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3 ideas
10995 | A haecceity is a set of individual properties, essential to each thing [Read] |
Full Idea: The haecceitist (a neologism coined by Duns Scotus, pronounced 'hex-ee-it-ist', meaning literally 'thisness') believes that each thing has an individual essence, a set of properties which are essential to it. | |
From: Stephen Read (Thinking About Logic [1995], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a difference of opinion over whether a haecceity is a set of essential properties, or a bare particular. The key point is that it is unique to each entity. |
14798 | All communication is vague, and is outside the principle of non-contradiction [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The 'vague' might be defined as that to which the principle of contradiction does not apply. For it is false neither that an animal (in a vague sense) is male, nor that an animal is female. No communication between persons can be entirely non-vague. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Critical Common-Sensism [1905], I) | |
A reaction: Note that he makes vagueness largely a matter of the way we talk, which is David Lewis's approach, and looks right to me. |
14797 | Vagueness is a neglected but important part of mathematical thought [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Logicians have too much neglected the study of vagueness, not suspecting the important part it plays in mathematical thought. It is the antithetical analogue of generality. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Critical Common-Sensism [1905], I) |