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Full Idea
The medieval philosophers and then Leibniz were keen on finding 'principles of individuation', and the idea appears again in Frege, to be taken up in some respects by Wittgenstein.
Gist of Idea
Individuation was a problem for medievals, then Leibniz, then Frege, then Wittgenstein (somewhat)
Source
C. Anthony Anderson (Identity and Existence in Logic [2014], 1.6)
Book Ref
'Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophical Logic', ed/tr. Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R [Bloomsbury 2014], p.60
A Reaction
I take a rather empirical approach to this supposed problem, and suggest we break 'individuation' down into its component parts, and then just drop the word. Discussions of principles of individuations strike me as muddled. Wiggins and Lowe today.
| 18763 | Basic variables in second-order logic are taken to range over subsets of the individuals [Anderson,CA] |
| 18764 | The notion of 'property' is unclear for a logical version of the Identity of Indiscernibles [Anderson,CA] |
| 18765 | Individuation was a problem for medievals, then Leibniz, then Frege, then Wittgenstein (somewhat) [Anderson,CA] |
| 18766 | 's is non-existent' cannot be said if 's' does not designate [Anderson,CA] |
| 18767 | Free logics has terms that do not designate real things, and even empty domains [Anderson,CA] |
| 18768 | We cannot pick out a thing and deny its existence, but we can say a concept doesn't correspond [Anderson,CA] |
| 18769 | Do mathematicians use 'existence' differently when they say some entity exists? [Anderson,CA] |
| 18770 | We can distinguish 'ontological' from 'existential' commitment, for different kinds of being [Anderson,CA] |
| 18771 | Stop calling ∃ the 'existential' quantifier, read it as 'there is...', and range over all entities [Anderson,CA] |