Society is not a thing, though, complex or otherwise. It's just a name for a concept. — NOS4A2

Likewise energy is a number. It's a physical construct. It's not a thing.

No, the fact that something looks like a human being makes something a "human being".

Something is a human being because it looks like what? As you said:

It means that everything we know about human beings is derived from the senses and experience.

How does one collocation of sense data "look like a human being?" in any definitive sense? It seems we are just attaching names to regularities in sense data, right? By what criteria do we attach such names? Supposing I'm a racist and I do not find it "useful" to attach the name "human" to Asians, why am I wrong about what a human being is? It's just an ensemble of sense data after all.

And what about any particular ensemble of sense data makes it worthy of dignity?

It's more like "realism is false because no one can find universal or abstract object". One of the common objections from nominalism against realism is that forms and universals and abstract objects cannot be found.

I rephrased it as I did because what you're saying is straightforwardly question begging. The realist claims we see humanity every time we see a man. To expect to "see" (sense) a universal as one would a particular isn't a critique of realism, it's just failing to understand it.

Nominalism rejects the existence of universals and abstract entities and other artificial creations, or any combination of the above. — NOS4A2

From my brief exposure to the concept of Nominalism, I get the impression that it is often used as a slur. For example, "Liberal" is generally non-threatening, while "Radical" implies a destructive intent. But Trump tweets tend to equate the terms. Likewise, "Abstractionism" merely distinguishes mental representations from the objective referent, while "Nominalism" is interpreted as denial of Truth, Beauty & Goodness. In the first sense, I may be a Nominalist, but in the second sense, I am definitely not a denier of Universal concepts. So, what was Pierce going-on about? :smile:

Actions are important. But do you not act according to any principle? — NOS4A2

Principles are indeed important. But are principles mental constructs of our mind or something else? That's the metaphysical question, yet it doesn't matter to the importance of principles themselves.

Think about that you love some person, be it your parent or child or a loved one. Surely there is that subjective part of you loving somebody. Is that then different if you believe in metaphysical question in nominalism or realism? In my opinion it doesn't matter.

Society is not a thing, though, complex or otherwise. It's just a name for a concept. — NOS4A2

And a concept is an abstract idea, so you are going in circles. Yet people do live in more or less organized communities that we call societies. And there's many words or names for this.

There has never been a nominalist, or rather, individualist country

There have been countries dominated by nominalist ideology though. They can be individualistic or collectivist. That's the whole idea. There is no such thing as human nature. Thus, the state can engineer man into whatever it needs man to be. If this means making man into an ant-like collectivist, why is this wrong? If man lacks a nature, it can hardly be because it goes against his nature, or his "natural individuality."

In what sense is the "individual" the right unit for society. Again, what even constitutes an "individual?" "Individual" is just a name applied to sense data. Yet human infants die on their own. Individual men do not tend to last long in the wild on their own either. Therefore, the proper unit of individuality for "man" is arguably the tribe. "Children," "women," and "men," are merely parts of this "natural" whole. They are accidents, not substance. The substance is the society. (Or at least, this view is just as good of a way to view things as any other, at least from a metaphysical perspective.)

That's the reasoning for collectivist nominalists. If you say, "no, 'man' refers to discrete individuals," I will just ask, "why must this be so?" This would seem to assume some sort of essence that is filled out by unique particulars, the very thing we have already denied. I will just maintain that the more useful measure of the individual is the society, and that you are referring to mere parts, just as a "hand" or "eye" is not a proper whole, neither is this "human being" of which you speak (these are merely cells in the proper organism of state/party).

BTW, collectivist attacks on the "individual" from the direction of nominalism are not the only ones. You could also consider here what Nietzsche says about the "I" and ego, Hume's "bundle of sensations," or post-modern dissolutions. If your concern is the primacy of individuals, I am not sure nominalism will prove particularly friendly.

Something is a human being because it looks like what?

It looks like those other human beings we've come across our whole lives. Could I be wrong? Sure, it could be an android, but that can only be discovered with further examination and experience.

