In this paper, I argue that there are universals. I begin (Sect. 1) by proposing a sufficient condition for a thing’s being a universal. I then argue (Sect. 2) that some truths exist necessarily. Finally, I argue (Sects. 3 and 4) that these truths are structured entities having constituents that meet the proposed sufficient condition for being universals.
This paper provides an axiomatic formalization of a theory of foundational relations between three categories of entities: individuals, universals, and collections. We deal with a variety of relations between entities in these categories, including the is-a relation among universals and the part-of relation among individuals as well as cross-category relations such as instance-of, member-of, and partition-of. We show that an adequate understanding of the formal properties of such relations – in particular their behavior with respect to time – (...) is critical for formal ontology. We provide examples to support this thesis from the domain of biomedicine. (shrink)
This book surveys the ways in which languages of different types refer to past, present, and future events and how these referents are related to the knowledge and attitudes of discourse participants. The book is the culmination of fifteen years of research by the author. Four major language types are examined in-depth: tense-based English, tense-aspect-based Polish, aspect-based Chinese, and mood-based Kalaallisut. Each contributes to a series of logical representation languages, which together define a common logical language that is argued to (...) underlie all language types. The four types differ in whether they choose to grammaticalize discourse reference to times (tense), events (aspect), and/or attitudes (mood), and how non-grammaticalized elements are inferred. The common logical language is a dynamic update logic, building on DRT and Centering Theory, but with a novel architecture—e.g. the distinction between focal vs. peripheral attention plays a key role, parallel to focal vs. peripheral vision. (shrink)
Structural universals are a kind of complex universal. They have been put to work in a variety of philosophical theories but are plagued with problems concerning their compositional nature. In this article, we will discuss the following questions. What are structural universals? Why believe in them? Can we give a consistent account of their compositional nature? What are the costs of doing so?
Presented here is an argument for the existence of universals. Like Church's translation- test argument, the argument turns on considerations from intensional logic. But whereas Church's argument turns on the fine-grained informational content of intensional sentences, this argument turns on the distinctive logical features of 'that'-clauses embedded within modal contexts. And unlike Church's argument, this argument applies against truth-conditions nominalism and also against conceptualism and in re realism. So if the argument is successful, it serves as a defense of (...) full ante rem realism. The argument emphasizes the need for a unified treatment of intensional statements -- modal statements as well as statements of assertion and belief. The larger philosophical moral will be that ante rem universals are uniquely suited to carry a certain kind of modal information. Linguistic entities, mind-dependent universals, and instance-dependent universals are incapable of serving that function. (shrink)
The concepts of particular and universal have grown so familiar that their significance has become difficult to discern, like coins that have been passed back and forth too many times, worn smooth so their values can no longer be read. On the Genealogy of Universals seeks to overcome our sense of over-familiarity with these concepts by providing a case study of their evolution during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, a study that shows how the history of (...) these concepts is bound up with the origins and development of analytic philosophy itself. Understanding how these concepts were taken up, transfigured, and given up by the early analytic philosophers, enables us to recover and reanimate the debate amongst them that otherwise remains Delphic. This book begins from the early, originating texts of analytic philosophy that have hitherto baffled commentators, including Moore's early papers, and engages afresh with the neglected contributions of philosophical figures that historians of analytic philosophy have mostly since forgotten, including Stout and Whitehead. This sheds new light upon the relationships of Moore to Russell, Russell to Wittgenstein, and Wittgenstein to Ramsey. (shrink)
In the latter half of the 19th century, economic thought in the Germanspeaking world was dominated, both intellectually and academically, by the so-called historical school, from Wilhelm Roscher to Gustav Schmoller and others. In 1871, the Austrian Carl Menger published his Grun&tze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Menger, 1976 (1871)), customarily referred to as one of the three simultaneous discoveries of marginalist economics-the other two marginalist ‘revolutionaries’ being Jevons in England and Walras in France. Twelve years later, in 1883, Menger published a major (...) methodological treatise entitled Untersuchungen iiber die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der Politischen Oekonomie insbesondere (Menger, 1963 (1883)). This book included criticisms of some of the historicist principles of doing economics. In the same year, Schmoller, leader of the German historicists, wrote a critical review of Menger’s book (Schmoller, 1883). Menger reacted forcefully with a more straightforwardly polemical small book, Die Irrthiimer des Historismus in der deutschen National6konomie (Menger, 1884). Commentaries by others appeared in later years, but this brief episode amounted to what has thereafter been called the Methodenstreit between Menger and Schmoller. It has been established as perhaps the most famous methodological controversy in the history of the social sciences. (shrink)
