Richard Weaver in the late 28s identified fourteenth-century nominalism, a movement holding that concepts are just names and not reflective of underlying reality, as the point at which Western Civilization went off the rails.
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Before critical theory took hold of American universities in the '90s, perhaps with the exception of Joseph Kosuth's mechanistic reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein and of the loose connection between Nelson Goodman's Nominalism and Minimalist Art, the philosophical and the art-critical rarely melded on these shores.
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Nominalists assert that only individuals or particulars exist and deny that universals are real (i.e. that they exist as entities or beings; universalia post res). The term "nominalism" comes from the Latin nomen ("name"). Four major forms of nominalism are predicate nominalism, resemblance nominalism, trope nominalism, and conceptualism.
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The term 'nominalism' stems from the Latin nomen, "name". John Stuart Mill summarised nominalism in the apothegm "there is nothing general except names".Mill, J.S. (1865/1877). An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, volume II, Chapter XVII, page 50.
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8 April 2008. Another form of nominalism is trope nominalism. A trope is a particular instance of a property, like the specific greenness of a shirt. One might argue that there is a primitive, objective resemblance relation that holds among like tropes.
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Psychological nominalism is the view advanced in Wilfrid Sellars' paper "Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind" (EPM) that explains psychological concepts in terms of public language use. Sellars describes psychological nominalism as the view that “all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short, all awareness…is a linguistic affair.” Judging solely from the mention in EPM, psychological nominalism would seem to be a form of verbal behaviorism, which holds that ascriptions of psychological states are definitionally equivalent to predictions about behavior.
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If resemblances between individuals are asserted, conceptualism becomes moderate realism; if they are denied, it collapses into nominalism.
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Occam's philosophy is called nominalism or sometimes terminism because it sought the simplest explanations that could account for phenomena.
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MacLeod & Rubenstein (2006), §3. One with a nominalist view claims that we predicate the same property of/to multiple entities, but argues that the entities only share a name and not have a real quality in common. Nominalists often argue this view by claiming that nominalism can account for all the relevant phenomena, and therefore—by Occam's razor, and its principle of simplicity—nominalism is preferable, since it posits fewer entities. Different variants and versions of nominalism have been endorsed or defended by many, including Chrysippus,John Sellars, Stoicism, Routledge, 2014, pp.
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Trope theory (or trope nominalism) in metaphysics is a version of nominalism. Here, a trope is a particular instance of a property, like the redness of a particular rose, or the specific nuance of green of a specific individual leaf. Trope theories assume that universals are unnecessary. This use of the term goes back to D. C. Williams (1953).
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This work is important in that it contains the main account of Ockham's nominalism, a position related to the problem of universals.
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The first German university, the Heidelberg University was not established until 1386. It was immediately steeped in mediaeval nominalism and early Protestantism.
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The following period showed both consolidation, and disruption: the Fraticelli, nominalism, conflict between Church and State (Philip the Fair, Louis of Bavaria, the Avignon Papacy). The spread of Nominalism owed much to two pupils of Duns Scotus: the Frenchman Peter Aureolus (d. 1321) and the Englishman William Occam (d. 1347). Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun opposed the primacy of the pope.
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William of Ockham In metaphysics, nominalism is a philosophical view which denies the existence of universals and abstract objects, but affirms the existence of general or abstract terms and predicates.Mill (1872); Bigelow (1998). There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universals – things that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things (e.g.
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The Platonic-style interpretation was critiqued by Hartry H. Field.Hartry H. Field, Science without numbers. A defense of nominalism. Second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
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Roscelin of Compiègne (), better known by his Latinized name Roscellinus Compendiensis or Rucelinus, was a French philosopher and theologian, often regarded as the founder of nominalism.
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In Ideas Have Consequences, Weaver analyzed William of Occam's 14th century notions of nominalist philosophy. In broad terms, nominalism is the idea that "universals are not real, only particulars".Young 107 Nominalism deprives people of a measure of universal truth, so that each man becomes his own "priest and ethics professor".Scotchie 5 Weaver deplored this relativism, and believed that modern men were "moral idiots, ... incapable of distinguishing between better and worse".
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Nino Cocchiarella put forward the idea that realism is the best response to certain logical paradoxes to which nominalism leads ("Nominalism and Conceptualism as Predicative Second Order Theories of Predication", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. 21 (1980)). It is noted that in a sense Cocchiarella has adopted Platonism for anti-Platonic reasons. Plato, as seen in the dialogue Parmenides, was willing to accept a certain amount of paradox with his forms.
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There are various forms of nominalism ranging from extreme to almost-realist. One extreme is predicate nominalism, which states that Fluffy and Kitzler, for example, are both cats simply because the predicate 'is a cat' applies to both of them. And this is the case for all similarity of attribute among objects. The main criticism of this view is that it does not provide a sufficient solution to the problem of universals.
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Gabriel Biel praised Occam and commented on his writings. Nominalism had less effect on the Dominican theologians. With the possible exceptions of Durand of St. Pourçain (d. 1332) and Holkot (d.
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Nominalism is older than Scotus, but its revival in Occamism may be traced to the one-sided exaggeration of some propositions of Scotus. Scotist Formalism is the direct opposite of Nominalism, and the Scotists were at one with the Thomists in combatting the latter; Occam himself was a bitter opponent of Scotus. The Council of Trent defined as dogma a series of doctrines especially emphasized by the Scotists (e.g. freedom of the will, free co-operation with grace, etc..).
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In modern philosophy, nominalism was revived by Thomas HobbesThomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) and Pierre Gassendi.Pierre Gassendi (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) In contemporary analytic philosophy, it has been defended by Rudolf Carnap,"Review of Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Resemblance Nominalism: A Solution to the Problem of Universals" – ndpr.nd.edu Nelson Goodman,"Nelson Goodman: The Calculus of Individuals in its different versions", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy H. H. Price, and D. C. Williams.Donald Cary Williams, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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But this theory of Roscelin's had no connection with the abstract concept of genus and species. He did not touch on this question. It is certain that he did not deny the existence or possibility of these concepts, and he was therefore not a nominalist in the fashion of Taine or in the sense in which nominalism is now understood. That is why, in reference to the modern sense of the word, some call it a pseudo- nominalism.
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Anathem is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 2008. Major themes include the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism.
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Weaver's ideal society was that of the European Middle Ages, when the Roman Catholic Church gave to all an accurate picture of reality and truth.Nash 94 Nominalism emerged in the late Middle Ages and quickly came to dominate Western thinking. More generally, Weaver felt that the shift from universal truth and transcendental order to individual opinion and industrialism adversely affected the moral health of Americans. Nominalism also undermines the concept of hierarchy, which depends entirely on fundamental truths about people.
