Universals As Respects of Sameness

Universals as Respects of Sameness Howard Joseph James Peacock University College London PhD (Philosophy) Õ Declaration I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Signed: Date: ó Abstract is thesis argues for realism about universals — the view that, in addition to particular things, there exist universals instantiated by those particular things. e rst half presents a positive case for realism. Here it is claimed that universals are needed in our ontology to serve as the respects in which things are the same, and the features or characteristics that things have in common. is argument is defended against nominalist responses, rst, that our apparent ‘ontological commitment’ to features and characteristics is not genuine; and second, that the same theoretical work can be achieved by treating respects of sameness as sets of particulars or sets of tropes rather than sui generis universals. e second half of the thesis defends the realist against the most serious objections to an ontology of universals. ese are the problems arising from the realist’s obligation to ascribe referential function to predicates, and the family of diculties known as ‘‘Bradley’s Regress’’. By addressing both the reasons to believe in universals, and the alleged reasons not to believe in universals, it is hoped that a coherent case for realism is achieved. ì Table of Contents Section Page Title Page Õ Declaration ó Abstract ì Table of Contents ¦ Preface ¢ Chapter Õ: e Problem of Universals Õþ Chapter ó: Ontological Evasions ¦ä Chapter ì: Doing without Universals? Chapter ¦: Predicates and Universals Õóþ Chapter ¢: Bradley’s Regress: I Õä¦ Chapter ä: Bradley’s Regress: II óþ¦ Aerword óì¦ References óìß ¦ Preface Our attempts to describe similarities between objects seem to embody a theory about the nature of resemblance itself. Confronted with two similar objects, we say that they are (qualitatively) ‘the same’; that they ‘have something in common’ or ‘share some common feature’; that one has the ‘qualities’ or ‘characteristics’ of the other; that they are ‘identical in some respects’. How should we understand this talk of ‘sameness’ and ‘features shared in common’? e apparent quantication over ‘respects’ and ‘features’, and the lack of any obvious alternative to treating sameness as identity, tempt us to recognize entities which are shared between similar objects, whose presence we advert to by talk of their ‘shared features’ and ‘sameness in some respects’. e question of whether we must recognize the existence of a special kind of entity that objects share when they exhibit qualitative sameness, or share some common feature, is the subject-matter of the debate between nominalists and realists. Realists claim that it is necessary to recognize a special kind of entity — universals — shared between qualitatively similar things; nominalists deny that belief in the existence of universals is warranted. In the following chapters, I argue in favour of a realism that recognizes a shared universal wherever objects exhibit genuine qualitative sameness or objective similarity in some respect. Before entering the debate, it would be well to ask, what is a universal, anyway? Without some answer to that question, we cannot know what claim we make when we say that universals exist. e rst thing to say is that a universal is a special kind of entity that is literally identical across its instances, although it is shared by numerically distinct things. is serves to distinguish realism from some radical nominalisms, and from some trope theories, for the trope theorist considers the redness of a and the redness of b to be distinct entities, and may deny that there is any one thing shared between a and b as a universal is supposed to be shared between its instances. However, not every nominalist will deny that there is something literally identical shared between qualitatively similar things — for example, the Predicate Nominalist claims that what is shared is some actual or possible predicate, while the Class Nominalist claims that what is shared is a set containing the things that exhibit the similarity in question. For that reason, we must stipulate that universals are a sui generis kind of entity: they are not to be ‘reduced’ to one or another already recognized metaphysical kind, such as sets of individuals or tropes. is characterization tells us more about what universals are not than about what they are. Can we supplement this with any positive account? It has already been observed that everyday discourse embodies a theory of universals in its vocabulary of characteristics, ¢ features, attributes, qualities, properties, and relations.