Avril Styrman schrieb:
> Again, I must remind of one great leap
> in ontology: D.M.Armstrong's two-volume Universals and
> Scientific Realism. I think that this is a must for
> every member of this mailing list. After reading the
> first part that concerns paradoxes of nominalism, one
> can hardly be a nominalist anymore. (01)
I agree completely. This book from 1978 is a milestone in analytic
metaphysics. And it takes account of arguments against realism (with
respect to universals) that Peirce, living hundred years earlier, had
never met. For me, personally, it was a relief when it came. I could
then to my nominalist-conceptualist environment simply say, that I did
my work on the preuspposition that Armstrong's arguments against all the
prevailing various forms of nominalims and conceptualism were to the point. (02)
However, even within the camp of immanent realism there are some
differences of opinion. Here are three ways in which my views differs
from Armstrong's: (03)
1. Armstrong thinks that all natural-kind-universals
(substance-universals) can be reduced to property-universals; I think
this is impossible.
2. Armstrong thinks that there are no determinables, only determinates;
I think both are needed in order to make sense of mathematical physics.
That is, determinates (quantity values) exist only as
determinates-of-a-determinable (determinable = quantity dimension).
3. Armstrong thinks that if there are universals there are no tropes,
and vice versa; I think that in order to make sense of the world
ontologists have to postulate the existence of both universals and
tropes. (This view is sometimes called 'moderate realism'.) (04)
Best moderate-realist wishes,
Ingvar J (05)
--
Ingvar Johansson
IFOMIS, Saarland University
home site: http://ifomis.org/
personal home site:
http://hem.passagen.se/ijohansson/index.html (06)
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