Re: Nominalism and Essentialism are the Scylla and Charybdis that Pragmatism must Navigate its Middle Way Between

JA: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8635
AM: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8636

Aaron,

That was more of summary response to a particular tendency in the reception of Peirce,
as I have watched it over several decades, but most surprisingly in the last 10 years.
There have been elements of recent discussions that brought the question back to mind,
but I have a feeling it would be preferable to tackle the issue head on, from scratch.

It is not so much a problem with essences, per se, as with their placement in the
world of objects.  The concept of an essence is flexible enough that even relations
of arbitrary arities can be said to have essences, but that is being flexible to the
point of vacuity.  What really matters is the arity, definition, and extension of the
relation in question.  Saying that a phenomenon exhibits "thirdness" is only the first
step in describing it.  What matters next, and for the remainder of the inquiry into it,
is discovering what triadic relation describes it best.

Regards,

Jon

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