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1843, John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive:... as if all names had been (what none but proper names really are) marks put upon individuals; and as if there were no difference between a proper and a general name, except that the first denotes only one individual, and the last a greater number.
1911, “Logic”, in Encyclopædia Britannica:It seems likely that man has arrived at the apprehension of a whole individual, e.g. a whole animal including all its parts, and thence has inferred by analogy a whole number, or class, e.g. of animals including all individual animals; and accordingly that the particular analogy of one individual to another has given rise to the general analogy of every to each individual in a class, or whole number of individuals, contained in the second premise of induction.
1970, John R. Searle, Speech acts:To put the same point differently, suppose we ask, 'Why do we have proper names at all?' Obviously, to refer to individuals.
2006, Steven French, “Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:It is typically held that chairs, trees, rocks, people and many of the so-called ‘everyday’ objects we encounter can be regarded as individuals.