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David Malet Armstrong AO FAHA (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), [4] often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher.He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature.
In both Universals and Scientific Realism (1978) and Universals: An Opinionated Introduction (1989), Armstrong describes the relative merits of a number of nominalist theories which appeal either to "natural classes" (a view he ascribes to Anthony Quinton), concepts, resemblance relations or predicates, and also discusses non-realist "trope ...
David Malet Armstrong (1926 - 2014) – Australian philosopher. In metaphysics, Armstrong defends the view that universals exist (although Platonic uninstantiated universals do not exist). Those universals match up with the fundamental particles that science tells us about.
The instantiation principle or principle of instantiation or principle of exemplification is the concept in metaphysics and logic (first put forward by David Malet Armstrong) that there can be no uninstantiated or unexemplified properties (or universals). In other words, it is impossible for a property to exist which is not had by some object.
Armstrong looks at Gilbert Ryle's refinement of Behaviourism, Dispositional Behaviourism. Armstrong illustrates Ryle's idea with a description of glass - brittleness is the disposition of materials such as glass to shatter under certain circumstances. Whether or not the glass shatters in a particular instance, it has the disposition to do so.
Were there no red objects there would be no red-universal. This immanence can be conceived in terms of the theory of hylomorphism by seeing objects as composed of a universal form and the matter shaped by it. David Malet Armstrong was a modern defender of Aristotelianism on the problem of universals. States of affairs are the basic building ...
Taking a broader view, the main positions are generally considered classifiable as: extreme realism, nominalism (sometimes simply named "anti-realism" with regard to universals), [6] moderate realism, and idealism. Extreme Realists posit the existence of independent, abstract universals to account for attribute agreement.
In Aristotle's view, universals can be instantiated multiple times. He states that one and the same universal, such as applehood, appears in every real apple.A common sense challenge would be to inquire what remains exactly the same in all these different things, since the theory is claiming that something remains the same.