1460. Questions

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Questions:

Do I need to distinguish, with respect to ordinary properties, individual as well as specific, generic, and categorial properties? If I do, can I also treat individuals as instances (= subjects = concretes)? If so, why so, if not, why not? And if I can't, what then?

I see no reason why "event pluralism" should lead anyone to deny the obvious fact that there are individual persons and things as well as species, genera, and categories. On the contrary, it seems that the very idea of an individual is that it should be, as it were, in between the fully concrete and the genuinely abstract, ordinary as well as extraordinary.

Relative to an event, an individual is less determinate, therefore less concrete, more abstract.On the other hand, relative to even ordinary properties, including infima species, individuals are more determinate, therefore less abstract, more concrete. Any individual member of a species is more determinate than the species itself. By the same token, any event constituting a state in the career of an individual is still more determinate than the individual as such.

It seems reasonable, accordingly, to distinguish between "individual" and "individuality"-the first being, like "event," a genuine, albeit less determinate, concrete = subject = instance; the second being, like "species," "genera," or "category," a genuine, albeit more determinate, abstract = object = property. 

I note that Hartshorne occasionally distinguishes between "specific essence" and "individual essence" (as, e.g., in The Divine Relativity and Absoluteness: A Reply": 43).

n.d.; rev. 30 July 2002