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In the debate about philosophical universals, Quinton defended a variety of nominalism that identifies properties with a set of "natural" classes. David Malet Armstrong has been strongly critical of natural class nominalism: Armstrong believes that Quinton's 'natural' classes avoid a fairly fundamental flaw with more primitive class nominalisms, namely that it has to assume that for every class you can construct, it must then have an associated property. The problem for the class nominalist according to Armstrong is that one must come up with some criteria to determine classes that back properties and those which just contain a collection of heterogeneous objects. Quinton's version of class nominalism asserts that determining which are the natural property classes is simply a basic fact that is not open to any further philosophical scrutiny.
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For Goodman and other proponents of mathematical nominalism,Bueno, Otávio, 2013, "Nominalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. {a, b} is also identical to {a, {b} }, {b, {a, b} }, and any combination of matching curly braces and one or more instances of a and b, as long as a and b are names of individuals and not of collections of individuals. Goodman, Richard Milton Martin, and Willard Quine all advocated reasoning about collectivities by means of a theory of virtual sets (see especially Quine 1969), one making possible all elementary operations on sets except that the universe of a quantified variable cannot contain any virtual sets. In the foundations of mathematics, nominalism has come to mean doing mathematics without assuming that sets in the mathematical sense exist.
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Also, for instance, in a 1425 document from the University of Cologne that draws a distinction between the via of Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, and the via of the 'modern masters' John Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen. See Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 1274-1671, (New York: OUP, 2011), p84. The notion of two distinct ways, a via antiqua, associated with realism, and a via moderna, associated with nominalism, became widespread only in the later fifteenth century – a dispute which eventually dried up in the sixteenth century.See Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 1274-1671, (New York: OUP, 2011), p84. Aware that explicit thinking in terms of a divide between 'nominalism' and 'realism’ emerged only in the fifteenth century, scholars have increasingly questioned whether a fourteenth-century school of nominalism can really be said to have existed.
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While the Augustinians James of Viterbo (d. 1308) and Thomas of Strasburg (d. 1357) attached themselves to Ægidius of Rome, Gregory of Rimini, mentioned above, championed an undisguised nominalism. Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo (d.
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His work on resemblance nominalism provides a response to that of David Malet Armstrong and grounds resemblance relations in the sort of modal realism expressed in On the Plurality of Worlds by David Lewis.
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Conceptualism is a position that is meshed between realism and nominalism. Conceptualists believe that universals can indeed be real, but only existing as concepts within the mind."Conceptualism." The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Simon Blackburn.
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This incurs the usual issues that some perfectly legitimate structures might accidentally happen not to exist, and that a finite physical world might not be "big" enough to accommodate some otherwise legitimate structures. The post rem structuralism ("after the thing") is anti-realist about structures in a way that parallels nominalism. Like nominalism, the post rem approach denies the existence of abstract mathematical objects with properties other than their place in a relational structure. According to this view mathematical systems exist, and have structural features in common.
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Aristotelian realism, on the other hand, is the view that universals are real entities, but their existence is dependent on the particulars that exemplify them. Nominalism and conceptualism are the main forms of anti-realism about universals.
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He was deeply disturbed by the image of the individual as a simple instance of something general, as a simple particular case of a general rule. But he also intended to maintain the reality of the general natures, not wanting to reduce them to mere collections or classes of individuals. Thus, he rejected both Platonic realism, and nominalism of all kinds. Instead of choosing between nominalism and realism, he proposes a third version, which insists on the solidarity existent between the individual and the general, linked by their determinations.
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3, p. 104. Michalski was a leading Polish student of medieval philosophy. The chief object of his studies was late, especially 14th-century, Scholasticism and Nominalism in Poland."Michalski, Konstanty," Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (PWN Universal Encyclopedia), vol. 3, p. 104.
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Rodrigo de Arriaga (17 January 1592 – 7 June 1667) was a Spanish philosopher, theologian and Jesuit. He is known as one of the foremost Spanish Jesuits of his day and as a leading representative of post-Suárezian baroque Jesuit nominalism.
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3926, Vienna Imperial Library). Chaucer dedicates his poem Troilus and Criseyde to the contemporary poet John Gower and to Strode: Modern English translation: "O moral Gower, I permit this book to you, and to you, philosophical Strode, to correct, away from your benevolence and zealous goodness." It is quite possible that Troilus and Criseyde was dedicated to "philosophical" (in one of the manuscripts: "logical") Strode because the philosopher introduced Chaucer to some of the basic philosophical distinctions between late medieval nominalism and realism. Thus, Chaucer's literary nominalism in his longest complete poem may well be due to his acquaintance with Strode.
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Goodman, along with Stanislaw Lesniewski, is the founder of the contemporary variant of nominalism, which argues that philosophy, logic, and mathematics should dispense with set theory. Goodman's nominalism was driven purely by ontological considerations. After a long and difficult 1947 paper coauthored with W. V. O. Quine, Goodman ceased to trouble himself with finding a way to reconstruct mathematics while dispensing with set theory – discredited as sole foundations of mathematics as of 1913 (Russell and Whitehead, in Principia Mathematica). The program of David Hilbert to reconstruct it from logical axioms was proven futile in 1936 by Gödel.
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The Franciscans partly favoured Nominalism, partly adhered to pure Scotism. Among the latter group were: Francis Mayronis (d. 1327); John of Colonia; Peter of Aquila (d. about 1370), who as abbreviator of Scotus was called Scotellus (little Scotus); Nicolaus de Orbellis (ca.
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This makes it difficult, it has been argued, to follow the twentieth century narrative which portrayed late scholastic philosophy as a dispute which emerged in the fourteenth century between the via moderna, nominalism, and the via antiqua, realism, with the nominalist ideas of William of Ockham foreshadowing the eventual rejection of scholasticism in the seventeenth century. ;Critique of nominalist reconstructions in mathematics A critique of nominalist reconstructions in mathematics was undertaken by Burgess (1983) and Burgess and Rosen (1997). Burgess distinguished two types of nominalist reconstructions. Thus, hermeneutic nominalism is the hypothesis that science, properly interpreted, already dispenses with mathematical objects (entities) such as numbers and sets.
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William of Ockham was a pioneer of nominalism, and some consider him the father of modern epistemology, because of his strongly argued position that only individuals exist, rather than supra-individual universals, essences, or forms, and that universals are the products of abstraction from individuals by the human mind and have no extra-mental existence. He denied the real existence of metaphysical universals and advocated the reduction of ontology. William of Ockham is sometimes considered an advocate of conceptualism rather than nominalism, for whereas nominalists held that universals were merely names, i.e. words rather than extant realities, conceptualists held that they were mental concepts, i.e.
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In medieval philosophy, the French philosopher and theologian Roscellinus (c. 1050 – c. 1125) was an early, prominent proponent of nominalism. Nominalist ideas can be found in the work of Peter Abelard and reached their flowering in William of Ockham, who was the most influential and thorough nominalist.
