Nominalism | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

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Nominalism Summary

Nominalism

NOMINALISM. The philosophical view of nominalists is based on the conviction that in human discourse only names (nomina), nouns, or words are "universal," not things, common natures, or ideas, as claimed by the realists. The problem of universals, first raised in logic, concerned the status of terms that are predicable of many subject-terms. The problem raised other questions that had to be answered in psychology or epistemology, with serious ramifications in theology. The logical problem of universals was heatedly debated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in response to Abelard; the larger problem was debated even more heatedly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in response to Ockham and his followers.

In the early Middle Ages logicians encountered the problem of universals in teaching Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge (Introduction). In the Categories Aristotle listed ten classes of terms that are predicable of subject-terms in discourse (substance and the nine accidental characteristics). Porphyry grouped these into five types of univocal predicability called "universals" (uni-versus-alia), namely, genus, species, difference, property, and accident. Concerning their status Porphyry raised three questions: namely, whether they exist substantially or only in the mind; if the former, whether they are corporeal or incorporeal; and, third, whether they exist separately from objects of sense or only in them. Porphyry gave no answer but implied a Platonic solution. Boethius (c. 475–c. 525), in his commentary, further asks whether these universals are "things," as the Platonists hold, or only "names" as Aristotle seems to hold.

Early teachers such as John Scottus Eriugena (fl. 847–877), Anselm (c. 1033–1109), and William of Champeaux (c. 1070–1121), largely influenced by the Platonic realism of the early church fathers, maintained that predicable terms immediately reflect common natures in creatures and mediately reflect ideas in the mind of God. The earliest opponent of such realism was the French teacher Roscelin (fl. 1080–1125), who taught Peter Abelard (1079–1142). Arguing that things as such exist only as individuals and cannot be predicated universally, Roscelin attributed universality solely to vocal utterances. Modifying the extreme view of Roscelin, Abelard held that in predication it is simply names that are predicated of subject-terms, and the main function of names is to signify whatever is agreed upon by men. The meaning of the term rose being agreed upon, the name of the rose and its signification remain even when there are no more roses. Signification, for Abelard, exists only in the mind, not in individual things existing outside the mind. Abelard, however, did not raise the more serious questions of psychology or epistemology, since he did not know the rest of Aristotle's philosophy.

Logicians after Abelard distinguished between the meaning (significatio) of names and their intended use (suppositio) in sentences. Three kinds of supposition were noted: "simple," as in the simple meaning of a name; "material," as in the sounds or letters with which it is composed; and "personal," as in the proper subject possessing the attribute. In the thirteenth century wider issues were also discussed, such as the psychology of knowledge and the epistemological foundations of all knowledge. Moderate realists explained universal concepts in terms of "abstraction" by the human intellect from sense knowledge directly perceiving existing individuals.

Early in the fourteenth century William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349) rejected every shade of universality in things outside the mind, even fundamentally and potentially: "All those whom I have seen agree that there is really in the individual a nature that is in some way universal, at least potentially and incompletely" (Sentences 1.2.7). Ockham's unique nominalism rests on three crucial positions. First, in logic he substituted a new meaning for "simple" supposition: namely, when a term used stands for a mental intuition (intentio animae), but without that meaning, that is, without signifying something mental. As a consequence "personal" supposition became the concrete individual indicated by the name (Sum of Logic 1.64). Second, in psychology Ockham eliminated all distinctions between the soul and its faculties, among the faculties themselves, and between intellectual and sense knowledge. For Ockham, the intellect directly perceives the concrete individual by "intuitive" knowledge. Third, as for existing realities, only "absolute things" (res absolutae) can exist, namely, individual substances (matter or form) and sensible qualities: "Apart from absolute things, viz. substances and qualities, nothing can be imagined [to exist] either actually or potentially" (ibid., 1.49). Thus the other Aristotelian categories, such as quantity, relation, and the like, were reduced to mental intuitions (intentiones animae) that referred to individual "absolute things" variously perceived.

Ockham's nominalism eliminated much of what was traditionally considered "real" in philosophy and theology. Thus the name "motion" in any variation did not refer to a reality other than the body itself in motion; it signified a body (personal supposition) considered as being in one place after another without interruption (in simple supposition). Since "without interruption" is a negation, it cannot exist outside the mind in order to be distinct from the body in motion. Similarly, "grace" signifies a sinner acceptable to God as pleasing to him, not a reality in man distinct from the sinner. This simplification of names appealed to many philosophers and theologians after Ockham.

Many of the leading theologians in the fifteenth century—Gabriel Biel, Pierre d'Ailly, and Peter of Candia (the antipope Alexander V), for example—were nominalists. Moreover, most universities of Europe in the sixteenth century considered nominalism a mark of Catholic orthodoxy.