Questions tagged [nominalism]
Nominalism is the position that universals and/or abstract objects do not exist
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Why would infinite monkeys not produce the works of Shakespeare?
Apologies if this is a very basic/obvious question. I have no training in philosophy, but have been making my way through Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy podcast.
Recently I listened to his ...
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Do realists and nominalists actually disagree about what really is, or do they just disagree about words?
So I am reading Loux's contemporary introduction to metaphysics, and he starts by giving two broad ideas about universals.
Do realists and nominalists actually disagree about what really is? For ...
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Did Gödel think certain math could only be understood if platonism is correct? (and correspondence and nominalism)
I’m reading Shapiro’s Thinking About Mathematics, and there’s a quote by Godel which I would like to fully understand, both his intended meaning and how it’s viewed in the wider context of mathematics,...
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“Give something a name, and it becomes a thing.”
A colleague once made a comment to the effect of, "If you give something a name, it becomes a thing."
Is that a quote, or similar to a quote, from some philosophical work. If so, what is the ...
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How do we know we've defined a thing properly when all definitions seem to have exceptions? [closed]
I don’t understand how to create definitions. Let’s take this question: “What is a woman?”
Now if I am a Platonic Idealist (or some other essentialist) then I think that all women share the same ...
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If mathematical platonism is true, is mathematics then a discovery?
A perennial meta-mathematical question is whether mathematics is an invention or a discovery.
If mathematical platonism is true, it means that mathematical concepts exist as ideas, and therefore, or ...
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How is nominalism different to universalism?
I wonder how this would be best explained to the public without prior knowledge (such myself).
We have on one side the contradiction between e.g. the general or abstract “(being) yellow” vs “yellow ...
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What have been the major achievements in the debate regarding platonism and nominalism?
I have read some of the philosophies on either side of the argument, but lack the historical overview to really get a picture of the main achievements chronologically. I'm taking nominalism to mean ...
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