If you use the term universal providing a context it seems to me to be a useful use of it. I use it to refer to values which I believe have universal applicability. By which I mean that everyone should ideally espouse them. Without some such way of speaking it is difficult to say anything important about such things as democracy or idolatry or any other term which has many contexts and meanings, not to mention evocations. I understand this is a Peirce list but the sense I got from reading this post is that the effort is to widen applicability and that terms like universal are problematic, to say the least. In reading Peirce I have noted more than once his own evocation of the non-scientific general ordinary person favorably and I get the impression he was interested in applicability generally.
Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU On Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 6:14 PM, John F Sowa <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > > > ----------------------------- > 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 > . > > > > > >
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