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1Moderate Nominalism and Moderate Realism De Första Sidorna View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Göteborgs universitets publikationer - e-publicering och e-arkiv Acta Philosophica Gothoburgensia 26 MODERATE NOMINALISM AND MODERATE REALISM CHRISTER SVENNERLIND Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis Christer Svennerlind, 2008 Distribution: ACTA UNIVERSITATIS GOTHOBURGENSIS Box 222 SE-405 30 Göteborg Sweden Typeface: Garamond Cover design: Peter Johnsen ISBN 978-91-7346-618-9 ISSN 0283-2380 Printed by Geson, Göteborg 2008 For Anette, Viktoria and Carl Acknowledgements During the years I have worked with this dissertation many persons have contributed to that progress was made. In particular this applies to my mother and father, Maj-Britt and Ingvar Svennerlind. I sincerely thank them for all their help. Equally important has been Anette Stillner, my common-law wife. With her and our two children, Viktoria and Carl, by my side life is a true pleasure. From the bottom of my heart I thank them for that. I want to thank Helge Malmgren for a lot of things. Among these is that he has employed me to work for him whenever he has had the possibility to do so. During a number of years that has meant much to me. I also thank him for the many days I have spent with him in various places discussing philosophy. During the last year Jan Almäng and Kent Gustavsson have constantly helped me to make progress in my writing. For that I cordially thank them both. I also thank all the participants of the seminars at the department of philosophy at Göteborg University. They are too numerous to be mentioned by name. One person who I want to explicitly mention though is Thomas Wetterström. He is the one who interested me in ontology. It was also he who led the seminars for many years. I have learnt very much from him. I thank Irene Karlgren, who kindly lent me her summerhouse to work in. Källby parish has also kindly helped me; for that, I am very grateful. A special person in connection with this dissertation is Ingvar Johansson. He is acting as the opponent appointed by the faculty. I have learnt very much from reading his works. I am also grateful for the discussions on various philosophical subjects we have had during the years. Genie Perdin has corrected my English. I thank her for that and also for putting up with the accelerated tempo during the last days before this book was sent to the printers. Last, but not least, I want to thank my supervisor Björn Haglund. During my time at the department of philosophy, he is among those with whom I have had the most rewarding philo- sophical discussions. I also thank him for having meticulously read the manuscript before it was sent to the printers. Contents Chapter I: Introduction 1 1.1 Ontology 1 1.2 Terminology 8 1.3 Disposition and Method 10 Chapter II: D. C. Williams on the Elements of Being 11 2.1 Introduction 11 2.2 The Analytic Ontology of the Early Williams 12 2.2.1 Overview 12 2.2.2 Two Pairs of Notions: Universal-Particular and Abstract-Concrete 13 2.2.3 The Combination of the Two Pairs 22 2.3 Williams’ Trope Theory 30 2.3.1 Overview 30 2.3.2 Parts and Components 31 2.3.3 The Alphabet of Being: Tropes 40 2.3.4 Concrete Particulars 49 2.3.5 Surrogates for Universals 58 2.3.6 Painless Realism 70 2.3.7 Predicativity 75 Chapter III: Examination of A-S. Maurin’s Ontology 77 3.1 Introduction 77 3.2 The Notion of Trope 78 3.2.1 Overview 78 3.2.2 Single Category: Trope 79 3.3 The Problem of Universalisation and Its Solution 93 3.3.1 Overview 93 3.3.2 Another Problem: The Problem of Universals 94 3.3.3 The Problem of Universalisation 97 3.3.4 Internal and External Relations 104 3.3.5 Internal Relations between Tropes 118 3.3.6 The Preferred Account of Internal Relations between Tropes 129 3.3.7 Degrees of Resemblance 139 3.4 The Problem of Thing-Construction and its Solution 142 3.4.1 Overview 142 3.4.2 The Problem of Thing-Construction 142 3.4.3 Compresence 147 3.4.4 Compresence and Bradley’s Regress 152 Chapter IV: Moment Nominalism 161 4.1 Introduction 161 4.2 Individual and Universal 162 4.2.1 Overview 162 4.2.2 A Modal Notion: Can 163 4.2.3 Semi-Individuality 167 4.2.4 Individuality 176 4.3 Relations and Complexes 178 4.3.1 Overview 178 4.3.2 Similarity 178 4.3.3 Internal and External Relations 188 4.3.4 Elementary Connection 193 4.3.5 Elementary Ideal Relation 199 4.3.6 Objects of Different Orders 202 4.4 Qualities and Quality-Moments 211 4.4.1 Overview 211 4.4.2 Three Postulates for a Theory of Qualities 212 4.4.3 Quality Relations 216 Chapter V: Moderate Realism 223 5.1 Introduction 223 5.2 One Partial and Two Mistaken Arguments for Particularism 224 5.2.1 Overview 224 5.2.2 Avicenna’s First Argument 224 5.2.3 Avicenna’s Second Argument 226 5.2.4 A Partial Argument from Segelbergian- Blackian Universes 230 5.3 The Moderate Realism of D. W. Mertz 240 5.3.1 Overview 240 5.3.2 Principles of Moderate Realism 240 5.3.3 A Refined Version of Avicenna’s Second Argument 247 5.3.4 Unit Attributes: Preliminaries 252 5.3.5 Intensional Aspect: Simple or Complex? 