Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. [ 1 ]
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 ...
In Aristotle's view, universals are incorporeal and universal, but only exist only where they are instantiated; they exist only in things. [1] Aristotle said that a universal is identical in each of its instances. All red things are similar in that there is the same universal, redness, in each thing.
Universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color green, the form circularity, and the virtue courage. Universals express aspects or features shared by particulars. For example, Mount Everest and Mount Fuji are particulars characterized by the universal mountain. [30] Universals can take the form of properties or relations.
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. [1] [2] There are two main versions of nominalism. One denies the existence of universals – that which can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things (e.g., strength, humanity).
Nominalists deny the existence of universals altogether, even as particularised and multiplied within particulars. Moderate realism, however, is considered a midpoint between Platonic realism and nominalism as it holds that the universals are located in space and time although they do not have separate realms.
Metaphysics encompasses a wide range of general and abstract topics. It investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being. An influential division is between particulars and universals. Particulars are individual unique entities, like a specific apple.
In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. [2] Intermediate between nominalism and realism , the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical concept of universals from a perspective that denies their presence in particulars outside the ...