How does one collocation of sense data "look like a human being?" in any definitive sense? It seems we are just attaching names to regularities in sense data, right? By what criteria do we attach such names? Supposing I'm a racist and I do not find it "useful" to attach the name "human" to Asians, why am I wrong about what a human being is? It's just an ensemble of sense data after all.

And what about any particular ensemble of sense data makes it worthy of dignity?

I don't believe in sense data and am a direct realist, so I would be attaching names to things out there, not in my head. If I were beside you I'd point to myself, or you, or anyone else nearby and say "we are human beings". You would be wrong to not attach the name "human" to Asians because we can look at any particular asian person, notice the similar features, and see that they are indeed human beings. So advanced are we at doing this that we could examine their DNA if need be.

In my opinion, the fact that one exists makes him worthy of dignity. He's particular, unique, is in possession of his own position in time and space. However, he gains or loses dignity according to his acts and how he treats others. That's how I approach it at any rate.

I rephrased it as I did because what you're saying is straightforwardly question begging. The realist claims we see humanity every time we see a man. To expect to "see" (sense) a universal as one would a particular isn't a critique of realism, it's just failing to understand it.

Fair enough, then help me understand. You're looking at a particular man, correct? What else are you seeing?

Principles are indeed important. But are principles mental constructs of our mind or something else? That's the metaphysical question, yet it doesn't matter to the importance of principles themselves.

Think about that you love some person, be it your parent or child or a loved one. Surely there is that subjective part of you loving somebody. Is that then different if you believe in metaphysical question in nominalism or realism? In my opinion it doesn't matter.

It does matter, in my opinion, because I know I’m not loving the concept of someone, or my own feelings, but the person. So one intuitively has its own value.

And a concept is an abstract idea, so you are going in circles. Yet people do live in more or less organized communities that we call societies. And there's many words or names for this.

I don’t begrudge anyone using general terms. We all use them. It’s when you start sacrificing those individuals for the sake of those terms, breaking a few eggs to make an omelette, for example.

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- Did you see my post , where I looked at the position of a bona fide nominalist (in this case, fictionalist)? I don't think we will understand what nominalism is until we start looking at actual proponents, such as Joyce. Do you find Joyce's view palatable?

It seems palatable to me.

But there are many positions in regards to nominalism. It’s an ancient argument. Hobbes was a “bonafide nominalist”, or Hume, or Locke for example, so I just assumed we had an idea of what nominalism is.

It seems palatable to me. — NOS4A2

Okay, but do you see how Joyce would in no way disagree with Peirce that, "all that can be loved, or admired [...] is figment"? He would not say that Peirce is engaged in question-begging or anything like that. Peirce cannot be dismissed so effortlessly. Joyce would say, "Yes, that's true, and therefore we must resort to make-believe." Peirce would probably say that the idea that nothing is lovable apart from make-believe is "dreary," and again, this claim is not so easily dismissed.

Are you saying I should approach the issue like Joyce?

I’m not so interested in how Joyce would approach the issue. What I am interested in is how Pierce approaches the issue. Pierce is dismissive of nominalism and treats those who agree with it as tools of the devil, men who espouse a demonic doctrine.

Still, it is not obvious why Peirce should view the question of the ontological status of laws and universals as fundamental to philosophy. Nor is it obvious what there is in so abstract a question to elicit the contempt he directs towards his nominalist adversaries. Peirce insists that a pragmatist ‘will be the most open-minded of all men’ (5.499, c. 1905), yet this does not stop him from denouncing nominalism as ‘the most ­ blinding of all systems’ (5.499, c. 1905), a ‘disgraceful habitude’ (6.175, 1906) and a ‘philistine line of thought’ (1.383, c. 1890). He declares nominalism ‘a protest against the only kind of thinking that has ever advanced human culture’ (3.509, 1897) and ‘deadly poison to any ­ living reasoning’ (NEM 3: 201, 1911). He takes it to involve ‘monstrous’ ­ doctrines (1.422, c. 1896) defended by ‘mostly superficial men’ (W2: 239, 1868) who ‘do not reason logically about anything’ (1.165, c. 1897). Nominalism, he says, is ‘of all the philosophies the most inadequate, and perhaps the most superficial, one is tempted to say the silliest possible’ (NEM 4: 295, 1905). It ‘and all its ways are devices of the Devil, if devil there be’ (SS: 118, 1909).

- Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism

Are you saying I should approach the issue like Joyce? — NOS4A2

I am saying that bona fide nominalists, such as Joyce, would not seem to merely dismiss Peirce's observation as question-begging. I think it would be hard to find a bona fide nominalist who does that. Joyce is one example of someone who would agree that what is lovable is figment.

Have you finished Olesky's book? I have not made it all the way through, but I think his exact objections are covered in depth (that's at least what the introduction and chapter summaries suggest, I only got through the discussion on Scotus and Ockham).

Lots of thinkers have called nominalism "diabolical" or demonic though. There is a history here. It's not just that they think they are "bad ideas." Something akin to nominalism shows up at the very outset of Western philosophy, but never gets much traction. By late antiquity, it is all but gone.

A lot of philosophy in this later period (late-antiquity to the late medieval period) is focused on self-cultivation, ethics, excellence, and "being like God." "Being like God" was the explicit goal of late-antique philosophical and monastic education in many surviving guides (even the biographies of Pagan sages paint them as "saints"). Here, reason plays an essential role in self-determination, freedom, the transcending of human finitude, and ultimately "being more like God." Reason itself also has a strong erotic and transformative element. This is a theme in Pagan, Christian, Islamic, and even Jewish thought to varying degrees.

Hume's formulation that "reason is, and ought only be, a slave of the passions," and his general outlook on reason (wholly discursive and non-erotic), hedonism, and nominalism/knowledge, very closely parallels what the old sages describe as the paradigmatic state of spiritual sickness (e.g. "slavery in sin"). The Philokalia, for instance, describes this sort of perception/experience of being in terms of "what can I use this for to meet my desires" (i.e., the Baconian view of nature) as the "demonic" mode of experience. That is, they consider something like utilitarianism (Mill mentions Bentham), and decide that this is how one thinks in the grips of demonic fantasy (for a whole host of complex reasons). The state of Hume's ideal, which is for him insulated from dangerous "fanaticism" and "enthusiasm," is in some ways pretty much a description of the state of the damned in Dante's Hell.

Nominalism also tends towards the "diabolical" in the term's original sense (where it is opposed to the "symbolical"). It will tend to focus on multiplicity and division. But the "slide towards multiplicity/potency/matter" is the very definition of evil in classical thought. Evil is privation, and matter is, ultimately, privation on its own.

The "pragmatic" (and so generally volanturist) recommendations of a number of nominalist thinkers line up pretty well with what Pagan and Christian thinkers thought was the state of a soul "enslaved by the passions and appetites," with a corrupt and malfunctioning nous. It's an orientation towards a hunger that turns out to be a sort of self-consuming, self-negating nothingness (the Satanocentrism of Dante's material cosmos, or perhaps R. Scott Bakker's image of Hell as inchoate sheer appetite, and the consumption of the other, and thus total frustration of Eros-as-union—or Byung-Chul Han's "Inferno of the Same" recommend themselves as images here).

The idea is not that only nominalists, or specifically nominalists are uniquely "evil." A realist might easily allow that it is better to be led by a virtuous nominalist liberal than by a vice-addled realist. A liberal nominalist society might be organized more virtuously than a corrupt realist one (e.g. the Papacy of Dante's time).

The point is more about how nominalism will make it impossible to identify virtue as virtue and vice as vice in the long run. Indeed, that is, I would imagine, a big motivation for the polemics, the idea that broad currents in modern thought slowly make vice into a virtue. I think there is a strong case for this re pleonexia (acquisitiveness) in capitalism.

And I think this is how you get forceful takes like Weaver's:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

By contrast, the modern tends to approach philosophy more like Hume on average than a Plotinus or an Origen. At the end of the day, you kick back from it and play billiards. It's not that serious. Daoism appeals more to some people, nominalist pragmatism to others, realism to still others, etc. It is, in some sense, a matter of taste.

