Now is there anything in reality corresponding to 'that-which-is' and 'beings'? Well of course: absolutely everything comes under 'that-which-is.' There is nothing that is named by 'Nothing.' And if I met nobody on the trail, that is not to say that I met someone named 'Nobody.' But absolutely everything falls under 'a being,' 'an existent,' ein Seiendes, das Seiende.
Heidegger has been known to say such things as Das Seiende ist, or Now let's think about whether we should be nominalists with respect to words like das Seiende, that-which-is, the existent, beings, and the like. If I understand Ed's position, he holds that all reference is intra-linguistic. There has to be something extralinguistic (and extramenal) corresponding to the predicate in 'Peter is blond,' but it is not obvious that it must be a universal. What I am calling Extreme Nominalism has little to recommend it, but I think Nominalism Proper is quite a reasonable position. The two middle positions, however, are subject to reasonable controversy. I hope no one is crazy enough to be a mad-dog nominalist, and that everyone is sane enough to be a methodological nominalist. Methodological Nominalism: This is just Ed's suggestion that we not assume that for each word there is a corresponding entity. Thus the whiteness of Socrates is numerically distinct from the whiteness of Plato. Both are particulars because neither is repeatable in the way in which a universal is repeatable. Thus Socrates is a particular while his whiteness is an abstract particular, where 'abstract' is being used in the traditional as opposed to the new-fangled Quinean way. I am using particular to refer to any unrepeatable item, whether concrete or abstract. This view allows that something in reality corresponds to predicates such as 'blond.' It is just that what this predicate denotes is not a universal but a particular, a trope say, or an Aristotelian accident. Nominalism Proper: Particulars (unrepeatables) alone exist: there are no universals (repeatables). The waters are muddy enough without bringing Meinong into the picture - please pardon the mixed metaphors.)Įxtreme Nominalism: The only words that have existing referents are names like 'Peter' and Paul' nothing in reality corresponds to such predicates as 'blond.' And a fortiori nothing corresponds to copulae and logically connective words such as 'and' and 'or.' Mad Dog Nominalism: No word has an existing referent, not even 'Peter' and 'Paul.' (I write 'existing referent' to disallow Meinongian objects as referents. Now I rather doubt that anyone maintains that every word in (3*) - or rather every word in a tokening of this sentence-type whether via utterance or inscription or some other mode of encoding - has an entity corresponding to it. Before proceeding to it, consider the following example: Whether there is call to be a nominalist about 'being' is another matter. On the face of it, then, there is no call to be anything other than a nominalist about 'nothing,' using 'nominalism' as per the suggestion above.
In (2*) the tilde and the particular quantifier are syncategorematic elements. This then goes into quasi-canonical notation as It is not the case that there is something in the drawer.
(Carnapian slanders aside, Heidegger does not maintain this, but this is a separate topic about which I have written a long unpublished paper.) Following Ed's excellent advice, the apparently referential 'nothing' can be paraphrased away:Ģ. Does anyone think that every term has a referent? (No) Don't we all hold that there can be no automatic assumption that every occurrence of a term in a stretch of discourse picks out an entity? (Yes) For example, one would be hard pressed to find a philosopher who holds that 'nothing' in My first concern is whether this definition of 'nominalism' is perhaps too broad, so broad that it pulls in almost all of us. A classic nominalist strategy is to rewrite the sentence in such a way that the term disappears. Further arguments are needed to show that there is or there isn't. Das Seiende is a term, so we shouldn't automatically assume there is a thing corresponding to it. I.e., we shouldn't automatically assume that there is a thing corresponding to every term. Nominalism is the doctrine that we should not multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms. Today I preach on an old text of long-time commenter and sparring partner, London Ed: The following redacted re-post from over ten years ago (7 March 2012) may help him focus his thoughts. One of the things he will have to do early on is to define 'nominalism' as he will use the term given its varied use in the history of philosophy. I encourage him to do so for his sake and ours. Ed Buckner is threatening to write a book on the history of philosophy from the perspective of nominalism.
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