Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

universals to things. It might be said that a conceptualist is just a nominalist who is too cowardly to admit it! So conceptualism is a kind of half-way house between nominalism and abandoning universals altogether.

It can also be helpful to think of universals as they relate to ‘qualities’. Qualities were considered back in Chapter 2, and there it was explained that they were once divided into primary and secondary qualities — with primary qualities belonging directly to things whilst secondary qualities were characteristics that things seem to have because of our perception of them. At first strike, secondary qualities might seem to have a close affinity with universals. So, imagine a red hat — the redness being a secondary quality. There is not some separate redness that can exist by itself — the redness has to occur within the person observing the hat. So here the ‘universal’ seems to occur within ourselves. Things seem to be different for primary qualities such as extension and duration in time. There is no ‘extension’ apart from things that are extended. There is no time apart from things that endure. All of which might suggest that universals of primary qualities exist within objects, but it is also necessary to add that there is no extension or duration without subjects to experience these qualities. So perhaps the universals, once again, dwell within ourselves.

A question about ‘constitution’ arises at this point — in other words — what makes a ‘thing’? The question of whether or not there are universals can be seen as a question of constitution. This question was addressed back

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