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Moderate realism is opposed to both extreme realism (such as the theory of Platonic forms) and nominalism. Nominalists deny the existence of universals altogether, even as particularised and multiplied within particulars. Aristotle espoused a form of moderate realism as did Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus (cf. Scotist realism).
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With respect to the color of the grass, the shirt and Kermit, one of their parts is identical. In this respect, the three parts are literally one. Greenness is repeatable because there is one thing that manifests itself wherever there are green things. Nominalism denies the existence of universals.
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Abelard's and Ockham's version of nominalism is sometimes called conceptualism, which presents itself as a middle way between nominalism and realism, asserting that there is something in common among like individuals, but that it is a concept in the mind, rather than a real entity existing independently of the mind. Ockham argued that only individuals existed and that universals were only mental ways of referring to sets of individuals. "I maintain", he wrote, "that a universal is not something real that exists in a subject... but that it has a being only as a thought-object in the mind [objectivum in anima]". As a general rule, Ockham argued against assuming any entities that were not necessary for explanations.
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Azzouni is currently working on the philosophy of mathematics (he holds a degree in mathematics), science, logic, language and in areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. He acknowledges a debt to Willard Van Orman Quine. Azzouni is of the nominalist bent and has centered much of his philosophical efforts around defending nominalism.
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The moral or political response is given by the conservative philosopher Richard M. Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences (1948), where he describes how the acceptance of "the fateful doctrine of nominalism" was "the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence".
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The opposite of nominalism is realism. Plato was perhaps the first writer in Western philosophy to clearly state a realist i.e. non-nominalist position: > ...We customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each of the > many things to which we apply the same name. ... For example, there are many > beds and tables.
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This maxim is, however, often misquoted. Occam was referring to his nominalism in this quotation. Essentially saying the theory of absolutes, or metaphysical realism, was unnecessary to make sense of the world. This new approach liberated scientific speculation from the dogmatic restraints of Aristotelian science, and paved the way for new approaches.
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Cambridge University Press and the general scientific and rationalist movement. Neopositivism and analytical philosophy discarded classical rationalism and metaphysics in favor of strict empiricism and epistemological nominalism. Proponents such as Bertrand Russell emphatically rejected belief in God. In his early work, Ludwig Wittgenstein attempted to separate metaphysical and supernatural language from rational discourse.
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Richard M. Weaver published Ideas Have Consequences in 1948 by the University of Chicago Press. The book is largely a treatise on the harmful effects of nominalism on Western civilization since that doctrine gained prominence in the High Middle Ages, followed by a prescription of a course of action through which Weaver believes the West might be rescued from its decline. Weaver attributes the beginning of the Western decline to the adoption of nominalism (or the rejection of the notion of absolute truth) in the late Scholastic period. In 1993, Heritage Foundation analyst James A. Phillips used the term "war of ideas" in describing the pivotal role played by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in the ideological battle for the protection of democracy.
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The other solution is that of nominalism. Here the thesis is that universals such as the ideas or forms of Plato are unnecessary in an explanation of language, thought and the world. Only single individuals are real, but they can be grouped together by a human observer through their similarities. Nominalists are usually empiricists.
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In philosophy of law, nominalism finds its application in what is called constitutional nominalism.An overview of the philosophical problems and an application of the concept to a case of the Supreme Court of the State of California, gives Thomas Kupka, 'Verfassungsnominalismus', in: Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy 97 (2011), 44–77, PDF.
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While one might speak of family resemblances between Ockham, Buridan, Marsilius and others, there are also striking differences. More fundamentally, Robert Pasnau has questioned whether any kind of coherent body of thought that could be called 'nominalism' can be discerned in fourteenth century writing.See Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 1274-1671, (New York: OUP, 2011), p86.
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Protestant view of grace and salvation was influenced very much by nominalism of William Ockham's razor. In Martin Luther's opinion Ockham was the only scholastic whose teaching was worth studying.Bouyer L., The spirit and forms of protestantism, p. 186-188 Rejection of traditional Metaphysics, and especially the universals, paved the way to modern empiricism.
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His epistemological views can be described as extreme nominalism. He stressed: In ontology "existence", as Gafurov understands it, is "the ability to provide any object three spatial and one temporal coordinates." In general, the epistemological views of Gafurov are close to Marxist positivism. In the field of aesthetics, Gafurov's views are characterized by snobbery, arrogance and mechanistics.
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See Nominalism#The problem of universals for several approaches to this goal. While induction was sufficient for discovering universals by generalization, it did not succeed in identifying causes. For this task Aristotle used the tool of deductive reasoning in the form of syllogisms. Using the syllogism, scientists could infer new universal truths from those already established.
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Contrary to what nominalism would suggest, language can be pinned down, can serve as a foundation through which one can "find real meaning".Young 122 So, those who do not understand language can never find real meaning, which is inordinately tragic. In Weaver's words, "a world without generalization would be a world without knowledge".Young 114 Thus universals allow true knowledge.
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She is an expert in the ethical-political thought of Jean Paul Sartre and the history of existentialism. In relation to this field, included in her work are Sören Kierkegaard o la subjetividad del caballero (1987) and Diáspora y Apocalipsis. Ensayos sobre el Nominalismo de Jean Paul Sartre's Nominalism (2001). Member of Frente de Liberación de la Mujer in Madrid until 1980.
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In 1958 in Philosophical Studies 4(7) Kotarbiński published Developmental Stages of Concretism, an essay in which he discussed the construction and evolution of his theory starting from the early concretism or nominalism, passing through seven stages of re-elaboration and finally culminating in pansomatism. Kotarbiński used terms: reism, pansomatism and concretism as equivalents to some extent throughout his works.
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Exactly what role to attribute to beauty in mathematics and science is hotly contested, see Philosophy of mathematics. The argument from beauty in science and mathematics is an argument for philosophical realism against nominalism. The debate revolves around the question, "Do things like scientific laws, numbers and sets have an independent 'real' existence outside individual human minds?". The argument is quite complex and still far from settled.
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Terminism is defined by rhetorician Walter J. Ong, who links it to nominalism, as "a concomitant of the highly quantified formal logic of medieval scholastic philosophy, and thus contrasts with theology which had closer connections with metaphysics and special commitments to rhetoric" (135).Walter J. Ong (1958), Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason, Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
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Nash 108 For others he was a historical revisionist. His refutation of what Russell Kirk termed "ritualistic liberalism"Nash 87 struck a chord with conservative intellectuals. Stemming from a tradition of "cultural pessimism",Nash 92 his critique of nominalism, however startling, gave conservatives a new philosophical direction. His writing attacked the growing number of modern Americans denying conservative structure and moral uprightness, confronting them with empirical functionalism.
