Were there not such constants as Planck's constant and so on, then there would be no 'symmetry-breaking' in the first place, would there? — Wayfarer

Constants emerge as the rate limit on self-optimising flows. So they describe the regularities that a process of symmetry breaking creates. They don't cause the action. They are a measure of it.

But I am saying the opposite of that, that we can analyze these things for what they are, independent of our judgements. You put beauty in the eye of the beholder, but do you really believe that it is simply by judging something as true, that it actually is true?

It's in no way saying anything like that. Be serious if you want to understand this stuff rather than responding like you're in a political forum and you want to polemically exaggerate your opponent with the aim of gaining votes/followers. It's not saying that anything is amorphous, "deserted," etc. — Terrapin Station

I'm not being polemical, Quine was a hardcore nominalist and called his own system an amorphous desert.

ALL that it's denying is that there are universals that exist extramentally as abstract existents that particulars then somehow partake of so that the universals are identically instantiated in at least two different particulars. — Terrapin Station

Right, so like I said, without universals the extramental world is a mish-mash of wholly unique particulars with no actual "sharing" relation at all. The world is overflowing with unique particulars everywhere you look.

Creating conceptual abstractions, where we ignore details of difference and instead lump things together as common kinds, allows us to act and react quickly so that we can survive to procreate. Those conceptual abstractions into common kinds are what universals are. — Terrapin Station

That is plausible, but what I do not find to be plausible is that, in a world utterly void of universals, the mind pops up with universals. It would require a sort of dualism in which the mind is actually not part of the rest of the world at all but separated from it.

And I still don't understand how nominalism gets around the problem of why we even clump things together in the first place. If universals do not exist extra-mentally, then how do we even begin to clump things together? Why see Blue1 similar to Blue2 but not similar to Red3? What differentiates the Blues from the Reds?

If so, then the question of universals is the wrong question. It's not why things are similar, it's why they're different that needs explaining.

Is that convincing? How would a proponent of universals respond? — Marchesk

Yes, well I had brought this point up a long while back, how nominalism not only struggles to explain why things are similar but why they are different as well. i.e. why can we discriminate between things if they are not "actually" similar to each other in virtue of sharing a property.

However I think similarity is a more pressing issue anyway. The nominalist could simply say that two things are different because they have different particular properties. Fine, the universalist would say the same thing except they would be universals not particulars.

Constants emerge as the rate limit on self-optimising flows. So they describe the regularities that a process of symmetry breaking creates. They don't cause the action. They are a measure of it. — apokrisis

Yet talk of rates, limits, self-optimization, flows, regularities, symmetries, all that stuff is still referring to something. A graph without numbers is not a graph. Language cannot exist without syntax. You reject abstract Platonic ideals but also seem to want "things" that are not concrete objects like tables and rhinos and whatnot. Are they virtual? Are they "semi-real"? Are they "vague"? In the beginning, there was nothing - but there technically was something, it just wasn't SOMETHING but a different sort of something entirely. Which, to the uninitiated, comes across either as bogus or esotericism.

I keep running into this problem when I read what you write: it seems to me that you attempt to explain things like universals in an ontic and intra-worldly, scientific manner, when it's that these very observations and theories hold the same regardless of what metaphysical position you hold. Nominalism won't change the Big Bang theory at all. Presentism is compatible with special relativity despite endurantism being a common trope. Idealism accounts for everything we know, just without an unknowable external world. Metaphysical theories of these types are empirically transparent.

Figuring out whether or not universals exist is not like finding a particle or uncovering the history of the cosmos. Science already uses properties all the time in its theorizing. What we want to know is that properties themselves are without a regress into vagueness. We want to know how we ought to see properties as. We already know that stability occurs and habits emerge, but nominalism doesn't deny this. It simply denies that these habits are actually repeatable entities that are multiply instantiated.

As it stands I do believe that there really shouldn't be a problem of universals, or at least a problem of similarity/difference. Universals are inevitable and I think should be fairly obvious especially when one sees just how clunky nominalist positions tend to be. The universalist is much more flexible as it recognizes the existence of both universals and particulars, while the nominalist strictly forbids the existence of universals. The problem shouldn't be on the existence of universals but the nature of universals themselves, i.e. abstract transcendentals vs immanents or something else.

Re how universals wind up created by our minds, that happens simply because it's necessary for our survival as creatures (with our particular characteristics/requirements) in a world where a lot of stuff can wind up killing us. We need to be able to act and react quickly to(wards) various things we encounter. Creating conceptual abstractions, where we ignore details of difference and instead lump things together as common kinds, allows us to act and react quickly so that we can survive to procreate. Those conceptual abstractions into common kinds are what universals are. — Terrapin Station

So, a Darwinist account of order. I guess that would be passed without comment by a lot of people, but I am dubious in the extreme. This is because it undermines the sovereign nature of reason - i.e. reason ought to be respected, not because it's ancillary to the process of procreation, but because what it reveals is necessarily true. Whereas here, reason is simply an adaption - like a peacock's tail, it improves the odds of passing on your little bundle of protoplasm - and if, as a byproduct, you happen to be able to figure out the age of the universe, then so much the better, eh?

Of course, this is a large argument in its own right, but it is discussed in such essays as Thomas Nagel's Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, from his book The Last Word. It is also at issue in Alvin Plantinga's 'evolutionary argument against naturalism'. And, last but not least, it is the subject of a pretty radical theory by Donald Hoffman (see The Case Against Reality), which argues, apparently without much sense of irony, very much along the lines that you're suggesting, to come to the radical conclusion that our notion of reality is basically an illusory byproduct of the struggle for survival.

Constants emerge as the rate limit on self-optimising flows — apokrisis

But there has to be order for anything to emerge whatever. That is the basic lesson of the 'six fundamental constants' types of books. Given order, then something can emerge - triangles will do as an example - but I don't think you're presenting why order should emerge. Nor would I expect an explanation of that, I don't think it is something that can be explained. Naturalism assumes order, or takes it for granted - once it begins to try and explain that order, then it's dealing with a problem of a different kind.

The problem shouldn't be on the existence of universals but the nature of universals themselves, i.e. abstract transcendentals vs immanents or something else. — darthbarracuda

You might find Kelly Ross' essay on Ontological Undecidability relevant.

Whereas here, reason is simply an adaption - like a peacock's tail, it improves the odds of passing on your little bundle of protoplasm - and if, as a byproduct, you happen to be able to figure out the age of the universe, then so much the better, eh? — Wayfarer

At the same time, however, we aren't perfect reasoners and we aren't objective evaluators of the world. We're filled with biases and fallacious thinking.

So I think the more "reasonable" thing to believe, in which I mean "most likely", is that the universe has a structure of repetition, and that this structure can be gradually re-modelled within our own minds. Genuine perfect correspondence is bullshit expect for some of the most basic and commonly-encountered things. Yet through a process of counterfactual reasoning and tentative speculation we can come to know things outside of our basic experience. And we can know we're on the right track because it will work, just as we would expect from an evolutionary perspective. There's no inherent need for correspondence truth in the wild, you only need what works. And what works may or may not be correspondence. However now that we have evolved further, we can reflect and realize all this.

But then there's also theories of knowledge which see Knowledge as a natural kind in-itself. Thus when we have knowledge, we actually HAVE knowledge.

At the same time, however, we aren't perfect reasoners and we aren't objective evaluators of the world. We're filled with biases and fallacious thinking. — darthbarracuda

But I think the kinds of explanations that can be expected of a biological theory of speciation - that is what evolution is - are different in kind to the sorts of questions that are subject of this discussion.

Just to even converse, to agree or to disagree, requires the ability to abstract, to say that 'this is like that' or 'this means that'. Many seem to assume that naturallly this is something that can be understood in terms of evolutionary theory - as if such abilities are foreshadowed by the primitive forms of communication in other animals. And that these abilities are then honed by evolution to the point we now see in h. sapiens, as if it's a continuum.

I think it's really lazy thinking and that there is a fundamental discontinuity that is reached at the point where humans are capable of abstract reasoning and language. It is at precisely that point, where the biological accounts loose their cogency and start to be missapplied to create an illusion of understanding something that really isn't at all well understood. These ideas - the nature of universals, logic, reason, and the like - aren't a highly refined version of bee-signalling or bird-calling. It is at this point where the 'rational animal' is able to see into a different ontological level than animals per se.

Given order, then something can emerge - triangles will do as an example - but I don't think you're presenting why order should emerge. Nor would I expect an explanation of that, I don't think it is something that can be explained. Naturalism assumes order, or takes it for granted - once it begins to try and explain that order, then it's dealing with a problem of a different kind. — Wayfarer

But this is just wrong - both at the level of facts and definitions. The whole point of naturalism is to abjure transcendent explanations such that the universe can be explained immanently, on it's own grounds, without appeal to the super-natural. The entire idea is not to 'take anything for granted', including and especially 'order'. And this is cashed out in the actual science of things, which, since the discovery of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics in the mid to late twentieth century, has done pretty much done nothing but demonstrate time and time again, in different fields across different domains, exactly how 'order arises from chaos'.

You attempt to invoke a 'difference in kind' is simply a projection aimed at securing a little piece of the divine for yourself by means of sheer fiat; it exists only as an imaginary line to stave off the real encroachment of naturalism upon a sphere you simply don't want it to cross. But there's no logical reason to draw any such line, except as a theological desideratum motivated more by fear than by facts.

I think it's really lazy thinking and that there is a fundamental discontinuity that is reached at the point where humans are capable of abstract reasoning and language. It is at precisely that point, where the biological accounts loose their cogency and start to be missapplied to create an illusion of understanding something that really isn't at all well understood. These ideas - the nature of universals, logic, reason, and the like - aren't a highly refined version of bee-signalling or bird-calling. It is at this point where the 'rational animal' is able to see into a different ontological level than animals per se. — Wayfarer

Although I sort of agree with the sentiment I can't help but point out the irony of you claiming reason is not equivalent to bird-calling, yet also claim that this skewed view of reason is the product of something not-too-dissimilar to bird-calling. >:O

Materialism is a foolish position.

he whole point of naturalism is to abjure transcendent explanations such that the universe can be explained immanently, on it's own grounds, without appeal to the super-natural. — StreetlightX

Well, I don't think it succeeds in so doing, I think it looks a lot less likely to be able to do that now, than it did at the beginning of the 20th Century. I mean, have a look into all the interminable debates on the 'many worlds interpretation' - there you have version of 'naturalism' that has to invoke the extravaganza of infinite parallel worlds, just in order to preserve the purported reality of the objects of observation.

But there's no logical reason to draw any such line, except as a theological desideratum motivated more by fear than by facts. — StreetlightX

That argument cuts both ways.

Although I sort of agree with the sentiment I can't help but point out the irony of you claiming reason is not equivalent to bird-calling, yet also claim that this skewed view of reason is the product of something not-too-dissimilar to bird-calling. >:O — darthbarracuda

Don't understand what you mean. To be clear, I certainly believe h. sapiens is the product of evolution, when the question is viewed through the perspective of biology; but that this doesn't entail that reason itself has an obvious biological explanation. I'm not referring to detailed evolutionary accounts of langauge, reason, and the like, which I'm sure have considerable weight, but the reductionist account of reason which does portray it simply in the terms of the 'peacock tail'.

Well, I don't think it succeeds in so doing, I think it looks a lot less likely to be able to do that now, than it did at the beginning of the 20th Century. I mean, have a look into all the interminable debates on the 'many worlds interpretation' - there you have version of 'naturalism' that has to invoke infinite parallel dimensions, in order to preserve the purported reality of the objects of observation. — Wayfarer

Frankly, the 'interminable debates' on quantum theory - itself a tiny sliver of the unquantifiable success of naturalist approaches to nature - has got nothing on the millennia of theological wrangling over the nature of God. If the less-than-century year old debate over this disqualifies naturalism as a viable position, then theology ought to be once and for all confined not simply to the trashcan of history but it's landfill.

If the less-than-century year old debate over this disqualifies naturalism as a viable position, then theology ought to be once and for all confined not simply to the trashcan of history but it's landfill. — StreetlightX

I'm not so sure. Theology and metaphysics generally don't try to be "sciences" although their practitioners sometimes like to play dress-up and pretend they're scientists of the divine or ontological scientists or what have you.

We expect results from science. When we don't get them, it's probably because we screwed up somewhere and need to re-assess the situation.

We don't necessarily expect results from theology or metaphysics. These two disciplines, in my opinion, are not deserving of the title "discipline" but are nevertheless important (at least the latter is, not sure about theology as I'm leaning towards atheism) as speculative attempts at understanding.

How do we analyze beauty, goodness and truth other than by analyzing the way we think about them. which includes the way we use the words, as you already said? The way we use the words reflects what we think about them, that is how we judge them to be in our lives. Can you think of any other way to analyze them?

Yet talk of rates, limits, self-optimization, flows, regularities, symmetries, all that stuff is still referring to something. — darthbarracuda

That's right. That's why I am arguing against nominalism.

What we want to know is that properties themselves are without a regress into vagueness. — darthbarracuda

But how do properties emerge into crisp being if vague being isn't what they are leaving behind?

The problem with your kind of ontology is that it can't explain existence as a causal development. Existence is just some dumb brute fact. Or maybe God invented it.

My approach takes the evidence that existence evolves seriously.

We already know that stability occurs and habits emerge, but nominalism doesn't deny this. It simply denies that these habits are actually repeatable entities that are multiply instantiated. — darthbarracuda

Shame that hypothesis doesn't fit the facts then. The evidence that the cosmos keeps spitting out the same entities, the same patterns, can be seen everywhere we look. (Have you heard of fractals or powerlaws?)

The problem shouldn't be on the existence of universals but the nature of universals themselves, i.e. abstract transcendentals vs immanents or something else. — darthbarracuda

So why the problem when I take something like universals to be real, and then offer a modern infodynamic account?

But there has to be order for anything to emerge whatever. — Wayfarer

Order is explained within thermodynamics as the negentropic investment that is made to increase the production of entropy. So it is order that emerges and that allows there to actually be something - a dissipative flow.

Q: Why does expanding spacetime exist? A: To give the Big Bang something to spill all its heat into.

Naturalism assumes order, or takes it for granted - once it begins to try and explain that order, then it's dealing with a problem of a different kind. — Wayfarer

Where are you getting this definition of naturalism from? Clearly I'm talking about process philosophers like Peirce and Anaximander who cottoned on to the fact that in nature, order can emerge from disorder so long as it serves the global purpose of disordering.

How do we analyze beauty, goodness and truth other than by analyzing the way we think about them. which includes the way we use the words, as you already said? — John

The search for symmetry, equilibrium and the minimisation of uncertainty - the usual physical principles?

Clearly I'm talking about process philosophers like Peirce and Anaximander who cottoned on to the fact that in nature, order can emerge from disorder so long as it serves the global purpose of disordering. — apokrisis

From the various musings on the 'naturalness problem in physics' which is closely related to, or might be simply a perspective on, the 'fine-tuning problem'. That is, the universe has just those attributes that are required for stars, matter and living things to form. Those constants can't themselves be explained - hence the 'naturalness problem'.

And there has to be 'order' for there to be 'disorder'. If there were no order, then there could be no disorder.

From the various musings on the 'naturalness problem in physics' which is closely related to, or might be simply a perspective on, the 'fine-tuning problem'. That is, the universe has just those attributes that are required for stars, matter and living things to form. Those constants can't themselves be explained - hence the 'naturalness problem'. — Wayfarer

So you offer the kind of problems that bug a reductionist in answer to my holist position?

The reductionist issue here is that because they are only imagining a constructive or additive picture of causality, it seems "natural" that either every quantum contribution adds to infinity (as there is nothing to stop it), or else all quantum contributions should symmetrically cancel to nothing (as everything time you add anything, you have to add a plus and a minus value).

But my holist position is all about the production of definite reality through the suppression or constraint of vague possibility. And so it is now "natural" that you get left with some minimal residue. Variety is suppressed to the point of indifference - but still, that leaves some irreducible variety or quantum spontaneity.

It is like trying to reduce noise in analog electronics. You can minimise it but never eliminate it.

Sure, explaining constants is a big problem for reductionists. Explaining everything about boundary conditions is a big problem when you are determined to view existence solely in terms of bottom-up material and efficient cause - acts of construction.

But for the billionth time, my model of causality is Aristotelean - all four causes in play. And Aristoteleanism is the kind of metaphysical naturalism I'm talking about, not the very recent adoption of the term within particle physics.

I don't see how you can deny universals, and still have physical principles. The point about a physical principle is that it is universally applicable to all kinds of particulars. That is at the very basis of science itself - you have to be able to make predictions, on the basis of principles, that certain outcomes will or won't be observed. So what are those principles, if not universals? — Wayfarer

For one, you can see them simply as a brute fact about how particulars "behave." That might seem like a cop-out, but as it is, if we were to posit physical "principles" or laws as universals, and then continue on to say that somehow, particulars "engage" with those universals so that they're literally, identically instantiated by different particulars, the best anyone has at this point for filling out that "somehow" is that it's a brute fact. So it's the same thing except that the realist on universals is adding a couple incoherent (on my view) notions to their brute fact. (Those incoherent ideas being the notion of abstract existents with no particular location and the idea of anything being literally, identically instantiated in two different, discernible existents.)

Alternatively to that, some nominalists rather take the approach that physical laws are simply a way of thinking about the phenomena that we observe. That's not to posit the phenomena that we observe as having no similarities, but similarities are not identities of discernibles, and if you don't have identities (that is, literally, numerically the same thing) instantiated in discernibles, you don't have universals.

I don't think that's much of a challenge though, unless one simply doesn't understand what similarities are, and one wants to pretend to not be able to understand any explanations/"in other words" descriptions (such as "(family) resemblances") etc. of what similarities are.

What similarities are not are abstract existents with no location that are somehow literally, identically instantiated in discernible particulars. And as long as they're not that, they're not universals.

I'm not being polemical, Quine was a hardcore nominalist and called his own system an amorphous desert. — darthbarracuda

Okay, but "an amorphous dessert" isn't actually implied by nominalism.

That is plausible, but what I do not find to be plausible is that, in a world utterly void of universals, the mind pops up with universals — darthbarracuda

I don't really understand this comment because what you're saying is plausible is a description if universals being exclusively conceptual abstractions. So if that's plausible, it shouldn't be implausible that the mind pops up with universals in a world extramentally devoid of universals.

Minds do quite lot of things that only occur in minds by the way.

And Aristoteleanism is the kind of metaphysical naturalism I'm talking about, not the very recent adoption of the term within particle physics. — apokrisis

The question is, how much of Aristoteleanism remains without a 'first cause'? If you retain some notion of telos then indeed many of the issues around reductionism are ameliorated, but I can't see how to square that with the idea that life is really just a heat sink (or a way of maximising entropy), or for that matter with a lot of current thinking in evolutionary biology.

Aristotle's naturalism was not naturalist in today's sense, because it didn't seek to methodically exclude what we would now categorise as the supernatural (even if his conception of first cause was remote from what Christian theology would later make of it.)

For one, you can see [physical principles] simply as a brute fact about how particulars "behave." — Terrapin Station

They're not 'brute fact' insofar as they are only perceptible to reason. Only by reason could you arrive at the conception of the laws of motion. Sure, they may not be something that can be further explained, but I think the term 'brute fact' does no justice to the idea.

But in any case, these were not the subject of the medieval debates about universals - that all came later. It was more that the idea of universals was embedded in a particular 'domain of discourse' which provided a connection between reason and the 'four types of causation', via Aristotelean metaphysics. I am extending the idea of 'universals' to encompass a wider range than was understood by the scholastics - to generalise it to cover such things as natural numbers, laws, conventions, and the like. However I believe that is a valid interpretation of the basic idea.

However thanks to Dr Google I have found this felicitous paragraph which nicely congeals many of the subjects in this thread.

Peirce understood nominalism in the broad anti-realist sense usually attributed to William of Ockham, as the view that reality consists exclusively of concrete particulars and that universality and generality have to do only with names and their significations. This view relegates properties, abstract entities, kinds, relations, laws of nature, and so on, to a conceptual existence at most. Peirce believed nominalism (including what he referred to as "the daughters of nominalism": sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism) to be seriously flawed and a great threat to the advancement of science and civilization. His alternative was a nuanced realism that distinguished reality from existence and that could admit general and abstract entities as reals without attributing to them direct (efficient) causal powers. Peirce held that these non-existent reals could influence the course of events by means of final causation (conceived somewhat after Aristotle's conception), and that to banish them from ontology, as nominalists require, is virtually to eliminate the ground for scientific prediction as well as to underwrite a skeptical ethos unsupportive of moral agency.

Review of Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism.

I appreciate that first, he sees materialism as a 'daughter of nominalism' (certainly true) and that second he recognises the distinction between reality and existence (which I have often laboured to make on the Forum). Further motivation to 'read more Pierce'.

don't think that's much of a challenge though, unless one simply doesn't understand what similarities are, and one wants to pretend to not be able to understand any explanations/"in other words" descriptions (such as "(family) resemblances") etc. of what similarities are. — Terrapin Station

So what are similarities? Every single electron in the universe is similar because it has the same mass and amount of charge. Mass is similar because it attracts by the same relationship, for all bodies of mass, across the entire cosmos. How does one account for such universalities in science?

An electron is an electron because it has certain properties that all electrons "share", or however you want to put that.

The question is, how much of Aristoteleanism remains without a 'first cause'? If you retain some notion of telos then indeed many of the issues around reductionism are ameliorated, but I can't see how to square that with the idea that life is really just a heat sink (or a way of maximising entropy), or for that matter with a lot of current thinking in evolutionary biology. — Wayfarer

It's the scholastics who need that first cause. And also some high flown purpose for human existence. So we can park those prejudices one side,

The supernatural is also excluded in the sense of an appeal to the external or transcendent. Naturalism is an ontic commitment to immanence or bootstrapping existence.

Review of Pierce and the Threat of Nominalism Notre Dame Reviews. — Wayfarer

Have you got some spellchecker that keeps insist on misspelling Peirce's name? (It rhymes with purse.)

And also some high flown purpose for human existence. So we can park those prejudices one side, — apokrisis

What you consider prejudice, I consider philosophy, and vice versa.

//ps// don't you like that quote about Peirce? I am trying to see if I can borrow that book.

We expect results from science. When we don't get them, it's probably because we screwed up somewhere and need to re-assess the situation.

We don't necessarily expect results from theology or metaphysics. These two disciplines, in my opinion, are not deserving of the title "discipline" but are nevertheless important (at least the latter is, not sure about theology as I'm leaning towards atheism) as speculative attempts at understanding. — darthbarracuda

I think it's important not to confuse or conflate science with naturalism. If the former refers to a series of methodologically constrained practises of explanatory construction, the latter simply says that our approach to the world ought to take place on grounds that don't appeal to extra-worldly sources or forces. It's possible, in the Quinian mode, to say that these are one and the same thing, but I think it is both possible and desirable to disentangle the two. One can be a speculative naturalist without, for all that, simply falling into the black hole of scientism.

So I don't have a problem with theology just because it is 'metaphysics and not science'. I do have a problem with sloppy distinctions that are illegitimately posed on some a priori, unargued for basis, as when science is somehow disqualified - by sheer power of fiat - from having anything of value to say about the coming-into-being of order. Not only is there no basis for it at the level of principles, it is also simply wrong at the level of fact as well. It has nothing going for it.

It doesn't help either that the constant and brazenly fallacious appeal-to-ignorance that is the invocation of quantum theory is basically the last refuge of the theological scoundrel, having been driven from literally every single other explanatory level of existence other than where - surprise, surprise - the dark and fuzzy frontier of scientific knowledge lies. There's a reason you don't get religious kooks barking shrill over the divine properties of say, silicon chip engineering. At some point, apparently, the perpetual embarrassment tips over into shame.

They're not 'brute fact' insofar as they are only perceptible to reason. Only by reason could you arrive at the conception of the laws of motion. Sure, they may not be something that can be further explained, but I think the term 'brute fact' does no justice to the idea. — Wayfarer

This paragraph makes no sense to me. It seems like you're reading "brute fact" as some sort of epistemic move that's only allowed by certain epistemic conditions that you do not believe obtain here. But that's not the usage of "brute fact" here. It's rather an ontological claim. The claim would be that ontologically, there's nothing else to "physical laws" aside from the fact that that's how particulars happen to "behave." It's not any sort of comment about how people arrive at a belief about laws of motion. And that concern would only be pertinent insofar as one believes that laws of motion have something to do with what we believe about them (and in that scenario, nominalism isn't any sort of issue, since what's at dispute under nominalism is what the extramental world is like).

But in any case, these were not the subject of the medieval debates about universals - that all came later. It was more that the idea of universals was embedded in a particular 'domain of discourse' which provided a connection between reason and the 'four types of causation', via Aristotelean metaphysics. I am extending the idea of 'universals' to encompass a wider range than was understood by the scholastics - to generalise it to cover such things as natural numbers, laws, conventions, and the like. However I believe that is a valid interpretation of the basic idea. — Wayfarer

I'm just not sure what this would have to do with what "nominalism" contemporarily refers to per current conventions. Re Aristotle and the four causes, that might be worthwhile to make another thread about, and there I can get into an analysis of why I think those ideas are nonsense. ;-)

So what are similarities? — Marchesk

Right. So I already gave one answer to this--that they are (family) resemblances, and already anticipated that you can very well go "well, what are (family) resemblances" etc., ad infinitum, or claim that that's ultimately circular (as if any definitions are not) in response to further explanations/"in other words" descriptions etc. for as long as you want to pretend that you have no idea what similarities are contra logical identities. And maybe you'd really not be able to comprehend what similarities are no matter what, so that it's not pretending. I'd not be able to tell that--whether you're just pretending or not.

Similarities are not things being the same as each other. Family resemblance should clue you into that. Alec and Daniel Baldwin, for example, have a family resemblance--that is they have similarities, but that's not to say that they're just the same in any regard. What can be confusing here is that "the same" can be a loose manner of speaking, but taken literally, as it should be in discussions where we're trying to sort these distinctions out, "the same" is literally, numerically identical.

Re accounting for universalities in science, that is a matter of how we think and talk about things like electrons, and it's necessary to think and talk about them that way in order to do science in the first place. Science needs to make assumptions such as phenomena having universality (that's a different sense of "universal" than we're discussing in the "realism (on universals) vs nominalism" discussion, by the way), such as replicability, etc.

How do we analyze beauty, goodness and truth other than by analyzing the way we think about them. which includes the way we use the words, as you already said? The way we use the words reflects what we think about them, that is how we judge them to be in our lives. Can you think of any other way to analyze them? — John

Analyzing the way that we use the words is only the beginning in Platonic dialectics. From this analysis we can come to the conclusion that there must be a real object referred to by these words, to validate their use. This object is the idea. Have you read Plato's Symposium? Once we come to understand the ideas as objects, we can analyze the objects themselves, attempting to understand what type of existence they have.

Here's a brief explanation of the difficulty involved with the way you are describing things. You say "the way we use the words", and "what we think". By using "we", you have already made an unjustified generalization. In reality, I use words, and I think , and so do you. There is no such thing as "the way we use words", because we each use them in our own ways. In order to make this generalization which you propose, we must assume some conventions, rules, agreements, or some such thing, to justify the claim that there is such a thing as "the way we use words". But if this is the case, then "the way we use words" refers to these agreements, and that is something outside of our minds, in between us, and therefore not "what we think about them" which is something within our minds.