So, when some raving realist says: "don't drink that, it's poison!" the response is likely to be: "well that's quite rude to call it poison. I quite like it." But of course the response here assumes that "poison" is uttered as a matter of taste. The realist thinks they have good reason to think it is really poison. It's a fundamental disconnect. This is why nominalist rebuttals will tend to be less organized.

This is all speaking in very broad terms of course. I am just speaking to the broad pitch of the rhetoric and where it seems to have its history. Nominalism, volanturism, and the elevation of potency over actuality are anathema to broad swaths of the history of Western thought, but the elevation of desire also puts it in conflict with a lot of Eastern thought (which is why the latter has become a popular alternative).

I'm hoping someone can point me in the direction of those who see realism as a threat, and we can continue this ancient battle on an even footing. — NOS4A2

Those who hope for salvation in an Ideal ghost-populated harp-strumming Heaven, might view worldly Realism*1 as a threat to their faith. And secular philosophers, who imagine that Plato's realm of Ideals & Forms is a remote-but-actual parallel word, might view Nominalism*2 as a threat to their worldview. Personally, I don't fit either of those categorical -isms, so I don't feel jeopardized by either belief system.

Someone in this thread mentioned Practical Idealism*3, so I Googled it. For me that BothAnd attitude seems to combine the best of both Pragmatic and Idealistic philosophies. That way, you are safe from faith threats from any direction. :smile:

PS___ I don't know anything about Pierce's Objective Idealism*5, but it also seems to cover both bases. Hence, may offend both Nominalists and Idealists.


*1. Realism and nominalism are opposing philosophical positions primarily concerned with the problem of universals. Realists believe that universals (abstract concepts like "redness" or "justice") are real and exist independently of our minds, while nominalists argue that universals are merely names or concepts created by the mind to classify particulars (individual objects)
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=realism+vs+nominalism
Note --- Universals are presumed to exist in a universal Mind (God). They exist in human minds only as Names referring to a General Concept. In this context though, Realists are faithful Idealists. This name-game makes my head spin.

*2. Idealism and nominalism are contrasting philosophical perspectives that offer different explanations for the nature of reality. Idealism proposes that reality is fundamentally mental, while nominalism asserts that only individuals and particulars exist, with universals being mere names or concepts.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=idealism+vs+nominalism
Note --- The universe does not seem to be "fundamentally mental", since minds only emerged after billions of years of physical development. And yet, the original Cause of the Cosmos must have included the Potential for eventual mental noumena. But Potential is not-yet Real. So is it Ideal, or something else?

*3. Practical idealism is a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of both having high ideals and being pragmatic in pursuing them.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=practical+idealism
Note --- Pragmatism/Realism and Rational Idealism are not necessarily in opposition, unless you choose to view them that way. They can be philosophically reconciled from a Holistic perspective. See *4

*4. Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Note --- The "Greater Whole" is the organic Cosmos, including both Matter & Mind. Some philosophers idealize the Cosmos as an omnipotential unknowable transcendent deity, as in PanEnDeism

*5. Charles Peirce The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce defined his own version of objective idealism as follows: The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_idealism
Note --- That sounds like a pragmatic/semiotic version of PanEnDeism. Physical laws embodied in matter take the place of commandments engraved on stone.

Good read, Count, thank you for that.

I’m reading Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism by Paul Forster, but I imagine the themes are exactly the same, how Peirce saw the threat of a new paradigm and wished to provide a realist alternative for philosophy and science. I’ll try to find a copy of Olesky’s book.

I’m still unsure whether nominalism was in fact any sort of paradigm. I also believe it’s a sort of fallacy to see the impact of the musings of philosophers in the general culture without knowing the extent to which those philosophers are actually read.

Aside from Hume vs. Dante's Virgil, this is another really good example:

...What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power...

A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Of course, many moderns have taken Milton's Satan as a sort of hero (surely, he has all the best lines), but the devout Milton is, although he wants to make Satan enticing, ascribing this sort of thinking to the Devil at the end of the day.