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Ideas Have Consequences is a philosophical work by Richard M. Weaver, published in 1948 by the University of Chicago Press. The book is largely a treatise on the harmful effects of nominalism on Western civilization since this doctrine gained prominence in the Late Middle Ages, followed by a prescription of a course of action through which Weaver believes the West might be rescued from its decline.
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Feser 2008, pp. 44-46 And by defending realism and rejecting nominalism, he rejects eliminative materialism—and thus naturalism. In the third chapter, Feser summarizes three of Thomas Aquinas's arguments for the existence of God.Feser 2008, pp. 90-119 These include arguments for an unmoved mover,Feser 2008, pp. 91-102 first, uncaused causeFeser 2008, pp. 102-110 and (supernatural) supreme intelligence,Feser 2008, pp.
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Seal Renaud du Bellay was the treasurer of Tours Cathedral and Archbishop of Reims from 1083 to 1096. He succeeded Manasses I after a vacancy of around three years. He presided over the Council of Soissons in 1092–93 which declared Roscellin's nominalism heretical. The acts of the council have not survived but it is known from contemporary correspondence, as with Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury.
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Medieval realism developed out of debates over the problem of universals.John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 72. Universals are terms or properties that can be applied to many things, such as "red", "beauty", "five", or "dog". Realism (also known as exaggerated realism) in this context, contrasted with conceptualism and nominalism, holds that such universals really exist, independently and somehow prior to the world.
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Moderate realism holds that they exist, but only insofar as they are instantiated in specific things; they do not exist separately from the specific thing. Conceptualism holds that they exist, but only in the mind, while nominalism holds that universals do not "exist" at all but are no more than words (flatus vocis) that describe specific objects. Proponents of moderate realism included Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus (cf. Scotist realism).
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He was closest to Leo Löwenthal, who had provided him access to personal letters and documents for his research. Jay's work since then has explored Marxism, socialism, historiography, cultural criticism, visual culture, and the place of post-structuralism and post- modernism in European intellectual history. His current research is focused on nominalism and photography. He is a recipient of the 2010/2011 Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin.
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A prominent student of Twaróg's, Jan of Stobnica (c. 1470 – 1519), was already a moderate Scotist who took account of the theories of the Ockhamists, Thomists and Humanists.Tatarkiewicz, Zarys..., p. 7. When Nominalism was revived in western Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century, particularly thanks to Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (Faber Stapulensis), it presently reappeared in Kraków and began taking the upper hand there once more over Thomism and Scotism.
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A realist about properties asserts that properties have genuine existence. One way to spell this out is in terms of exact, repeatable, instantiations known as universals. The other realist position asserts that properties are particulars (tropes), which are unique instantiations in individual objects that merely resemble one another to various degrees. The anti-realist position, often referred to as nominalism claims that properties are names we attach to particulars.
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Young 135 He also agreed with Plato's notions of the realities of transcendentals (recall Weaver's hostility to nominalism) and the connection between form and substance.Johannesen 7 For instance, Weaver admired the connection between the forms of poetry and rhetoric. Like poetry, rhetoric relies on the connotation of words as well as their denotation. Good rhetoricians, he asserted, use poetic analogies to relate abstract ideas directly to the listeners.
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Peters (1967), p. 100. Katholou is a contraction of the phrase kata holou, meaning "on the whole"."katholou" in Harvard's Archimedes Project online version of Liddell & Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon. Aristotle famously rejected certain aspects of Plato's Theory of Forms, but he clearly rejected nominalism as well: > ...'Man', and indeed every general predicate, signifies not an individual, > but some quality, or quantity or relation, or something of that sort.
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Frustration of purpose can occur when the terms of a contract are applied literally and automatically without taking into consideration radical changes in the economic or physical environment.Corbin, Corbin on Contracts, 1964, §1165 at 225-26. The Willard court was also wrestling with a 19th-century concept of money that was quickly becoming outmoded. This concept, known as "nominalism," assumed that money had an intrinsic value which did not change.
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Dummett's work on the German philosopher Frege has been acclaimed. His first book Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973), written over many years, is seen as a classic. It was instrumental in the rediscovery of Frege's work, and influenced a generation of British philosophers. In his 1963 paper "Realism", he popularised a controversial approach to understanding the historical dispute between realist and other non-realist philosophy such as idealism, nominalism, irrealism.
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It appears in the work of > bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no > more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., > of objects are really there. Consistently adhere to that unwarrantable > denial, and you will be driven to some form of idealistic nominalism akin to > Fichte's. Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there.
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Armstrong further rejects nominalisms that deny that properties and relations exist in reality because he suggests that these sorts of nominalisms, specifically referring to what he calls class nominalism, and resemblance nominalism, postulate primitives of either class membership or resemblance. This primitive results in a vicious regress for both kinds of nominalisms, Armstrong suggests, thus motivating his states-of- affairs based system that unites properties by postulating a primitive tie of instantiation based on a fact-ontology, called states of affairs. In terms of the origin of Armstrong's view of universals, Armstrong says his view of universals is "relatively unexplored territory" but points to Hilary Putnam's 1970 paper 'On Properties' :Reprinted in as a possible forerunner. He also says that "Plato in his later works, Aristotle and the Scholastic Realists were ahead of contemporary philosophy in this matter, although handicapped by the relative backwardness of the science and the scientific methodology of their day".
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It goes back to philosophical concepts that Plato and Aristotle created. In particular, Boon sees at work the nominalism of Plato, who introduced the idea of an unchanging and unattainable original in Western philosophy. The distinction between original and copy is in its modern incarnation represented by copyright but is actually a consequence of industrial capitalism. This distinction is threatening to undermine the culture of the world and thus to marginalize other systems of reproduction.
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Mirecourt was chiefly influenced by the philosophy of Nicholas of Autrecourt, William Ockham, and to a minimal degree, Gregory of Rimini, and perhaps even Thomas Bradwardine. Nearly all of the major figures of Mirecourt's day accepted the basic tenets of nominalism, to some degree, and Mirecourt was no different in this respect. He was particularly influenced by the radical nominalist views of Nicholaus of Autrecourt, who was forced to burn his writings in 1347.
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Broadly speaking, nominalism denies the existence of universals (abstract entities), like sets, classes, relations, properties, etc. Thus the plural logic(s) were developed as an attempt to formalize reasoning about plurals, such as those involved in multigrade predicates, apparently without resorting to notions that nominalists deny, e.g. sets. Standard first-order logic has difficulties in representing some sentences with plurals. Most well-known is the Geach–Kaplan sentence "some critics admire only one another".
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Logica, 1546 Paul's philosophy has been categorised within the realist tradition of medieval thought. Following on from John Wycliffe and the subsequent Oxonians who followed him, Paul further developed this new brand of realism, and further renewed Walter Burley’s opposition to nominalism. Paul's metaphysical theses are rooted fundamentally in Scotist thought. Duns Scotus maintained the doctrine of the univocity of being and the existence of the universal forms of objects outside of the person's mind.
