Nominalism and all its ways are devices of the Devil if devil there be. And in particular it is the disease which almost drove poor John Mill mad,—the dreary outlook upon a world in which all that can be loved, or admired, or understood is figment.
— Charles Sanders Peirce, "Semiotic and significs : the correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Lady Victoria Welby"
Are the particulars not as worthy of being loved, admired, or understood as the abstractions and universals the realist holds dear?
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.
I'm not sure if this makes much sense as a critique. A lot of realism is extremely person centered and sees a strong telos at work in history (the history of particulars). Valuing particulars is not really what is at stake.
Actually, I think some realists attack nominalists precisely for destroying particulars and turning them into a formless "will soup." Note that personalism and phenomenology seems to be biggest in traditional Christian philosophy, which tends to be unrelentingly realist.
Does it? They certainly exist as ideas.
And this of course exactly not Ockham's idea (as I understand it).
Interesting topic, but could you clarify just what the - your - question is?
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
But if someone kills another for some the sake of some name like “country” or “God”, then we have an instance of destroying what is boundlessly more valuable for the sake of an idea or figment.
… the apparent rejection or disappearance of religion and theology in fact conceals the continuing relevance of theological issues and commitments for the modern age. Viewed from this perspective, the process of secularization or disenchantment that has come to be seen as identical with modernity was in fact something different than it seemed: not the crushing victory of reason over infamy, to use Voltaire’s famous term, not the long drawn out death of God that Nietzsche proclaimed, and not the evermore distant withdrawal of the deus absconditus Heidegger points to, but the gradual transference of divine attributes to human beings (an infinite human will), the natural world (universal mechanical causality), social forces (the general will, the hidden hand), and history (the idea of progress, dialectical development, the cunning of reason). ...
That the de-emphasis, disappearance, and death of God should bring about a change in our understanding of man and nature is hardly surprising. Modernity … originates out of a series of attempts to construct a coherent metaphysic specialis on a nominalist foundation, to reconstitute something like the comprehensive summalogical account of scholastic realism. The successful completion of this project was rendered problematic by the real ontological differences between an infinite (and radically omnipotent) God and his finite creation (including both man and nature).
Nominalism and all its ways are devices of the Devil if devil there be. And in particular it is the disease which almost drove poor John Mill mad,—the dreary outlook upon a world in which all that can be loved, or admired, or understood is figment.
— Charles Sanders Peirce, "Semiotic and significs : the correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Lady Victoria Welby"
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. — Ideas have Consequences, Richard Weaver
Oddly enough Berkeley is considered a nominalist. — NOS4A2
From a nominalist perspective, the realist project presents a different individualism, an extreme egoism, where figment is “all that can be loved, or admired, or understood”. — NOS4A2
Kills another what exactly? :wink: — Count Timothy von Icarus
Critics of nominalism like Dugin and Benoist do often connect it to the unraveling of traditional identities, but as you point out, that assumes the legitimacy of those categories in the first place. From a nominalist view, those identities are constructed and contingent, not essential truths. — Areeb Salim
Do you have a response from a bona fide nominalist, such as Peirce was critiquing? I'm not convinced that such nominalists would agree with you, and it would be interesting to see their response. — Leontiskos
Joyce starts out from the assumption that, when taken literally, moral sentences are systematically untrue, and seeks to show that it can still be practically useful to pretend that it is not so.
[...]
Turning to moral fictionalism, Joyce thinks that the make-believe that moral properties are instantiated can have the same benefits as the genuine belief that they are. — Fictionalism | SEP
Interesting OP, but I don't follow this sentence at all. Peirce is not saying that figment is all that can be loved...? (Edit: So is it the idea that realists are interested in abstractions apart from particulars? That seems a strange construal.)
But if someone kills another for some the sake of some name like “country” or “God”, then we have an instance of destroying what is boundlessly more valuable for the sake of an idea or figment. This, I fear, is the threat of realism. — NOS4A2
Yet we can talk about particular ideas. It always seems to me that the best answers lie somewhere in the middle of two extremes - realism and nominalism, rationalism and empiricism, direct and indirect realism, political left and right, etc.Ideas are often considered abstract objects. — NOS4A2
The stance of there existing universals and abstract entities doesn't create anything more to the issue. Metaphysics doesn't answer moral or social questions.
Simply that he looks like other human beings.
One thing is for certain, we are not developing these general ideas by looking at forms and essences.
The notion that one attaches and removes dignity to terms and definitions in order to dignify a human being is precisely the threat that I’m talking about. When one dehumanizes, like calling people rats for example, nothing at all changes in any individual human being outside the realist skull, but his treatment of them certainly does.
If something "looks like a human being" we should treat it with dignity because...?
"Nominalism is true because realism is certainly false." Good one.
Surely if that's the threat then people's treatment of each other must have improved markedly after 1500, when nominalism became ascendent. More nominalist Protestant nations like the US must have treated minorities better, and the Soviet Union and communist China must have been particular exemplars of upright behavior. In terms of the volanturism that tends to accompany nominalism, I am aware of a society called "the Third Reich" that vastly prioritized the will, which should have resolved the problems of intellectualism in ethics. Let me just flip to my history book to confirm this...
I disagree.One’s metaphysics ought to inform how he approaches the other branches of philosophy, including politics and ethics. — NOS4A2
Now I don't follow your logic at all. Society is a word and we give words / names for complex things like society.If one believes the word “society” is just a general name he’s not going to spend a serious amount of time trying to change it. — NOS4A2
Nominalism and individualism aren't synonyms. And here individualism or collectivism aren't metaphysical questions.There has never been a nominalist, or rather, individualist country. America is close, I suppose, and has advanced beyond its collectivist ways in the treatments of groups and their memberships, but it still has a long way to go. — NOS4A2
I disagree.
Politics and ethics as other moral issues are very important irrelevant of them being either our mental constructs or them being something independent of us. What we do, the actions, are important. The reasons why we do something only explain our actions, but the actions themselves are the important issue here.
Now I don't follow your logic at all. Society is a word and we give words / names for complex things like society.
Nominalism and individualism aren't synonyms. And here individualism or collectivism aren't metaphysical questions.
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