Editing Nominalism (section)

==History==
{{see also|Anti-realism}}

===Ancient Greek philosophy===

[[Plato]] was perhaps the first writer in [[Western philosophy]] to clearly state a [[Realism (philosophy)|realist]], i.e., non-nominalist, position:
<blockquote>... We customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each of the many things to which we apply the same name.&nbsp;... For example, there are many beds and tables.&nbsp;... But there are only two forms of such furniture, one of the bed and one of the table.  ([[The Republic (Plato)|''Republic'']] 596a–b, trans. Grube) </blockquote>

<blockquote>What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself&nbsp;...? Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state? (''Republic'' 476c)</blockquote>

The Platonic universals corresponding to the names "bed" and "beautiful" were the [[Theory of Forms|Form]] of the Bed and the Form of the Beautiful, or the ''Bed Itself'' and the ''Beautiful Itself''.  Platonic Forms were the first universals posited as such in philosophy.<ref name="Penner 1987, p. 24">Penner (1987), p. 24.</ref>

Our term "universal" is due to the English translation of [[Aristotle]]'s technical term ''katholou'' which he coined specially for the purpose of discussing the problem of universals.<ref>Peters (1967), p. 100.</ref>  ''Katholou'' is a contraction of the phrase ''kata holou'', meaning "on the whole".<ref>[http://archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/dict?name=lsj&lang=el&word=kaqo%2flou&filter=GreekXlit "katholou"] in [[Harvard]]'s Archimedes Project online version of [[Henry Liddell|Liddell]] & [[Robert Scott (philologist)|Scott]]'s ''[[A Greek-English Lexicon]]''.</ref>

Aristotle famously rejected certain aspects of Plato's Theory of Forms, but he clearly rejected nominalism as well:

<blockquote>... 'Man', and indeed every general predicate, signifies not an individual, but some quality, or quantity or relation, or something of that sort.  (''[[Sophistical Refutations]]'' xxii, 178b37, trans. Pickard-Cambridge)</blockquote>

The first philosophers to explicitly describe nominalist arguments were the [[Stoics]], especially [[Chrysippus]].<ref>John Sellars, ''Stoicism'', Routledge, 2014, pp. 84–85: "[Stoics] have often been presented as the first nominalists, rejecting the existence of universal concepts altogether.&nbsp;... For Chrysippus there are no universal entities, whether they be conceived as substantial [[Platonic Forms]] or in some other manner."</ref><ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.iep.utm.edu/chrysipp/| title = Chrysippus (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)}}</ref>

===Medieval philosophy===
In [[medieval philosophy]], the French philosopher and [[Theology|theologian]] [[Roscellinus]] (c. 1050 – c. 1125) was an early, prominent proponent of nominalism. Nominalist ideas can be found in the work of [[Peter Abelard]] and reached their flowering in [[William of Ockham]], who was the most influential and thorough nominalist. Abelard's and Ockham's version of nominalism is sometimes called [[conceptualism]], which presents itself as a middle way between nominalism and realism, asserting that there ''is'' something in common among like individuals, but that it is a concept in the mind, rather than a real entity existing independently of the mind. Ockham argued that only individuals existed and that universals were only mental ways of referring to sets of individuals. "I maintain", he wrote, "that a universal is not something real that exists in a subject&nbsp;... but that it has a being only as a thought-object in the mind [objectivum in anima]". As a general rule, Ockham argued against assuming any entities that were not necessary for explanations.  Accordingly, he wrote, there is no reason to believe that there is an entity called "humanity" that resides inside, say, Socrates, and nothing further is explained by making this claim. This is in accord with the analytical method that has since come to be called [[Ockham's razor]], the principle that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible. Critics argue that conceptualist approaches answer only the psychological question of universals. If the same concept is ''correctly'' and non-arbitrarily applied to two individuals, there must be some resemblance or shared property between the two individuals that justifies their falling under the same concept and that is just the metaphysical problem that universals were brought in to address, the starting-point of the whole problem (MacLeod & Rubenstein, 2006, §3d). If resemblances between individuals are asserted, conceptualism becomes moderate realism; if they are denied, it collapses into nominalism.

