Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

classes of things as to universals.

A ‘trope’, in contrast to a universal, is a characteristic that is instanced in only one thing. So, for instance, every ‘red’ object is red in a unique way, but the colour is collectively (that is, for all red objects) a universal. The trope theory tries to overcome the problems of instantiation of universals, but seems not to succeed. Each individual instance of a different red, for instance, seems to have to be classed as a different universal.

An idea called ‘conceptualism’ tries to get us back to a less problematic view of universals. Conceptualism recognises that similar things can be gathered, but holds that universals are instanced by individual objects. So verbs might just be abstracted from particulars. It’s not too clear if this fully resolves things, as we are then forced to ask exactly how an individual object can be an instance of a universal. The problem also relates to what we discussed around things and somethings in Chapter 2. There are only unique somethings, so grouping things as universals or as classes, as discussed above, seems problematic, if analysed too deeply.

Whilst all verbs are universal, there are people (called ‘nominalists’, in contrast to ‘conceptualists’) who reject them being reified into such abstract terms as universals. ‘Nominalism’ denies any kind of universals, and asserts that the qualities or actions of things are just brute facts of existence. Nominalism is suggesting that it is just the way language is used and the way things are named that result in this strange tendency for us to ascribe

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