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Nominalism was critical to the development of the law of contract and the modern industrial economy.Harman, "Note: Alleviating Hardship Arising From Inflation and Court Congestion: Toward the Use of the Conditional Specific Performance Decree," Southern California Law Review, March 1983, p. 800-801. Most nations adhered to it until the 20th century but abandoned it thereafter.Hirschberg, The Nominalistic Principle: A Legal Approach to Inflation, Deflation, Devaluation and Revaluation, 1971, p. 32-33.
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The theory stands in opposition to both Platonism and nominalism, and emphasises applied mathematics and mathematical modelling as the most philosophically central parts of mathematics. He is the founder of the Sydney School in the philosophy of mathematics. In 2008 he set up the Australian Database of Indigenous Violence. He is the editor of the Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
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In contrast, he had a rather dry, some said 'barbaric', written Latin style. He was referred to by Pierre Bayle as writing "in stylo Sorbonico", not meaning this as a compliment. His interests ranged across the burning issues of the day. His approach largely followed Nominalism which was in tune with the growing emphasis on the absolutely unconstrained nature of God, which in turn emphasised his grace and the importance of individual belief and submission.
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William of Ockham The opposing view to realism is one called nominalism, which at its strongest maintains that universals are verbal constructs and that they do not inhere in objects or pre-exist them. Therefore, universals in this view are something which are peculiar to human cognition and language. The French philosopher and theologian Roscellinus (1050–1125) was an early, prominent proponent of this view. His particular view was that universals are little more than vocal utterances (voces).
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Oor gode en afgode, second edition, p. 138. In South Africa, he writes in 1971 “we are bedevilled by a racialist capitalism exacerbated by our industrial and technological revolution, which justifies itself by a scriptural literalism.”Cf. Persons, p. 11. His dissatisfaction with the contemporary solutions to the country’s political situation is captured succinctly as follows: “On the one hand we have the inadequate response of a nominalism of race, and on the other the conceptualism of abstract liberalism.
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Grzegorz of Stawiszyn (; 1481-1540), was a Polish philosopher and theologian of the mid 16th century, Rector of the University of Krakow in the years 1538–1540. Past Rectors of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków Brief history at JU official website. Grzegorz was born in Stawiszyn in 1481. He was an adherent of Nominalism, a metaphysical view in philosophy, revived in western Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century thanks to French philosopher Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (Faber Stapulensis).
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The two opposing philosophical views on universals, nominalism (or rather conceptualism) and realism can be defined by means of their relation to objective precision: anyone who accepts objective precision, is a philosophical realist; anyone who rejects it, is a conceptualist or nominalist (in a broad sense). In other words, the nominalists reject the idea that our universal mental concepts (formal concepts) require universal intentional objects; thus, according to nominalists, in abstraction only formal precision takes place, no objective precision.
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He showed great interest in Portuguese poetry, most notably through his inclusion of commentaries and notes on poetry in the communist newspaper Avante!. He was interested in the relations between materialistic thought and the medieval controversy between realism and nominalism. He was member elected in European elections and became member of European Parlement. He asked that when he died he would be cremated to the sound of the Chorus of the Slaves of the opera Nabucco by Verdi.
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Weaver attributes the beginning of the Western decline to the adoption of nominalism (or the rejection of the notion of absolute truth) in the late Scholastic period. The chief proponent of this philosophical revolution was William of Ockham. The consequences of this revolution, Weaver contends, were the gradual erosion of the notions of distinction and hierarchy, and the subsequent enfeebling of the Western mind's capacity to reason. These effects in turn produced all manner of societal ills, decimating Western art, education and morality.
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World lines and other physical concepts like the Dirac Sea are also used throughout the series. Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem involves a long discussion of worldlines over dinner in the midst of a philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism. Absolute Choice depicts different world lines as a sub-plot and setting device. A space armada trying to complete a (nearly) closed time-like path as a strategic maneuver forms the backdrop and a main plot device of "Singularity Sky" by Charles Stross.
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The novel's language is viewed as rife with labeling and product placements. Postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson calls it "a kind of hyped-up name-dropping ... [where] an encyclopaedic familiarity with the fashions ... [creates] class status as a matter of knowing the score rather than of having money and power". He also calls it "postmodern nominalism" in that the names express the new and fashionable. This name-dropping demonstrates how commercialism has created and named new objects and experiences and renamed (or re-created) some that already existed.
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In physics, logic and ethics, Terminism (Nominalism) prevailed in Kraków, under the influence of the French Scholastic, Jean Buridan (died c. 1359), who had been rector of the University of Paris and an exponent of views of William of Ockham. Buridan had formulated the theory of "impetus"—the force that causes a body, once set in motion, to persist in motion—and stated that impetus is proportional to the speed of, and amount of matter comprising, a body: Buridan thus anticipated Galileo and Isaac Newton.
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Lefèvre d'Étaples Jan Szylling, a native of Kraków, studied with Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (in Latin, Jacobus Faber Stapulensis) in Paris, France, in the first years of the 16th century. Later he was a cathedral canon in Kraków.Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Historia filozofii (History of Philosophy), volume one, p. 312. When Nominalism was revived in western Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century, particularly thanks to Lefèvre d'Étaples, it presently reappeared in Kraków and began taking the upper hand there once more over Thomism and Scotism.
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Nominalism (from Latin nomen, "name") says that ideal universals are mere names, human creations; the blueness shared by sky and blue jeans is a shared concept, communicated by our word "blueness". Blueness is held not to have any existence beyond that which it has in instances of blue things. This concept arose in the Middle Ages, as part of Scholasticism. Scholasticism was a highly multinational, polyglottal school of philosophy, and the nominalist argument may be more obvious if an example is given in more than one language.
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The Bibliotheca Botanica was the first botanical bibliography arranged by subject. The titles were arranged hierarchically into 16 classes or chapters, each with one or more ordines or sections. Applying this methodus naturalis to books and people was a mark of his ‘scholastic’ view of the world. Most subsequent classifications of botanical literature, including geographical entities, would be more or less empirically based highlighting a recurrent conflict between essentialism, empiricism, nominalism and other doctrines in the theory and practice of any kind of classification.
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Some Neoplatonists, such as the pagan philosopher Plotinus and the Christian philosopher Augustine, imply (anticipating conceptualism) that universals are contained within the mind of God. To complicate things, what is the nature of the instantiation or exemplification relation? Conceptualists hold a position intermediate between nominalism and realism, saying that universals exist only within the mind and have no external or substantial reality. Moderate realists hold that there is no realm in which universals exist, but rather universals are located in space and time wherever they are manifest.