===Modern and contemporary philosophy===
In [[modern philosophy]], nominalism was revived by [[Thomas Hobbes]]<ref name=SEP>{{cite book| chapter-url = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/| title = Thomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)| chapter = Thomas Hobbes| date = 2022| publisher = Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University}}</ref> and [[Pierre Gassendi]].<ref>{{cite book| chapter-url = https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gassendi/| title = Pierre Gassendi (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)| chapter = Pierre Gassendi| date = 2014| publisher = Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University}}</ref>

In [[contemporary philosophy|contemporary]] [[analytic philosophy]], it has been defended by [[Rudolf Carnap]],<ref name=:0>{{cite web| url = https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/resemblance-nominalism-a-solution-to-the-problem-of-universals/| title = "Review of Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, ''Resemblance Nominalism: A Solution to the Problem of Universals''" – ndpr.nd.edu| date = 7 February 2004| last1 = MacBride| first1 = Fraser}}</ref> [[Nelson Goodman]],<ref>{{cite web| url = https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goodman/supplement.html| title = "Nelson Goodman: The Calculus of Individuals in its different versions", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref>  [[H. H. Price]],<ref name=:0/> and [[D. C. Williams]].<ref>[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-dc/ Donald Cary Williams, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy].</ref>

Lately, some scholars  have been questioning what kind of influences nominalism might have had in the conception of [[modernity]] and contemporaneity. According to [[Michael Allen Gillespie]], nominalism profoundly influences these two periods. Even though modernity and contemporaneity are secular eras, their roots are firmly established in the sacred.<ref name="gillespie">{{cite book |last1=Gillespie |first1=Michael Allen |title=The Theological Origins of Modernity |date=2008 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |isbn=978-0226293516}}</ref> Furthermore, "Nominalism turned this world on its head," he argues. "For the nominalists, all real being was individual or particular and universals were thus mere fictions."<ref name="gillespie"/>

Another scholar, Victor Bruno, follows the same line. According to Bruno, nominalism is one of the first signs of rupture in the medieval system. "The dismembering of the particulars, the dangerous attribution to individuals to a status of totalization of possibilities in themselves, all this will unfold in an existential fissure that is both objective and material. The result of this fissure will be the essays to establish the [[nation state]]."<ref name="Bruno">{{cite book |last1=Bruno |first1=Victor |date=2020 |title=A Imagem Estilhaçada: Breve Ensaio sobre Realismo, Nominalismo e Filosofia |publisher=Editora ViV |location=Rio de Janeiro |isbn=978-6588972021}}</ref>

===Indian philosophy===
{{See also|Difference (philosophy)}}
[[Indian philosophy]] encompasses various realist and nominalist traditions. Certain orthodox Hindu schools defend the realist position, notably [[Purva Mimamsa]], [[Nyaya]] and [[Vaisheshika]], maintaining that the referent of the word is both the individual object perceived by the subject of knowledge and the universal class to which the thing belongs. According to Indian realism, both the individual and the universal exist objectively, with the second underlying the former.

Buddhists take the nominalist position, especially those of the [[Sautrāntika]]<ref>{{cite web|author=Sonam Thakchoe|editor=Edward N. Zalta|title=The Theory of Two Truths in India|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/twotruths-india/|website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|date=2022 }}</ref> and [[Yogācāra]] schools;<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chatterjee |first1=A. K. |title=The Yogācāra Idealism |date=1975 |publisher=Motilal Banarsidass |location=Delhi |isbn=8120803159 |edition=2d, rev.}}</ref><ref name="Bruno" /> they were of the opinion that words have as referent not true objects, but only concepts produced in the intellect. These concepts are not real since they do not have efficient existence, that is, causal powers. Words, as linguistic conventions, are useful to thought and discourse, but even so, it should not be accepted that words apprehend reality as it is.

[[Dignāga]] formulated a nominalist theory of meaning called ''apohavada'', or ''theory of exclusions''. The theory seeks to explain how it is possible for words to refer to classes of objects even if no such class has an objective existence. Dignāga's thesis is that classes do not refer to positive qualities that their members share in common. On the contrary, universal classes are exclusions (''[[apoha]]''). As such, the "cow" class, for example, is composed of all exclusions common to individual cows: they are all non-horse, non-elephant, etc.