Õ All these words seem to pick out the same kind of entity; moreover they are entities which may be shared by dierent objects, for example when I am said to have some of the characteristics of my father. One of the reasons why it is rarely felt necessary to give a general account of what universals are is that the notion can be explained with reference to such usages in everyday discourse, and we may see our philosophical account of universals as clarifying and extending a theory already embodied in our everyday thought and talk. One element of everyday discourse about universals is that they are capable of combining with particulars: objects have properties, and stand in relations. is combination is not a matter of the particular being a constituent of the universal, in the way in which the Class Nominalist asserts that objects are constituents of the sets that are identied as their properties and relations. However, it is not an essential part of realism to hold the converse, that universals are constituents (Armstrong ÕÉÉa: ¢) or ‘non-spatiotemporal parts’ (Lewis ÕÉä: äß) of some further objects, whether these are construed as ‘thick particulars’ (Armstrong ÕÉÉa: äþ) or ‘states of aairs’ (Armstrong ÕÉÉß: Õó¢); nor is it mandatory to treat the combination between universals and particulars as an entity — the relation of instantiation — although I shall argue later that this is in fact the best approach for the realist. A feature of philosophical characterizations of universals is that they are considered immune to causal inuence; nothing we could do would change the intrinsic nature of a given universal. is is not to say that universals need be causally inert. Certainly we are able to aect which combinations hold between universals and particulars, for our inuence in the world extends as far as changing which properties objects have, and which relations they stand in. Moreover, universals may be said to have causal inuence on us, even if we cannot change their nature. It would be hard to state a theory of perception which did not describe us as perceiving either the properties of objects, or the properties of our sensory impressions, and such perception requires that these properties be capable of exerting a causal inuence on the world. Interlinked with this conception of universals as immune to inuence is the idea that universals are mind-independent; nothing about the nature or existence of universals is determined by the activity of the human mind. is stipulation serves to distinguish realism from conceptualism, the position that what qualitatively similar things have in common is some man-made concept under which they fall. Finally, any account of universals should mention the question of their location. So- called ‘aristotelians’ say that universals are located at the same places as the particulars ÕOn this point I am in agreement with Quine (ÕÉäÉ: Õ¢). ä that instantiate them, while ‘platonists’ may say that universals lack spatio-temporal location, or may take the extreme view that universals are located in a ‘Platonic heaven’. A premature decision between ‘platonism’ and ‘aristotelianism’ should not be allowed to prejudice the discussion; for now we should observe merely that it cannot be assumed that universals must have spatio-temporal location. I oer a tentative suggestion about how the controversy may be be resolved in my conclusion. e present work falls into two parts: chapters Õ-ì make the case for realism about universals, while chapters ¦-ä address diculties for the realist project. is division is necessary because nominalists attack both the realist’s reasons for introducing universals in the rst place, and the coherence and plausibility of the theory of universals itself. Discussion of problems for a realist ontology is helpful also because it enables us to see more clearly what kind of realist theory we may accept. My positive case for universals is based on a development of the argument known since antiquity as the ‘One over Many’, while the problems I consider are the diculties associated with the thesis that predicates refer to universals, and Bradley’s regress. Chapter one discusses the ‘One over Many’ argument. Realists sometimes talk as though there is one ‘Problem of Universals’, some single problem to which the existence of universals provides a prima facie solution (Armstrong ÕÉÉ: ¢; Rodriguez-Pereyra óþþó: Õ¦), where the burden of proof falls on the nominalist to explain why universals are not, aer all, required (Armstrong ÕÉßa: ÕÉ). We should not assume that there is only one way to argue successfully for the existence of universals, and in fact the historical debates that may be subsumed under the Problem of Universals cover everything from accounting for the objectivity of mathematical truth to explaining how a predicate can be true of more than one thing (MacBride óþþó: óß). At times, in the absence of adequate dialectic, realists have been known even to resort to violence and intimidation to promote their position.ó Indeed, it would be strange to hold that universals are among the fundamental constituents of reality, yet deny that their existence could be established by more than one argument.

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