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It fails to provide an account of what makes it the case that a group of things warrant having the same predicate applied to them.MacLeod & Rubenstein (2006), §3a. Proponents of resemblance nominalism believe that 'cat' applies to both cats because Fluffy and Kitzler resemble an exemplar cat closely enough to be classed together with it as members of its kind, or that they differ from each other (and other cats) quite less than they differ from other things, and this warrants classing them together.MacLeod & Rubenstein (2006), §3b.
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David Armstrong, perhaps the most prominent contemporary realist, argues that such a trope-based variant of nominalism has promise, but holds that it is unable to account for the laws of nature in the way his theory of universals can. Ian Hacking has also argued that much of what is called social constructionism of science in contemporary times is actually motivated by an unstated nominalist metaphysical view. For this reason, he claims, scientists and constructionists tend to "shout past each other".Hacking (1999), pp. 80-84.
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The ontological argument is a defining example of the fusion of Hebrew and Greek thought. Philosophical realism was the dominant philosophical school of Anselm's day, and stemmed from Platonism. It held, in contrast to Nominalism, that things such as "green" and "big" were known as universals, which had a real existence in an abstract realm, as described by Plato. Accordingly, if a concept could be formed in the human mind, then it had a real existence in the abstract realm of the universals, apart from his imagination.
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In 1464, Heynlin went to the University of Basel and applied for admission to the professorial faculty of arts. The old controversy regarding the nature of Universals had not yet subsided, and in the university of Basel Nominalism held sway. Hence in view of this and the maintenance of peace within the institution, the admission of Heynlin to the faculty was not accomplished without a most vigorous opposition. Once a member of the faculty, he hoped to rid it of all Nominalistic tendencies, nor was he disappointed in his expectation.
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The frustrated reformism of the humanists, ushered in by the Renaissance, contributed to a growing impatience among reformers. Erasmus and later figures like Martin Luther and Zwingli would emerge from this debate and eventually contribute to another major schism of Christendom. The crisis of theology beginning with William of Ockham in the fourteenth century was occurring in conjunction with the new burgher discontent. Since the breakdown of the philosophical foundations of scholasticism, the new nominalism did not bode well for an institutional church legitimized as an intermediary between man and God.
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Nash 89 Weaver viewed America's moral degradation and turn toward commodity-culture as the unwitting consequences of its belief in nominalism. That is, a civilization that no longer believed in universal transcendental values had no moral ambition to understand a higher truth outside of man.Nash 89 The result was a "shattered world",Young 113 in which truth was unattainable, and freedom only an illusion. Moreover, without a focus on the sort of higher truth that can be found in organized religions, people turned to the more tangible idols of science and materialism.
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Opposing nominalism, they assumed that the analysis of the grammar of ordinary language was the key to metaphysics. For the Modistae, grammatical forms, the modi significandi of verbs, nouns, and adjectives, comprise the deep ontological structure of language, which objectively reflects reality. Their work predicted the concept of universal grammar, suggesting that universal grammatical rules may be extracted from all living languages. Roger Bacon may have given the movement inspiration with his observation that all languages are built upon a common grammar, a shared foundation of ontologically anchored linguistic structures.
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84–85: "[Stoics] have often been presented as the first nominalists, rejecting the existence of universal concepts altogether. ... For Chrysippus there are no universal entities, whether they be conceived as substantial Platonic Forms or in some other manner.".Chrysippus (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Ibn Taymiyyah, William of Ockham, Ibn Khaldun, Rudolf Carnap,"Review of Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Resemblance Nominalism: A Solution to the Problem of Universals" – ndpr.nd.edu Nelson Goodman,"Nelson Goodman: The Calculus of Individuals in its different versions", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy David Lewis, H. H. Price, and D. C. Williams.
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These students then made a reply to Louis XI, defending nominalism as a movement going back to Ockham, which had been persecuted repeatedly, but which in fact represents the truer philosophy. See Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 1274-1671, (New York: OUP, 2011), p. 85. and only gradually became widespread during the fifteenth century.For example, when Jerome of Prague visited the University of Heidelberg in 1406, he described the nominalists as those who deny the reality of universals outside the human mind, and realists as those who affirm that reality.
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Meanwhile, revolutionary nominalism is the project of replacing current scientific theories by alternatives dispensing with mathematical objects (see Burgess, 1983, p. 96). A recent study extends the Burgessian critique to three nominalistic reconstructions: the reconstruction of analysis by Georg Cantor, Richard Dedekind, and Karl Weierstrass that dispensed with infinitesimals; the constructivist re-reconstruction of Weierstrassian analysis by Errett Bishop that dispensed with the law of excluded middle; and the hermeneutic reconstruction, by Carl Boyer, Judith Grabiner, and others, of Cauchy's foundational contribution to analysis that dispensed with Cauchy's infinitesimals.
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One common, but sometimes difficult, question is how best to decide which species an organism belongs to, because reproductively isolated groups may not be readily recognizable, and cryptic species may be present. There is a continuum from reproductive isolation with no interbreeding, to panmixis, unlimited interbreeding. Populations can move forward or backwards along this continuum, at any point meeting the criteria for one or another species concept, and failing others. Many of the debates on species touch on philosophical issues, such as nominalism and realism, and on issues of language and cognition.
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Nominalism, Realism, Conceptualism – Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) Moderate realism is anti-realist about abstract objects, just like conceptualism is (their difference being that conceptualism denies the mind- independence of universals, while moderate realism does not).Neil A. Manson, Robert W. Barnard (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Metaphysics, Bloomsbury, 2014, p. 95. A more recent and influential version of immanent realism has been advanced by Willard Van Orman Quine, in works such as "Posits and Reality" (1955),Scientific Realism and Antirealism – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and D. M. Armstrong, in works such as his Universals: An Opinionated Introduction (1989, p. 8).
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Opus Oxoniense I iii 1-2 Scotus believed that universals exist only inside the things that they exemplify, and that they "contract" with the haecceity of the thing to create the individual. As a result of his realist position, he argued strongly against both nominalism and conceptualism, arguing instead for Scotist realism, a medieval response to the conceptualism of Abelard. That is to say, Scotus believed that such properties as 'redness' and 'roundness' exist in reality and are mind-independent entities. Furthermore, Duns Scotus wrote about this problem in his own commentary (Quaestiones) on Porphyry's Isagoge, as Boethius had done.
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Here he attacks the notion of universals as Platonic forms, but is equally critical of Aristotelian realism about essences, as he is of nominalism and conceptualism as theories of universals. In 1952–1953, Aaron was invited to be Visiting Professor at Yale University. In 1956 he was able to study the third draft of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding at the Pierpont Morgan Library, which resulted in a substantial addition to the second edition of John Locke, published in 1955. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) and President of the Mind Association in the same year.
