Universals and Particulars
Many distinct things can share a feature: two apples are both red, two electrons share a charge. This area asks whether there are universals that such things share, or only individual particulars, and how to account for resemblance and predication.
Definition
A universal is an entity that can be wholly present in many places at once and shared by many particulars; a particular is a single, non-repeatable individual.
Scope
Covers the problem of universals, realism about properties and relations, nominalist and trope-theoretic alternatives, the substance-attribute relation, and the metaphysics of predication and resemblance.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Are there universals, or only particulars?
- What grounds the resemblance among distinct things?
- What is the relation between a substance and its attributes?
- Can properties be particulars (tropes) rather than universals?
Key concepts
- Universal
- Particular
- Trope
- Resemblance
- Predication
- Instantiation
- Naturalness
Key theories
- Realism about universals
- There exist repeatable universals that distinct particulars share; Armstrong defends a sparse, a posteriori realism on which universals are those properties posited by total science.
- Trope theory
- There are no universals; properties are particularized, non-repeatable tropes, and resemblance among tropes does the work attributed to shared universals.
- Class nominalism and naturalness
- Lewis treats properties as classes of (possible) individuals while invoking a primitive distinction between natural and gerrymandered classes to recover the explanatory roles of universals.
History
Plato located universals in a separate realm of Forms; Aristotle held universals are immanent in their instances. The medieval problem of universals pitted realists against nominalists and conceptualists. In the twentieth century Armstrong revived scientific realism about universals, while trope theory and class nominalism offered influential alternatives.
Debates
- Realism versus nominalism
- Realists posit universals to explain how distinct things can share features; nominalists deny universals and seek to explain shared features by classes, resemblance, or tropes.
Key figures
- Plato
- Aristotle
- William of Ockham
- D. C. Williams
- D. M. Armstrong
- David Lewis
Related topics
Seminal works
- armstrong1978
- williams1953
- lewis1983
Frequently asked questions
- What is the problem of universals?
- It is the question of how to account for the fact that many distinct particulars can share the same features. Realists answer by positing shared universals; nominalists deny universals and explain sharing in other terms.