baggage
with conflicting definitions that CSP probably did not want to endorse.
I wrote the following article for the _Applied Ontology Journal_,
in which I recommended Peirce's semiotic as a replacement for
a lot of ancient baggage that was more confusing than useful:
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signs.pdf
To focus the discussion, I started with a book by David Armstrong:
Armstrong, David M. (1989) Universals: An Opinionated Introduction,
Boulder: Westview Press.
An excerpt from my article that includes quotations by Armstrong:
On page 1, Armstrong began with a cautionary note about the “Problem
of Universals”:
So let me begin by saying what the problem is. It may turn out that
it is really a pseudo-problem. That was the opinion of Wittgenstein
and his followers, for instance. Quine is not far from thinking the
same. But whether it is a real problem or not should not be decided
in advance.
The index of that book is a warning of the terminology to come:
abstract particulars; argument from almost indiscernible cycles;
blob theories; bundle theories; identity of indiscernibles;
indiscernibility of identicals; particulars (bare, perfect,
thick, thin); tropes (a posteriori, bundles, causality,
co-extensive, higher-order, independent existence of, natural
classes of, nontransferable, sparse); universalia (ante res,
in res, inter res).
Armstrong’s final chapter summarizes the issues:
Metaphysicians should not expect any certainties in their
inquiries... Of all the results that have been argued for here,
the most secure, I believe, is the real existence of properties
and relations. Whether they be universals or particulars is a
more delicate matter, and just what properties and relations
are required is obscure, and in any case not for the philosopher
to determine.
To illustrate the issues, Armstrong cited a “distinction that
practically all contemporary philosophers accept... It is the
distinction between token and type” by Charles Sanders Peirce.
As an example, he noted that the phrase the same in the sentence
'Two ladies wore the same dress' means the same type of dress,
not the same token. In general, tokens are particulars, and types
are universals. But Armstrong cited many more examples that show
the complexities and ambiguities in any attempt to define precise
identity conditions.
I don't know exactly why Peirce avoided the word 'universal', but I
suspect that he saw the kinds of confusions that it had caused in
his day. He did not want to get sucked into that swamp.
John
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