Color MS 462

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I now pass to the third chapter of the exposition treating of the gamma-part of the system of existential graphs. The alpha part considers only the general relations of simultaneous assertions and of assertions of which the both of one in the members of the conditional proposition de inesse.

The beta part considers individual existence, though without discriminating between past or future; and thereby treats of the logic of all these relations which suppose the individual existence of their correlates. When I speak of a relation, it is that kind of relation that I usually mean. (I endevor so to restrict the use of the word). I distinguish other relations by calling them references. Thus I speak of the reference of a thing to its qualities, (if i do not consider them as having individuality. The gamma part of the system deals with what can logically be asserted of the meanings.

An ens rationis is something whose being

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consists in the possibility of something being true about something else. Ordinary An ordinary adjective do not a when applied to an object does not assert any accomplished fact. It says tells how an experiment will in future experience turn out. To say that a body is soft means that the experiment of trying to scratch it by the moderate pressure of a knife will always succeed. To say that a body is hard will mean that the same experiment will always fail. We so rarely meet with a body on which such experiments will give variable results without any obvious assignable reason that the need of an adjective to express this quality has not been felt. That is what it is to To possess a quality now usually means that any experiments of a certain kind that may be made in the future will turn out

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uniformly in a certain way or ways. Of course, there are qualities which we immediately feel, such as colors; and there are qualities which These are what they are without reference to anything else. We may suppose ^{and ordinarily do suppose} that external things have qualities in themselves independently of what weanything else. We suppose that a sof hard or soft body is rendered such by something that is true of that body in itself whether anybody ever tries to scratch it or not. But of such qualities we can have no ^further knowledge; and when we apply an adjective the meaning of it refers to a conditional prediction as to the results of ^possible future experience. That, then is what it is to be hard and to be soft. But now what is this thing hardness or softness in itself? It is something whose being consists in the possibility [illegible] have one or the other uniform. Now You must understand that I am talking logic and nothing else. These Returns

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have no doubt a bearing upon ^{metaphysical and upon other} vexed questions; but upon these questions themselves. I have no time to touch. I am not then talking Metaphysics: I am notstill less am I talking Epistemology.

Kant has a famous distinction between constutive constitutive truth principles & regulative truthprinciples. A constitutive principle expresses what is so, whatever that may mean. A regulative principle expresses how you must think about a matter in order to attain your [purposes ??], whether it be so, or not.

For example, in a hand of whist, when there are only three rounds remain to be played and you have the lead you must think of the cards as lying so that it will be possible for you to win the odd trick, although you have no evidence that it is so. You must think so, because if it is not so, your thinking it is cannot can