Abstract
In this chapter, I present the big picture of reality from the perspective of Priority Nominalism. I will give some hints about how the priority nominalist comprehends different, closed questions of ontology, like the status of meanings and the problem of mereological composition . Furthermore, in this chapter the main pre-theoretical intuitions of Priority Nominalism will be discussed against the background of a more general meta-metaphysical analysis of the realism-nominalism debate. At the very end, I present seven advantages of Priority Nominalism over rival theories.
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Notes
- 1.
Nominalism generally seems easier to pair with an anti-metaphysical attitude than with realism. See, e.g., Carnap for a summary of this sentiment: ‘It is therefore not correct to classify the members of the Vienna Circle as nominalists, as is sometimes done. However, if we look at the basic anti-metaphysical and pro-scientific attitude of most nominalists (and the same holds for many materialists and realists in the modern sense), disregarding their occasional pseudo-theoretical formulation, then it is, of course, true to say that the Vienna Circle was much closer to those philosophers than to their opponents’ (1956:215).
- 2.
See also Chateaubriand (2005) for a defence of Realism and rejection of Ockham’s Razor.
- 3.
Armstrong (1978a: 12–13).
- 4.
Perhaps for some medieval nominalists like Roscelin and Ockham the particular members of species really had nothing in common except the species-name that referred to each member – or, at least, they said things like this.
- 5.
Indeed, the medieval realism-nominalism debate emerged from discussions about Porphyry’s commentary on Aristotle in the third century, concerning the question of whether or not genera and species are mind-dependent.
- 6.
In Goodman’s hypothesis, the predicates ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ not only have parameters for time, but also relative to observers ‘being observed before t and is green, or is not observed before t and is blue’. Thus, he is not suggesting that things spontaneously change colour. But this is not relevant for my point, in particular because I chose a kind of thing that indeed (and regularly) changes colour.
- 7.
Quine according to Mancosu (2008).
- 8.
According to Mancosu (2008).
- 9.
Even Rodriguez-Pereyra (2002:201) concedes that in this and some other aspects Resemblance Nominalism is not intuitive.
- 10.
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Imaguire, G. (2018). The Big Picture of Reality. In: Priority Nominalism. Synthese Library, vol 397. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95004-4_7
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