260 5.3.6 Unit Attributes: Continuous Composites 264 5.3.7 Predication 273 5.3.8 Networks of Unit Attributes 278 References 283 CHAPTER I Introduction 1.1 Ontology The title of this essay is ‘Moderate Nominalism and Moderate Realism’, which indicates that its subject is ontology. ‘Nominalism’ signals that in particular and appears to be (almost) exclusively used in the context of ontology. ‘Realism’, on the other hand, is used frequently in almost every area of philosophy. In any event, whether a philosopher is a nominalist or a realist, what he or she takes an interest in is a project which was initiated by Plato and Aristotle. They have marked out the issues ontology centers on to a great extent. In his early work, Categories , Aristotle lists ten categories of reality: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, date, posture, state, action and passivity. 1 Any true description of reality should be made in terms of these ten categories. They can be characterised as the most abstract notions used when describing something, for example, we tend to say that things have qualities. For instance, the Swedish flag is partly blue; if we look at a particular flag, its blue colour has specific nuance. In the terminology introduced by W. E. Johnson, 2 the colour is a lowest determinate of a number of determinables. Most of these determinables do not have any specific adjectives expressing them. Further, the highest determinable among the colours is colour itself, but it is not the (categorially) highest determinable in the line starting with the lowest colour determinates. A still higher determinable is quality itself. Since quality is not a determinate in relation to any higher determinable, we have by now reached the end of the line: a category. This procedure can be applied to Aristotle’s other nine categories as well. Note that in this example we started out talking of 1 The names of some of these ten categories vary between the English translations made of Aristotle’s Greek terms. 2 Cf. Johnson 1921, chapt. XI. 2 CHAPTER I notions used when describing things and were fairly soon referring to traits of the things themselves. This oscillation between concepts and traits of things is difficult to avoid. However, we can use it to make a point. It is that the determinate–determinable distinction is applicable to traits of things as well as of concepts that are used to describe them. If our conceptual scheme is true to how things are, the con- cepts used have counterparts in rerum natura .1 According to some, the categories listed by Aristotle are not independent of each other. For example, the category of substance is said to be reducible to one or more of the others, in particular, quality. This has been a common view among empiricists and still has its proponents today.2 Others stick to the idea that the reduction is impossible in principle; arguing that categorial distinction between substance and quality should therefore be maintained.3 There is also a long tradition of trying to reduce relations to qualities. Aristotle himself is, at least to some extent, part of that tradition. His description of relations as the “least of all things a kind of entity or substance”4 has often been pleaded by adherents of this particular reductionism. During two millennia this was in fact the majority view among western philosophers. Nowadays, quite a few of the guardians of this tradition are found among trope theorists. Since it is difficult, I would say impossible, to consistently uphold this reductionism, the reductionist claim is only partly maintained by most of its adherents. Thus, while the so-called internal relations are con- sidered to be reducible, this is not so with regard to the so-called external relations. Central to the debate between proponents of nominalism and realism are the notions of particularity and universality. The distinc- tion between these two is applicable to all of Aristotle’s categories, as 1 Cf.
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