Charles Sanders Peirce - A person is not absolutely an individual

Charles Sanders Peirce quoted in Semiotics and Cybernetics: The relevance of C. S. Peirce Terrence W. Deacon 1976 SOURCE

"Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself," that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man's circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism." (5.423)

The triumph of Peirce's musings, thoughts, fragments and texts, an anticipation of the future of intellect, of the fallibility of the "individual" mind, of the unity of science and a metaphysics of the immanent frame, is becoming more and more manifest. This is because ontological values are slowly replacing the false values of the last 2000 years and they move toward a cautious optimism based on the willing of those values of tolerance, democracy, helpfulness and non-idolatry. The last is most important because it encapsulates the First Commandment and makes it a universal aspect of what it means to be human.
Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes