I've tried really hard to be a nominalist for a long time. What I've found is that, if you're too quick to reach for Occam's Razor, you slit your own throat. — Pneumenon
That's the problem, really. I think that the reason for there being so many different kinds of nominalism is that nominalists tie themselves up in knots trying to reduce the non-concrete to the concrete without invoking the non-concrete, and failing, and then trying something else. If the problem keeps resurfacing like that, then you should probably take that as a hint that your approach isn't working. — Pneumenon
R: So what's similar about our reaction in both cases? Are there not, then, "reaction universals?"
N: Perhaps they're just similar reactions.
R: What makes them similar?
N: There are aspects of each reaction that are the same.
R: Are the aspects universals, then? — Pneumenon
N: Universals are merely names that we have for particular things. There is no entity that can be instantiated over and over again.
R: Are names real?
N: Yes, but they exist only in our minds.
R: Whose mind: yours or mine?
N: Both.
R: So a name can be realized, or instantiated, or however you want to put it,in multiple minds?
N: Yes.
R: So how are names different from universals?
N: Well, it just means that we react in the same way when we see two objects, so both objects fall into the same category. — Pneumenon
Argh, this is a very frustratingly confusing topic. I think the best way of explaining what I'm getting caught up with the most is that, perhaps, the Realist is correct because properties are like the "life" of an object. I think actually a better question instead of asking what makes things similar is what makes things different. The nominalist would answer that what differs is the material structure of the particular, like the atomic structure, or the string/quantum foam/etc structure. But this begs to question as to why these different structures give rise to different properties. — darthbarracuda
Additionally, I fail to understand how we can come to understand such things as "abstract" objects. To be perfectly honest they simply come across as spooky, superstitious ghosts. — darthbarracuda
Care to comment on my actual argument about universals? — TheWillowOfDarkness
So in the relevant sense, names do not exist. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Our name for something is our action. It exists. — TheWillowOfDarkness
A Metaphysical Realist holds that not only do concrete particulars exist, but so do abstract, multiply exemplifiable entities, known as universals. For the particular, an apple, to be red, it must exemplify the universal "redness". For a triangle to be triangular, it must exemplify the universal "triangularity". The universal is the predicate, and the particular is the subject. — darthbarracuda
Whichever question is better, there's nothing to stop me from asking, "What makes them the same?" And so I will: why are two tropes similar? If A and B are resembling tropes, but C is not a resembling trope to either, then why is that? — Pneumenon
And what's a structure? Because if two objects can have the "same" structure, then you're appealing to universals again. Ditto for the "brain-interpretation" counter, which seems to be positively full of holes. Is the brain doing the same interpretation over and over? And even if red is "just" an experience, is it the same experience over and over? — Pneumenon
That's the central problem: if nominalism were true, then I'd expect my experience of things to be a completely chaotic flux of absolute randomness with no identifiable patterns whatsoever, because as soon as identifiable patterns crop up, universals have already snuck back in. But experience is not a chaotic flux of absolute randomness. — Pneumenon
Same for "names." Let's say that every name is an action rather than a universal. So what? The question then arises: if I say "Bob" twice, then in what sense did I say the same thing twice? — Pneumenon
I'll address the third man argument, as well as your last paragraph, later, because they're both almost worthy of threads in themselves. — Pneumenon
Ockham did not do away with objective reality, but in doing away with one part of objective reality—forms—he did away with a fundamental principle of explanation for objective reality. In doing away with forms, Ockham did away with formal causality. Formal causality secures teleology—the ends or purposes of things follow from what they are and what is in accord with or capable of fulfilling their natures. In the natural world, this realist framework secures an intrinsic connection between efficient causes and their effects—an efficient cause produces its effects by communicating some formality: fire warms by informing objects with its heat.
...the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. Notice: even if contemporary philosophers came to a consensus about how to overcome Cartesian doubt and secure certainty, it is not clear that this would do anything to repair the fragmentation and democratization of the disciplines, or to make it more plausible that there could be an ordered hierarchy of sciences, with a highest science, acknowledged as queen of the rest—whether we call it first philosophy, or metaphysics, or wisdom.
Any mental image I can form of a man is always going to be of a man of a particular sort -- tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, redheaded, bald, or what have you. It will fit at most many men, but not all. But my concept 'man' applies to every single man without exception. Or...any mental image I can form of a triangle will be an image of an isosceles , scalene, or equilateral triangle, of a black, blue, or green triangle, etc. But the abstract concept triangularity applies to all triangles without exception. And so forth.
Second, mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate. To use Descartes’ famous example, a mental image of a chiliagon (a 1,000-sided figure) cannot be clearly distinguished from a mental image of a 1,002-sided figure, or even from a mental image of a circle. But the concept of a chiliagon is clearly distinct from the concept of a 1,002-sided figure or the concept of a circle. I cannot clearly differentiate a mental image of a crowd of one million people from a mental image of a crowd of 900,000 people. But the intellect easily understands the difference between the concept of a crowd of one million people and the concept of a crowd of 900,000 people.
Third, we have many concepts that are so abstract that they do not have even the loose sort of connection with mental imagery that concepts like man, triangle, and crowd have. You cannot visualize triangularity or humanness per se, but you can at least visualize a particular triangle or a particular human being. But we also have concepts -- such as the concepts law,square root, logical consistency, collapse of the wave function, and innumerably many others -- that can strictly be associated with no mental image at all. You might form a visual or auditory image of the English word “law” when you think about law, but the concept law obviously has no essential connection whatsoever with that word, since ancient Greeks, Chinese, and Indians had the concept without using that specific word to name it. You might form a mental image of a certain logician when you contemplate what it is for a theory to be logically consistent, or a mental image of someone observing something when you contemplate the collapse of the wave function, but there is no essential connection whatsoever between (say) the way Alonzo Church looked and the concept logical consistency or (say) what someone looks like when he’s observing a dead cat and the concept wave function collapse. — Edward Feser
For instance, that cup exists, this keyboard exists, the computer in front of me exists. When we speak of abstract objects, such as number, we are not speaking of something that exists, but something that pertains to the operations of thought itself. — Wayfarer
So do universals exist? I say they are real, but not existent; they pertain to the nature of reality and of thought, but are not concrete particulars and so don't exist in the same way that concrete particulars exist. — Wayfarer
Ideas of generality are what we use to talk about particulars; why should we think we can use them to talk about themselves and still l remain within the realm of intelligibility ? — John
Trope theory in metaphysics is a version of nominalism. Here, a trope is a particular instance of a property, like the specific redness of a rose, or the specific nuance of green of a leaf. Trope theories assume that universals are unnecessary.
Yes, but you can say that particulars are real or that they exist because they enter into relation with, and causally influence, others particulars, and because they can be perceived, intersensorially and intersubjectively. — John
Such things cannot be said about universals
in what sense can they be said to be real?
What you seem to have done is conflated "this is what it means to be a real particular" with "this is what it means to be real" and then concluded that because universals don't satisfy the former then they don't satisfy the latter. — Michael
If, for example, you wanted to say that universals exist as concepts, grammatical entities or forms, then you should be able to give an account of such an existence that does not depend on describing particulars, their relations or attributes, otherwise you will not be giving an account of how universals exist independently of their instantiations as particulars, their relations or attributes. — John
If such an account of their independent existence or reality cannot be given then I don't see how it could make any sense to assert their independent existence or reality.
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