The Commens Dictionary

Quote from ‘C. S . Peirce's Lowell Lectures for 1903. Lecture 4.’

Quote: 

qualities are not, properly speaking, individuals. All the qualities you actually have ever thought of might, no doubt, be counted, since you have only been alive for a certain number of hundredths of seconds, and it requires more than a hundredth of a second actually to have any thought. But all the qualities, any one of which you readily can think of, are certainly innumerable; and all that might be thought of exceed, I am convinced, all multitude whatsoever. For they are mere logical possibilities, and possibilities are general, and no multitude can exhaust the narrowest kind of a general. Nevertheless, within limitations, which include most ordinary purposes, qualities may be treated as individuals. At any rate, however, they form an entirely different universe of existence. It is a universe of logical possibility.

Date: 
1903
References: 
CP 4.514
Citation: 
‘Quality’ (pub. 08.01.15-13:14). Quote in M. Bergman & S. Paavola (Eds.), The Commens Dictionary: Peirce's Terms in His Own Words. New Edition. Retrieved from http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-c-s-peirces-lowell-lectures-1903-lecture-4.
Posted: 
Jan 08, 2015, 13:14 by Mats Bergman