1.3 Particulars: The Nominalists

The nominalist, on the other hand, argues that to ask for an account of how it is that we get general terms which are distinct from individual terms, is to presuppose the existence of that very thing, e.g., universals, which one is trying to prove.   The nominalist argues that two things are similar by reason of each individual in itself, not because there is some common nature which is instantiated in both.   It is a distinction between two terms of language, not between things denoted by the terms in the statements.  For the realists to claim that universals exist, but do not exist in a place or time, is to make the notion of “existence” inexplicable and mysterious.   To say “the universal exists”, and “the particular exists”, is to use the word “exist” in two different and mutually exclusive ways.

The nominalist refuses to construe abstract terms as names of entities distinct from the individual things. The so-called universals are terms or signs standing for or referring to individual objects and sets of objects, but they themselves cannot be said to exist as mind-independent entities. Therefore, to summarize, the first problem with universals for the nominalist is that no sense can be made of what exactly these universals are; their existence can’t be accounted for in the way that something is normally said to exist in space and time.   Secondly, the exact way that they come to participate in the separate entity of the participating particular is likewise inexplicable, the account usually remaining on the metaphorical level with the use of words such as ‘instantiating’, ‘inhering in’, ‘partaking in’, etc.   None of these terms are descriptions of the mechanism of the relationship between the two different ontological entities; they are not explanations, but merely attempts at analogies.

Generality is, therefore, for the nominalist, not an ontological distinction between two different levels of reality.   While there are predicates that are general terms, they are not common natures that are then individuated.   Particulars are just particulars.   The problem is a logical one of showing how general terms used in propositions refer to individuals signified by them, and that the general terms do not refer to independent entities that are general.

How is it, then, that the nominalist explains the generality of ‘red’ across the individual objects of ‘red shoe’, ‘red car’, ‘red flower’, etc.?   The answer to this is often given in the domain of epistemology, where the question is re-framed as:  how is it that we are able to know diverse instances of red (or any other attribute) objects?   An epistemological answer to that question is generally found in an empiricist account of knowledge acquisition, so that sense perception gives rise to memory, and memory conditions affect subsequent perceptions, so that the current perceptions are not only perceptions but they are also recognized as similar to past perceptions.   Given this view, a kind of resemblance theory usually accompanies the nominalist account.   An empiricist’s view of knowledge acquisition fits nicely with the nominalist’s commitment to a tidy ontology.