It has long been recognized that temporal anaphora in French and English depends on the aspectual distinction between events and states. For example, temporal location as well as temporal update depends on the aspectual type. This paper presents a general theory of aspect-based temporal anaphora, which extends from languages with grammatical tenses (like French and English) to tenseless languages (e.g. Kalaallisut). This theory also extends to additional aspect-dependent phenomena and to non-atomic aspectual types, processes and habits, which license anaphora to (...) proper atomic parts (cf. nominal pluralities and kinds). (shrink)
Slot theory is the view that (i) there exist such entities as argument places, or ‘slots’, in universals, and that (ii) a universal u is n-adic if and only if there are n slots in u. I argue that those who take properties and relations to be abundant, fine-grained, non-set-theoretical entities face pressure to be slot theorists. I note that slots permit a natural account of the notion of adicy. I then consider a series of ‘slot-free’ accounts of that (...) notion and argue that each of them has significant drawbacks. (shrink)
This paper argues for an ontological distinction between two kinds of universals, 'kinds of tropes' such as 'wisdom' and properties such as 'the property of being wise'. It argues that the distinction is parallel to that between two kinds of collections, pluralities such as 'the students' and collective objects such as 'the class'. The paper argues for the priortity of distributive readings with pluralities on the basis of predicates of extent or shape, such 'large' or 'long'.
The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...) readings of how Spinoza understands not just the nature of essence, but also the nature of being, reason, striving, definitions, and different kinds of knowledge. (shrink)
Gardeners, poets, lovers, and philosophers are all interested in the redness of roses; but only philosophers wonder how it is that two different roses can share the same property. Are red things red because they resemble each other? Or do they resemble each other because they are red? Since the 1970s philosophers have tended to favour the latter view, and held that a satisfactory account of properties must involve the postulation of either universals or tropes. But Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra revives (...) the dormant alternative theory of resemblance nominalism, showing first that it can withstand the attacks of such eminent opponents as Goodman and Armstrong, and then that there are reasons to prefer it to its rival theories. The clarity and rigour of his arguments will challenge metaphysicians to rethink their views on properties. (shrink)
This paper summarizes and extends the transmodal argument for the existence of universals (developed in full detail in "Universals"). This argument establishes not only the existence of universals, but also that they exist necessarily, thereby confirming the ante rem view against the post rem and in re views (and also anti-existentialism against existentialism). Once summarized, the argument is extended to refute the trope theory of properties and is also shown to succeed even if possibilism is assumed. A (...) nonreductionist theory of universals and properties is then outlined, and it is sketched how to reap the benefits of possibilism and Meinongianism in an actualist setting. (shrink)
Both philosophers of perception and analytic metaphysicians apply the tropes/universals distinction when considering the ontological status of visual properties. One way of arguing in favor of the trope interpretation of visual properties is to claim that the way in which we visually experience properties makes it plausible to characterize them as tropes. In this paper, I argue for a different position, namely that the way in which we visually experience properties provides a serious challenge for the trope interpretation, but (...) not for an interpretation in terms of universals. More specifically, I claim that the trope interpretations of visual properties have problems accounting for the fact that ordinary, veridical visual experiences can present the properties of two objects as strictly similar. (shrink)
Higher-order realists about properties express their view that there are properties with the help of higher-order rather than first-order quantifiers. They claim two types of advantages for this way of formulating property realism. First, certain gridlocked debates about the nature of properties, such as the immanentism versus transcendentalism dispute, are taken to be dissolved. Second, a further such debate, the tropes versus universals dispute, is taken to be resolved. In this paper I first argue that higher-order realism does not (...) in fact resolve the tropes versus universals dispute. In a constructive spirit, I then develop higher-order realism in a way that leads to a dissolution, rather than a resolution, of this dispute too. (shrink)
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra offers a fresh philosophical account of properties. How is it that two different things (such as two red roses) can share the same property (redness)? According to resemblance nominalism, things have their properties in virtue of resembling other things. This unfashionable view is championed with clarity and rigor.
The essay constructs an ontological theory designed to capture the categories instantiated in those portions or levels of reality which are captured in our common sense conceptual scheme. It takes as its starting point an Aristotelian ontology of “substances” and “accidents”, which are treated via the instruments of mereology and topology. The theory recognizes not only individual parts of substances and accidents, including the internal and external boundaries of these, but also universal parts, such as the “humanity” which is an (...) essential part of both Tom and Dick, and also “individual relations”, such as Tom’s promise to Dick, or their current handshake. (shrink)
This book addresses the metaphysics of Armstrongian states of affairs, i.e. instantiations of naturalist universals by particulars. The author argues that states of affairs are the best candidate for truthmakers and, in the spirit of logical atomism, that we need no molecular truthmakers for positive truths. In the book's context, this has the pleasing result that there are no molecular states of affairs. Following this account of truthmaking, the author first shows that the particulars in (first-order) states of affairs (...) are bare particulars. He then argues that the properties in states of affairs are simple, non-relational and concrete universals. Next, he argues that (material) relations in states of affairs are external relations. Lastly, he argues that a state of affairs is unified by a distinctive formal relation without giving rise to Bradley’s regress. (shrink)
Within the framework of Positive Psychology and Needing Theories, this article reviews cultural practices or perceptions regarding what happiness is and how it can be achieved. Mainly research on Subjective Well-Being (SWB) has identified many cultural differences in the pursuit of happiness, often described as East-West splits along categories such as highly expressed affect vs. quiet affect, self-assertion vs. conformity to social norms, independence vs. interdependence and the like. However, it is the overall goal of this article to show that (...) whatever the normative content of a culture’s or subculture’s view of happiness may be, it involves the same basic psychological needs beyond how people may choose to report or express resulting emotions. In particular, the theory of happiness proposed by the Hellenistic philosopher Epicurus provides broader, more inclusive categories and concepts which can be used to explain and possibly harmonize assumptions from particular traditions. (shrink)
Several variants of Lewis's Best System Account of Lawhood have been proposed that avoid its commitment to perfectly natural properties. There has been little discussion of the relative merits of these proposals, and little discussion of how one might extend this strategy to provide natural property-free variants of Lewis's other accounts, such as his accounts of duplication, intrinsicality, causation, counterfactuals, and reference. We undertake these projects in this paper. We begin by providing a framework for classifying and assessing the variants (...) of the Best System Account. We then evaluate these proposals, and identify the most promising candidates. We go on to develop a proposal for systematically modifying Lewis's other accounts so that they, too, avoid commitment to perfectly natural properties. We conclude by briefly considering a different route one might take to developing natural property-free versions of Lewis's other accounts, drawing on recent work by Williams. (shrink)
Instead of the half-century old foundational feud between set theory and category theory, this paper argues that they are theories about two different complementary types of universals. The set-theoretic antinomies forced naïve set theory to be reformulated using some iterative notion of a set so that a set would always have higher type or rank than its members. Then the universal u_{F}={x|F(x)} for a property F() could never be self-predicative in the sense of u_{F}∈u_{F}. But the mathematical theory of (...) categories, dating from the mid-twentieth century, includes a theory of always-self-predicative universals--which can be seen as forming the "other bookend" to the never-self-predicative universals of set theory. The self-predicative universals of category theory show that the problem in the antinomies was not self-predication per se, but negated self-predication. They also provide a model (in the Platonic Heaven of mathematics) for the self-predicative strand of Plato's Theory of Forms as well as for the idea of a "concrete universal" in Hegel and similar ideas of paradigmatic exemplars in ordinary thought. (shrink)
This thesis focuses on Abelard’s solution to the problem of understanding universals as presented in the Tractatus de Intellectibus. He examines this issue by asking what is understood when we consider the term ‘man’, a problem I call the ‘homo intelligitur [man is understood]’ problem. This is an important question, since earlier in the Treatise, Abelard states that understandings paying attention [attendens] to things otherwise than they are are empty, and thus, cannot be true. The challenge is therefore to (...) explain how understandings about universals, such as genera and species, can be sound, given that Abelard is a nominalist and, as such, does not believe in the existence of universal entities. His own answer to the problem is that such understandings attend to natures. However, since natures are, on his view, nothing more than the individuals they belong to, it is unclear how his solution is intended to work. I propose two ways to understand Abelard’s solution to the ‘homo intelligitur’ problem, identifying their respective merits and drawbacks. The first one is to treat ‘nature’ as meaning ‘status’. I explore this solution in Chapters 2 and 3, and conclude that while it has the advantage of establishing links between De Intellectibus and previous logical works by Abelard, it has some significant drawbacks, most notably that it is unclear how we can have epistemic access to status given that status are not things, which renders unclear how the criteria for the soundness of understandings can be met. The second one involves treating natures as referring to behaviors typical of members of a given genus or species. These behaviors come from the particular essential forms possessed by individuals, i.e. their differentiae understood as analogous to nuclear tropes in Peter Simons’ trope theory. I conclude that this solution is more intuitive than the first one and has the advantage of not depending on a specific interpretation of the evolution of Abelard’s thought. However, it is unclear how to treat behaviors and regularities in his ontology. (shrink)
Provocatively, David Armstrong's properties are supposed to be both universals and spatio-temporal. What does this amount to? I consider four of Armstrong's views, in order of ascending plausibility: (1) the exemplification account, on which universals are exemplified by space-times; (2) the location account, on which universals are located at space-times; (3) the first constituent account, on which spatio-temporal relations are elements of what I call the form of time; and, the true view, (4) the second constituent account, (...) on which universals are spatio-temporal only 'derivatively' by being constituents of states of affairs which are so 'primarily'. The first two accounts are rejected because they entail that space-times must be substantival. In making plausible the second constituent account, I distinguish primitive and derivative spatio-temporality. Something is primitively spatio-temporal when it is at a space-time, or stands in spatio-temporal relations. Something is derivatively spatio-temporal when it is a constituent of something primitively spatio-temporal. (shrink)
Some argue that theories of universals should incorporate structural universals, in order to allow for the metaphysical possibility of worlds of 'infinite descending complexity' ('onion worlds'). I argue that the possibility of such worlds does not establish the need for structural universals. So long as we admit the metaphysical possibility of emergent universals, there is an attractive alternative description of such cases.
This paper could be thought of as divided into two parts. In the first I show through a series of thought experiments that it is a mistake to think of one’s individual experience as necessarily belonging to only one particular place, time and organism. In repetitions across a universe large enough to host them, the particular experience that one finds oneself in, which can be individuated only by the detailed type that is the entirety of its momentary subjective content, would (...) exist equally in every occurrence of that type, much as a moment in the plot of a novel would exist equally in every copy of that novel. Each distinguishable subjective moment of experience is thus a ‘moment universal’. In the second part of the paper I draw from this the conclusion that there could not be any proper possessors of lines of experience - that there are no proper persons - no continuing subjects of consciousness and self-interest. About five years after writing this paper I came to see that the particular identity of an experience could not be confined by types of momentary subjective detail any more than it could be confined by particular places, times or organisms. All experience is equally here, now and mine and all conscious organisms are equally I. My argument for this crucial further development is presented in ‘One Self – The Logic of Experience’, Inquiry 33 (1991): pp. 39-68. (shrink)
O problema no qual se inserem nominalismo e realismo, diz-nos MacBride, é o de como explicar as características repetidas das coisas. Enquanto o realista nos diz que as características repetidas se explicam por serem universais, ou seja, por serem as naturezas comuns que várias coisas compartilham, o nominalista nos diz que é possível explicar essas características repetidas com apenas particulares concretos (sem universais).
In the ontology of music the Aristotelian theory of musical works is the view that musical works are immanent universals. The Aristotelian theory is an attractive and serviceable hypothesis. However, it is overlooked as a genuine competitor to the more well-known theories of Musical Platonism and nominalism. Worse still, there is no detailed account in the literature of the nature of the universals that the Aristotelian identifies musical works with. In this paper, I argue that the best version (...) of Musical Aristotelianism identifies musical works with structural universals. I first motivate the view by outlining its explanatory benefits. I then argue that Musical Aristotelianism is preferable to Musical Platonism and present a novel account of musical works as structural universals by developing D. M. Armstrong’s theory of structural universals. I discuss the consequences of Musical Aristotelianism with respect to on-going issues in debates about musical works and defend the view against an influential objection, concluding that Musical Aristotelianism is a genuine competitor in debates about the nature of musical works. (shrink)
The paper deals with the theory of universals of Sebastian Izquierdo, a Spanish Jesuit author working in Rome, as he formulated and defended it in Disputation 17 of his major philosophical work The Lighthouse of Sciences, published in Lyon in 1659. Izquierdo’s discussion centers around three questions: What is universality? Is there some intellect-independent universality? What is the nature of the intellect-dependent universality? Izquierdo’s approach may be seen as a search for the third way between the realism of the (...) Thomists and the Scotists and the nominalism of some Jesuits such as Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza. (shrink)
The philosophical problem of universals is traditionally framed as the problem about the ontological status of universals. It is often said that the ontological status of universals is a post-Aristotelian problem that was bequeathed to the Middle Ages by a famous sentence in Porphyry's Isagoge. 1 Porphyry raises but then refuses to answer three questions about the ontological status of genera and species, saying that they are too "deep" for the present investigation. 2 Although Porphyry is the (...) first to announce the problem, it was Boethius's commentary on Porphyry, rather than the Isagoge itself, that made this sentence famous and that is therefore responsible for the problem of universals in .. (shrink)
The limited aim here is to explain what John Dewey might say about the formulation of the grue example. Nelson Goodman’s problem of distinguishing good and bad inductive inferences is an important one, but the grue example misconstrues this complex problem for certain technical reasons, due to ambiguities that contemporary logical theory has not yet come to terms with. Goodman’s problem is a problem for the theory of induction and thus for logical theory in general. Behind the whole discussion of (...) these issues over the last several decades is a certain view of logic hammered out by Russell, Carnap, Tarski, Quine, and many others. Goodman’s nominalism hinges in essential ways on a certain view of formal logic with an extensional quantification theory at its core. This raises many issues, but the one issue most germane here is the conception of predicates ensconced in this view of logic. (shrink)
One of the tasks of ontology in information science is to support the classification of entities according to their kinds and qualities. We hold that to realize this task as far as entities such as material objects are concerned we need to distinguish four kinds of entities: substance particulars, quality particulars, substance universals, and quality universals. These form, so to speak, an ontological square. We present a formal theory of classification based on this idea, including both a semantics (...) for the theory and a provably sound axiomatization. (shrink)
Nimeni nu ştie sigur dacă amintirea lui Newton despre măr a fost corectă, dar perspectiva lui aceasta este. Filosofii au crezut încă de la greci că mişcarea “naturală” a stelelor, planetelor, Soarelui şi Lunei este circulară. Kepler a stabilit că orbitele sunt de fapt eliptice, dar a crezut că mişcările planetelor este dictată de către o “forţă divină” emanată de la Soare, iar Newton şi-a dat seama că aceeaşi forţă care face ca o piatră aruncată să cadă înapoi pe Pământ, (...) ţine şi planetele pe orbita Soarelui, şi Luna pe orbita Pământului. În 1687, Isaac Newton a publicat Principia, în care face ipoteza legii pătratelor inverse a gravitației universale. Aplicarea legii gravitației lui Newton a permis obținerea multor informații detaliate pe care le avem despre planetele din Sistemul Solar, masa Soarelui și detalii despre quasari; chiar și existența unei materii întunecate se deduce din legea gravitației lui Newton. Deși nu am călătorit pe toate planetele și nici pe Soare, cunoaștem masele lor. Aceste mase se obțin prin aplicarea legilor gravitației la caracteristicile măsurate ale orbitei. În spațiu un obiect își menține orbita datorită forței gravitaționale care acționează asupra ei. Planeta orbitează stelele, stelele orbitează în centre galactice, galaxiile orbitează un centru de masă în grupuri și clusterele orbitează în superclustere. CUPRINS: Gravitația - Istoria teoriei gravitației - - Revoluția științifică - - Teoria lui Newton a gravitației - - Principiul echivalenței - - Relativitatea generală - - Gravitația și mecanica cuantică - Aspecte specifice - - Gravitația Pământului - - Ecuațiile pentru un corp care cade aproape de suprafața Pământului - - Gravitația și astronomia - - Radiații gravitaționale - - Viteza gravitației - Anomalii și discrepanțe Istoria teoriei gravitației - Antichitate - Era modernă - - Teoria lui Newton despre gravitație - - Explicații mecanice ale gravitației - - Relativitatea generală - - Gravitația și mecanica cuantică Isaac Newton - Ortodoxia creștină - Dumnezeu ca maestru creator - Alte credințe - Scrieri Legea gravitaţiei universale a lui Newton - Istorie - Forma modernă - - Forma vectorială - - Comparaţie cu forţa electromagnetică - - Reticenţele lui Newton - Aspecte problematice - - Preocupări teoretice privind expresia lui Newton - - Observații care contravin formulei lui Newton - - Reticențele lui Newton - - Soluția lui Einstein Isaac Newton vs. Robert Hooke - Opera și revendicările lui Hooke - Opera și revendicările lui Newton - Recunoașterea lui Newton - Controversa modernă a priorității - Schopenhauer despre Newton și Hooke Acțiunea la distanță - Ipotezele eterului - Corespondența cu Richard Bentley - Concluzii Explicarea gravitației prin eter - Curenți - Presiune statică Constanta gravitațională universală, G Legea inversului pătratului în gravitație - Formula - Justificare - Gravitația Gravitaţia Pământului - Ecuațiile pentru un corp în cădere în apropiere de suprafața Pământului Greutatea și imponderabilitatea - Greutatea în mecanica newtoniană - Istorie - - Newton - Relativitatea Mareele și gravitația - Caracteristici - Constituienți - Istoria fizicii mareelor - Forțe - Ecuațiile de maree ale lui Laplace - Mareele oceanelor - - Amplitudine și ciclu - - Batimetrie - Mareea Pământului - - Forța fluxului - - Mareea corporală - - Ceilalți contribuabili ai mareelor Pământului - Mareea atmosferei Pământului - - Caracteristici generale - Mareele lunare - - Componenta principală lunară semi-diurnă Câmpul gravitațional - Mecanica clasică Gravitația în interiroul unei planete (Teorema carcasei) - Dovezile lui Newton - - Forța pe un punct în interiorul unei sfere goale - Modelul preliminar de referință al pământului (PREM) Referințe Despre autor - Nicolae Sfetcu - - De același autor - - Contact Editura - MultiMedia Publishing . (shrink)
