What nominalism means?

Nominalism, coming from the Latin word nominalis meaning “of or pertaining to names”, is the ontological theory that reality is only made up of particular items. It denies the real existence of any general entities such as properties, species, universals, sets, or other categories.

What is an example of nominalism?

Nominalism arose in reaction to the problem of universals, specifically accounting for the fact that some things are of the same type. For example, Fluffy and Kitzler are both cats, or, the fact that certain properties are repeatable, such as: the grass, the shirt, and Kermit the Frog are green.

What is nominalism and realism?

Realism is the philosophical position that posits that universals are just as real as physical, measurable material. Nominalism is the philosophical position that promotes that universal or abstract concepts do not exist in the same way as physical, tangible material.

What is nominalism in epistemology?

The claim of epistemological nominalism is, in brief, that it cannot be known that there are numbers; or, at length, that: (0) Even if true, belief in an assertion or theory implying or pre- supposing that there are numbers or objects of some similar sort cannot be knowledge.

What is nominalism in Christianity?

Nominalism is a word used to describe people who are “nominally” associated with Christianity. But it means that millions of Americans profess faith in Jesus Christ, but either don’t have a church home, or don’t understand or accept much of the whole Christian faith.

What is resemblance nominalism?

If resemblance nominalism is anything, it is the idea that having a property is resembling certain things. The idea must be implemented by specifying what things something must resemble in order to have a property. But the specification cannot be given in terms of what properties these things must have.

Is Aristotle a Nominalist?

Aristotle offers a theory of a world of individual things having aspects, both individual and universal. Accordingly Aristotle ends up being a sort of nominalist in his study of being qua being —yet a peculiar sort of nominalist . For the mental states themselves reflect the real structure of the aspects.

Do Nominalists believe in God?

His ontological nominalism was intimately connected with his theological view of a free, all-powerful, and all-merciful God. Since he admitted only real distinctions, he taught that God’s nature could be only of unanalyzable simplicity, rejecting even the existence of exemplary ideas in God’s mind.

Are universals abstract objects?

Paradigmatically, universals are abstract (e.g. humanity), whereas particulars are concrete (e.g. the personhood of Socrates). For example, one might hold that numbers are particular yet abstract objects. Likewise, some philosophers, such as D. M. Armstrong, consider universals to be concrete.

Are properties universals?

At least since Plato, who called them “ideas” or “forms”, properties are viewed as universals, i.e., as capable, (in typical cases) of being instantiated by different objects, “shared” by them, as it were; consequently, in contrast with particulars, or individuals, of being somehow at once in different places.

What does it mean to be a nominalist?

Nominalism is a type of metaphysical anti-realism. It holds that things like universals, essences, and abstract objects do not exist at all. Instead, these things “exist” simply as names given to physical (concrete) particulars.

What does nominalism claim with respect to abstract objects?

For one kind of Nominalism denies the existence, and therefore the reality, of universals and the other denies the existence, and therefore the reality, of abstract objects. But what does Nominalism claim with respect to the entities alleged by some to be universals or abstract objects, e.g. properties, numbers, propositions, possible worlds?

What was the role of nominalism in medieval philosophy?

The realist position invited a defensive alliance between empiricism and nominalism; the most notable medieval example of such a synthesis was the work of William of Ockham. The problem of universals was arguably the central theme of medieval Western philosophy.

What’s the difference between Platonism and nominalism?

Realism about universals is the doctrine that there are universals, and Platonism is the doctrine that there are abstract objects. But Nominalism is not simply the rejection of universals or abstract objects. For if that were the case, a nihilist, someone who believed that there are no entities at all,…