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The term "anti-realism" was introduced by Michael Dummett in his 1982 paper "Realism" in order to re-examine a number of classical philosophical disputes, involving such doctrines as nominalism, Platonic realism, idealism and phenomenalism. The novelty of Dummett's approach consisted in portraying these disputes as analogous to the dispute between intuitionism and Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics. According to intuitionists (anti-realists with respect to mathematical objects), the truth of a mathematical statement consists in our ability to prove it. According to Platonic realists, the truth of a statement is proven in its correspondence to objective reality.
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Neal Stephenson, Clocks, Orreries, etc., acknowledgements for Anathem A major theme of the novel is the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics based on a directed acyclic graph, which accounts for the various "worldtracks" and "narratives" explored by Fraa Orolo and manipulated by Fraa Jad. Another major theme is the recurring philosophical debate between characters espousing mathematical Platonic realism (called "Halikaarnians" in the novel and associated with Incanters) and characters espousing nominalism (called "Procians" in the novel and who are the Rhetors). Stephenson cites the work of Roger Penrose as a major influence on the novel.
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Hersh advocated what he called a "humanist" philosophy of mathematics, opposed to both Platonism (so-called "realism") and its rivals nominalism/fictionalism/formalism. He held that mathematics is real, and its reality is social-cultural-historical, located in the shared thoughts of those who learn it, teach it, and create it. His article "The Kingdom of Math is Within You" (a chapter in his Experiencing Mathematics, 2014) explains how mathematicians' proofs compel agreement, even when they are inadequate as formal logic. He sympathized with the perspectives on mathematics of Imre Lakatos and Where Mathematics Comes From, George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez, Basic Books.
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The epistemology they developed defends the view that there are only two 'instruments of knowledge' or 'valid cognitions' (pramana): "perception" (pratyaksa) and "inference" (anumāṇa). Perception is a non-conceptual awareness of particulars which is bound by causality, while inference is reasonable, linguistic and conceptual.Tom Tillemans (2011), Dharmakirti, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy These Buddhist philosophers argued in favor of the theory of momentariness, the Yogacara "awareness only" view, the reality of particulars (svalakṣaṇa), atomism, nominalism and the self-reflexive nature of consciousness (svasaṃvedana). They attacked Hindu theories of God (Isvara), universals, the authority of the Vedas, and the existence of a permanent soul (atman).
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Some philosophical variants of nominalism propose that species are just names that people have assigned to groups of creatures but where the lines between species get drawn does not reflect any fundamental underlying biological cut- off point. In this view, the kinds of things that people have given names to, do not reflect any underlying reality. It then follows that species do not exist outside the mind, because species are just named abstractions. If species are not real, then it would not be sensible to talk about "the origin of a species" or the "evolution of a species".
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Born in Stein, near Pforzheim, in Baden-Württemberg, Heynlin may have been of Swabian origin. (From Stein, meaning "stone" in German, are derived his translated Latinized surnames Lapideus or a Lapideand Gallicized surname La Pierre.) On the completion of his academic studies in Germany, presumably at Leipzig and Freiburg, he proceeded to Paris to pursue the study of philosophy and theology. In Paris, he came in contact with the foremost representatives of Realism, who, recognizing Heynlin's abilities and probable future influence, exerted their powers to the utmost to mould his mind after their own and thus make him like themselves a bitter opponent of Nominalism. Their efforts were successful.
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During Dignāga's time, the orthodox Indian Nyaya school and also Hindu Sanskrit grammarians (such as Bhartṛhari) had discussed issues of epistemology and language respectively, but their theories generally accepted the concept of universals which was rejected by most Buddhist philosophers. Influenced by the work of these thinkers as well as by Buddhist philosophers of the Sautrantika school who rejected Hindu theories of universals in favor of nominalism (prajñapti), Dignāga developed his own Buddhist theory of language and meaning based on the concept of "apoha" (exclusion).Hayes (1982), p 27-28. Hattori Masaaki explains the doctrine thus: > a word indicates an object merely through the exclusion of other objects > (anyapoha, -vyavrtti).
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Hampshire praises Spinoza as "the most ambitious and uncompromising of all modern philosophers" and discusses Spinoza's thought in its 17th century context, contrasting him with other rationalist philosophers such as René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Hampshire believes that, while internally consistent, Spinoza's philosophy and especially his epistemology is "liable not to be appreciated" because it is simultaneously linked to two normally opposed traditions, nominalism and the coherence theory of truth. In Hampshire's view, while Spinoza "deliberately effaced his own personality and wished his philosophy to stand alone", there is enough evidence to show that Spinoza was an "exceptional" man. He provides lengthy discussions of Spinoza's conception of mind and will.
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Nominalism arose in reaction to the problem of universals, specifically accounting for the fact that some things are of the same type. For example, Fluffy and Kitzler are both cats, or, the fact that certain properties are repeatable, such as: the grass, the shirt, and Kermit the Frog are green. One wants to know by virtue of what are Fluffy and Kitzler both cats, and what makes the grass, the shirt, and Kermit green. The Platonist answer is that all the green things are green in virtue of the existence of a universal: a single abstract thing that, in this case, is a part of all the green things.
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Peter Abelard, a french philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician, put forward the theory of conceptualism In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical concept of universals from a perspective that denies their presence in particulars outside the mind's perception of them. Conceptualism is anti-realist about abstract objects, just like immanent realism is (their difference being that immanent realism accepts there are mind-independent facts about whether universals are instantiated).Neil A. Manson, Robert W. Barnard (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Metaphysics, Bloomsbury, 2014, p. 95.
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Between 1414 and 1418, theology and jurisprudence professors of the university took part in the Council of Constance and acted as counselors for Louis III, who attended this council as representative of the emperor and chief magistrate of the realm. This resulted in establishing a good reputation for the university and its professors. Due to the influence of Marsilius, the university initially taught the nominalism or via moderna. In 1412, both realism and the teachings of John Wycliffe were forbidden at the university but later, around 1454, the university decided that realism or via antique would also be taught, thus introducing two parallel ways ().
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Some philosophers, notably in the traditions of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to existent entities. Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, but that some provide a kind of shorthand for reference to a collection either of objects or of events. In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of specific kinds of intellectual activities. Between these poles of realism and nominalism stand a variety of other positions.
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He denied ontological status to such concepts as a point or zero, considering them tools of knowledge; his approach in Western literature was characterized as logical nominalism. Zinoviev's pupil, the German logician Horst Wessel, noted that his logic was based on syntax, not semantics. Zinoviev investigated a number of questions of non-classical logic, from the general theory of signs to a logical analysis of motion, causality, space and time. In "The Philosophical Problems of Multivalued Logic", multivalued logic was viewed as a generalization, not an abolition of classical two-valued logic, although Zinoviev concluded that the emergence of multivalued logic "dealt a blow" to the a priori classical logic.
