Full Idea
Understanding the concepts involved in individuation can only be characterised by reference to observable commerce between things singled out and thinkers who think or find their way around the world precisely by singling them out.
Gist of Idea
Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers
Source
David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], Pre 1)
Book Reference
Wiggins,David: 'Sameness and Substance' [Blackwell 1980], p.2
A Reaction
I take individuation to be relatively uninteresting, because I understand identity independently of how we single things out, but Wiggins's reliance on sortals implies that the very identity of things in the world is knee deep in mental activity.
Related Idea
Idea 16492 Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins]