![]() ![]() Nominalist ideas can be found in the work of Peter Abelard and reached their flowering in William of Ockham, who was the most influential and thorough nominalist. In medieval philosophy, the French philosopher and theologian Roscellinus (c. 1050 – c. 1125) was an early, prominent proponent of nominalism. The first philosophers to explicitly describe nominalist arguments were the Stoics, especially Chrysippus. ( Sophistical Refutations xxii, 178b37, trans. 'Man', and indeed every general predicate, signifies not an individual, but some quality, or quantity or relation, or something of that sort. Īristotle famously rejected certain aspects of Plato's Theory of Forms, but he clearly rejected nominalism as well: Katholou is a contraction of the phrase kata holou, meaning "on the whole". Our term "universal" is due to the English translation of Aristotle's technical term katholou which he coined specially for the purpose of discussing the problem of universals. Platonic Forms were the first universals posited as such in philosophy. The Platonic universals corresponding to the names "bed" and "beautiful" were the Form of the Bed and the Form of the Beautiful, or the Bed Itself and the Beautiful Itself. ![]() ![]() ![]() What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself .? Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state? ( Republic 476c) But there are only two forms of such furniture, one of the bed and one of the table. For example, there are many beds and tables. . We customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each of the many things to which we apply the same name. . Plato was perhaps the first writer in Western philosophy to clearly state a realist, i.e. See also: Anti-realism Ancient Greek philosophy In philosophy of law, nominalism finds its application in what is called constitutional nominalism. John Stuart Mill summarised nominalism in the apothegm "there is nothing general except names". The term nominalism stems from the Latin nomen, "name". However, the name "nominalism" emerged from debates in medieval philosophy with Roscellinus. It is opposed to realist philosophies, such as Platonic realism, which assert that universals do exist over and above particulars, and to the hylomorphic substance theory of Aristotle, which asserts that universals are immanently real within them. Nominalism is primarily a position on the problem of universals. However, some versions of nominalism hold that some particulars are abstract entities (e.g., numbers), while others are concrete entities – entities that do exist in space and time (e.g., pillars, snakes, bananas). Most nominalists have held that only physical particulars in space and time are real, and that universals exist only post res, that is, subsequent to particular things. The other version specifically denies the existence of abstract objects – objects that do not exist in space and time. One version denies the existence of universals – things that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things (e.g., strength, humanity). There are at least two main versions of nominalism. In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. Philosophical view with two varieties William of Ockham ![]()
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