Re: Approximate Individuals

Hi Tom,

It's been a while since I worked on this stuff,
and only found myself tracking these old notes
down when somebody posted something on another
list that vaguely reminded me of the whole bit
about individuals in the early works of Peirce.

I think I remember deciding that it's better to speak of
approximate terms and individual terms than to speak of
approximate objects and individual objects, that is,
to apply these and similar qualifiers to the signs
that denote and not to the objects denoted.

I guess I can speak of qualia and haecceities as ideal limits
of things we know, but things we know are always generalities
so far as I can tell.

Jon

[email protected] wrote:
> Jon,
> 
> It's been awhile. I hope all's well these days.
> 
> It's the second definition of the "individual":
> 
> (2) Another definition which avoids the above difficulties is that
> an individual is something which reacts.  That is to say, it does
> react against some things, and it is of such a nature that it
> might react, or have reacted, against my will.
> 
> that interests me. This seems to get at the level – of Secondness –
> where individualism is truly determined, a level that any logical
> discussion can only approximate. And the rules of making that
> approximation would then be the criteria by which we apply our 
> thought.
> 
> Tom 

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