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CP 1.434. When we speak of a fact as individual, or not general, we mean to attribute to it two characters each of which is altogether peculiar to facts. One of these is the character just described, the other having a mode of being independent of any qualities or determinations, or, as we may say, having brute fighting force, or self-assertion. The individual fact insists on being here irrespective of any reason, whether it be true or not that when we take a broader view we are able to see that, without reason, it never could have been endowed with that insistency. This character makes a gulf between the individual fact and the general fact, or law, as well as between the individual fact and any quality, or mere possibility, which only mildly hopes it won't be intruding. But besides that character, individuality implies another, which is that the individual is determinate in regard to every possibility, or quality, either as possessing it or as not possessing it. This is the principle of excluded middle, which does not hold for anything general, because the general is partially indeterminate; and any philosophy which does not do full justice to the element of fact in the world (of which there are many, so remote is the philosopher's high walled garden from the market place of life, where fact holds sway), will be sure sooner or later to become entangled in a quarrel with this principle of excluded middle. END
I am tempted to let this stand with no comment because the logic we have inherited tends to venerate the excluded middle, to favor the binary, to leave things at the level of the factual. One who takes the view that freedom and observation are the true path to understanding everything including matter or nature must allow for the porousness of everything. Logic becomes not merely what can or is working but also what should be and what could work. Freedom is not merely the capacity for there to be multiple outcomes or possibilities but also is a quality of love.
The essence of human achievement is, in the view of Triadic Philosophy, to embody freedom and love. That is to unify them.
There is also the matter of facts as assertions and statements that in themselves have no material substance. Such things are reality no less than a helicopter crash or a piece of garbage on the sidewalk. Indeed the entire world of thought and expression, insofar as we are meeting assertions denoted factual, is a feast of binaries in Pierce's view.
Because Triadic Philosophy sees things through its unified lens, the distinction Peirce draws between individual and general is not very useful. Better to have a small number of things seen as ontological and universal, things in the realm of values, than be occupied with whether the assertion of fact is individual or general. It is surely individual but it may also be general.
Indeed an individual person or spirit is explicitly general as part of identity itself.
I am tempted to let this stand with no comment because the logic we have inherited tends to venerate the excluded middle, to favor the binary, to leave things at the level of the factual. One who takes the view that freedom and observation are the true path to understanding everything including matter or nature must allow for the porousness of everything. Logic becomes not merely what can or is working but also what should be and what could work. Freedom is not merely the capacity for there to be multiple outcomes or possibilities but also is a quality of love.
The essence of human achievement is, in the view of Triadic Philosophy, to embody freedom and love. That is to unify them.
There is also the matter of facts as assertions and statements that in themselves have no material substance. Such things are reality no less than a helicopter crash or a piece of garbage on the sidewalk. Indeed the entire world of thought and expression, insofar as we are meeting assertions denoted factual, is a feast of binaries in Pierce's view.
Because Triadic Philosophy sees things through its unified lens, the distinction Peirce draws between individual and general is not very useful. Better to have a small number of things seen as ontological and universal, things in the realm of values, than be occupied with whether the assertion of fact is individual or general. It is surely individual but it may also be general.
Indeed an individual person or spirit is explicitly general as part of identity itself.