This paper shows how the universals of category theory in mathematics provide a model (in the Platonic Heaven of mathematics) for the self-predicative strand of Plato's Theory of Forms as well as for the idea of a "concrete universal" in Hegel and similar ideas of paradigmatic exemplars in ordinary thought. The paper also shows how the always-self-predicative universals of category theory provide the "opposite bookend" to the never-self-predicative universals of iterative set theory and thus that the paradoxes (...) arose from having one theory (e.g., Frege's Paradise) where universals could be either self-predicative or non-self-predicative (instead of being always one or always the other). (shrink)
Epicureans and Stoics reject the independent existence of the Platonic Ideas. This paper assesses what both schools put forward as substitutes for universals. Both Epicureans and Stoics appeal to an a posteriori mental capacity for generalisation but that is where their shared commitments end. the divergences are mapped out, against a tendency in historiography to assimilate the two strategies, and both theories are then analysed independently.
The reintroduction of Aristotle's Analytics to the Latin West—in particular, the reintroduction of the Posterior Analytics—forever altered the course of medieval epistemological discussions. Although the Analytics fell decidedly from grace in later centuries, the sophisticated account of human cognition developed in the Posterior Analytics appealed so strongly to thirteenth-century European scholars that it became one of the two central theories of knowledge advocated in the later Middle Ages. Robert Grosseteste's 'Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libro', written in the 1220s, is most (...) likely the first complete Latin commentary on the Posterior Analytics. As the thirteenth century wore on, Aristotle’s account of human cognition was generally set in opposition to the Augustinian-influenced theory of divine illumination that was de rigueur in the early thirteenth century. Although common consensus holds that this pattern of opposition was set already in Grosseteste’s CPA, I argue that the story of the Posterior Analytics’s early reception is, in fact, quite different. In particular, I maintain that, rather than seeing himself as forced to choose between his earlier theory of divine illumination and the “new” Aristotelian epistemology, Grosseteste is perfectly content to blend and bring together the diverse elements of these systems and to present a consciously synthetic rather than adversarial picture of these differing accounts of human cognition. (shrink)
ABSTRACT. Most philosophers and educators are not familiar with James’s theory of universals, especially how it applies to learning concepts. His theory is an integral aspect of his epistemology, which is useful for understanding how children and adults learn and remember new concepts. James discusses and refers to his theory of universals throughout his career, but he never fully develops it. This paper defends the view that conceptualism is most consistent with his basic empiricism, developed from his Principles (...) of Psychology and is his true position. Some critics argue that nominalism or Platonic realism are closer to his position, but this paper rejects those views as atypical or unrevised ideas of James’. (shrink)
This paper contends that some of the recent critical appraisals of universals theories of natural laws, namely, van Fraassen's analysis of Armstrong's probabilistic laws, are largely ineffective since they fail to disclose the incompatibility of universals and any realistic natural law setting. Rather, a more profitable line of criticism is developed that contests the universalists' claim to have resolved the induction problem (i.e., the separation of natural laws from mere accidental regularities), and thereby reveals the universals' philosophically (...) inadequate concept of a physical property. (shrink)
The problem of universals remains a philosophical theme not only in ontology but also in epistemology. In Husserl, there are particular universals, the noematic ‘X’, the identical, and universals stricto sensu, atemporal universal names. In this paper, I present the theme as it is analyzed by Husserl in Ideas I. In the first section, I describe the trajectory to the universals highlighting the parallelism between noese and noema. In the second section, I draw the reflection of (...) this problem on the philosophy of language which is also affected by the noeticnoematic correspondence. In the third and last section, I show how the investigation about the universals moves in the noematic sphere, and conclude defending the possibility of reaching the universal strict sense departing from the noematic ‘X’. (shrink)
In this paper I explore the logical relationship between the question of the reality of qualia and the problem of universals. I argue that nominalism is inconsistent with the existence of qualia, and that realism either implies or makes plausible the existence of qualia. Thus, one's position on the existence of qualia is strongly constrained by one's answer to the problem of universals.
We discuss a well-known puzzle about the lexicalization of logical operators in natural language, in particular connectives and quantifiers. Of the many logically possible functions of the relevant type, only few appear in the lexicon of natural languages: the connectives in English, for example, are only 'and', 'or', and perhaps 'nor' (expressing negated disjunction). The logically possible 'nand' (negated conjunction) is not expressed by a lexical entry of English, or of any natural language. The explanation we propose is based on (...) the “dynamic” behaviour of connectives and quantifiers: we define update potentials for logical operator, under the assumption that the logical structure of a sentence p defines what type of update p contributes to context, together with the speech act performed (assertion or denial). We conjecture that the adequacy of update potentials determines the limits of lexicalizability for logical operators in natural language. (shrink)
Today it would be considered "bad Platonic metaphysics" to think that among all the concrete instances of a property there could be a universal instance so that all instances had the property by virtue of participating in that concrete universal. Yet there is a mathematical theory, category theory, dating from the mid-20th century that shows how to precisely model concrete universals within the "Platonic Heaven" of mathematics. This paper, written for the philosophical logician, develops this category-theoretic treatment of concrete (...)universals along with a new concept to abstractly model the functions of a brain. (shrink)
I reassess the famous arguments of Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1925) against the tenability of the distinction between particulars and universals and discuss their recent elaboration by Fraser MacBride. I argue that Ramsey’s argument is ambiguous between kinds and properties and that his sceptical worries can be resolved once this distinction is taken into account. A crucial role in this dissolution is a notion of what is essential to a property. I close by some epistemological considerations.
There are more things between heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, says Hamlet. Right. But there are also philosophies that have dreamt of things that are neither here nor there, as Goodman says. There is a danger of suffering from ontological myopia just as there is a danger of suffering from ontological allucination. This paper is about some basic strategies that are available to (or have been elaborated by) philosophers to steer clear of both dangers in (...) their efforts to draw up a good inventory of what there is. (shrink)
Hoy, al igual que ayer, identidad, independencia у liberacióп siguen siendo para Latinoamérica asuntos indisolublemente unidos. El actual proceso de globalización, unido а la unipolaridad política que impera en el planeta, obliga al latinoamericano а enfrentar el mismo dilema de siempre: si se es diferente no hay derecho entonces а ocupar un lugar en la universalidad imperante, si se integra а esa universalidad se tiene que renunciar а una buena dosis de lo propio. Es la alternativa que impone, por un (...) lado, una universalidad excluyente у, por el otro, una identidad forjada en alto grado por la oposición а esa universalidad. (shrink)
This paper examines two contemporary answers to the question of whether moral values and norms are apt for rational criticism and justification: Richard Rorty’s radically contextualist approach—which is centered around the notion of contingency and is characterized by a dismissal of all claims to philosophical justification—and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental-pragmatic version of discourse ethics—which encompasses highly ambitious claims to justification and universal validity. Contrasting the key theses of Rorty’s contextualism with those of Apel’s universalist discourse ethics and reconstructing their respective conceptions (...) of moral progress we argue that neither Rorty’s nor Apel’s position is convincing. (shrink)
In The Problems of Philosophy, Russell presented his famous regress argument against the nominalist denial of universals. In this paper I explore the origin of the argument in Russell and explore its relevance in contemporary metaphysical debate. I argue that a hundred years on, the argument still presents a powerful tool for realists in their debate with nominalists and trope theorists.
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