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Gilson, É., History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, p.499 In this nominalistic Protestant view of relationship between God and creation, the mystery of God becomes utterly unattainable for human reason, even if it is illumined by faith. While traditional understanding of the mystery of faith is that the Divine revelation can use human word, somehow assimilating the Word of God, to initiate man into the mystery of the divine life, according to Louis Bouyer, the Protestant view excludes such approach. Revelation of the mystery of salvation to man is compatible with traditional philosophy, like Thomism, and incompatible with the Protestant view of grace, influenced by nominalism.
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The beginnings of Scholasticism may be traced back to the days of Charlemagne (d. 814). Thence it progressed in ever-guickening development to the time of Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Peter the Lombard, and onward to its full growth in the Middle Ages (first epoch, 800–1200). The most brilliant period of Scholasticism embraces about 100 years (second epoch, 1200–1300), and with it are connected the names of Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, owing to the predominance of Nominalism and to the sad condition of the Church, Scholasticism began to decline (third epoch, 1300–1500).
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See The Nun's Priest's Tale and Nominalism: A Preliminary Study by Grover C. Furr and references given there. Holcot was still read in the sixteenth-century when the Parisian theologian, Jacques Almain, wrote a work engaging Holcot's opinions. The commentary on the Book of Wisdom was printed in 1480, and, subsequently, went through many editions. An edition of the questions on the Sentences was printed at Lyon in 1497, although it contained a cover letter stating that the manuscripts used to produce this edition were disorderly and unreliable. Unfortunately, this remains the only edition of Holcot’s Sentences available today.Thomas Williams, ‘Transmission and Translation’, in AS McGrade, ed, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), p. 337.
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With D. M. Armstrong, Campbell is one of the founders of so-called Australian materialism and, within it, of a variety of trope theory. He also has a distinctive view of concrete and abstract objects: the former can exist by themselves, and the latter are incapable of independent existence. He refuses, following Frank P. Ramsey, the necessity of choice between realism and nominalism in the problem of universals, because they both share "a false presupposition being that any quality or relation must be a universal" (Campbell 1991, preface). The separation between the University of Sydney's Departments of Traditional and Modern Philosophy and of General Philosophy is attributed to his organising the proposal in 1973.
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Weaver's philosophy shares an epistemological orientation with some forms of existentialism in that it posits that the axioms underlying all human belief systems are ultimately arbitrary (in the sense that they cannot be derived, or anchored in something anterior) and are thus a product of the exercise of ultimate choice rather than empirical evidence. Weaver thus bases his attack against nominalism on historical analogy and the teleological implications, or "consequences" of such a world view. It is important, however, to distinguish this approach from that of historicism, which contends that history develops in organic, deterministic cycles. Weaver emphasizes his position that the cause of apparent patterns in the decline of civilizations is recurrent, unintelligent choice.
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This trend away from nominalism was under way at the time the Willard case came before the Supreme Court, and it represents the Court's attempt to reconcile this modern economics with contract law.Harman, "Note: Alleviating Hardship Arising From Inflation and Court Congestion: Toward the Use of the Conditional Specific Performance Decree," Southern California Law Review, March 1983, p. 800-802. The Supreme Court's ruling in Willard also was certainly influenced by the forthcoming Legal Tender Cases.Harman, "Note: Alleviating Hardship Arising From Inflation and Court Congestion: Toward the Use of the Conditional Specific Performance Decree," Southern California Law Review, March 1983, p. 823.Dawson and Cooper, "The Effect of Inflation on Private Contracts: United States, 1862-79," Michigan Law Review, 1935, p. 864-866.
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Jameson focuses on the novel's "postmodern nominalism" that uses brand names to refresh old objects and experiences. In post-structural literary theory Cayce is compared with the main character, Oedipa Maas, of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 as detectives interpreting clues but with neither the character nor the reader knowing if there actually is a pattern to be found and, if there is one, whether it is real or conspiracy. Gibson's use of name-dropping brands to create a sense of "in-group style … of those in the know" is traced back to Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V. . Gibson's writing style is said to be similar to Raymond Chandler's detective stories and Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers that used MacGuffins (the identity of the maker of the footage, in this case) to drive the story.
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How much of what the observer perceives is objective is controversial, so the exact definition of constructs varies greatly across different views and philosophies. The view that the senses capture most or all of the properties of external objects directly is usually associated with the term direct realism. Many forms of nominalism ascribe the process of conceptual construction to language itself, for instance, constructing the idea of "fishness" by drawing distinctions between the word "fish" and other words (such as "rock") or through some kind of resemblance between the referents that the class implied by the word encompasses. Conversely, Platonic idealism generally maintains that a "reality" independent of the subject exists, though this reality is seen as ideal, not physical or material, and so it cannot be known by the senses.
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John's writings are excellent at clarifying the literary and scientific position of 12th century Western Europe. Though he was well versed in the new logic and dialectical rhetoric of the university, John's views imply a cultivated intelligence well versed in practical affairs, opposing to the extremes of both nominalism and realism a practical common sense. His doctrine is a kind of utilitarianism, with a strong leaning on the speculative side to the modified literary scepticism of Cicero, for whom he had unbounded admiration and on whose style he based his own. His view that the end of education was moral, rather than merely intellectual, became one of the prime educational doctrines of western civilization, but his influence is to be found, not in his immediate contemporaries but in the world-view of Renaissance humanism.
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For over 2,000 years, Euclid's Elements stood as a perfectly solid foundation for mathematics, as its methodology of rational exploration guided mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists well into the 19th century. The Middle Ages saw a dispute over the ontological status of the universals (platonic Ideas): Realism asserted their existence independently of perception; conceptualism asserted their existence within the mind only; nominalism denied either, only seeing universals as names of collections of individual objects (following older speculations that they are words, "logoi"). René Descartes published La Géométrie (1637), aimed at reducing geometry to algebra by means of coordinate systems, giving algebra a more foundational role (while the Greeks embedded arithmetic into geometry by identifying whole numbers with evenly spaced points on a line). Descartes' book became famous after 1649 and paved the way to infinitesimal calculus.
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Once Nominalism reappeared in Kraków and began taking precedence over Thomism and Scotism, Grzegorz of Stawiszyn, a Kraków professor, published Jacques d'Étaples works including his commentaries to works by Aristotle, beginning in 1510.Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Zarys dziejów filozofii w Polsce (A Brief History of Philosophy in Poland), [in the series:] Historia nauki polskiej w monografiach (History of Polish Learning in Monographs), [volume] XXXII, Kraków, Polska Akademia Umiejętności (Polish Academy of Learning), 1948. This monograph draws from pertinent sections in earlier editions of the author's Historia filozofii (History of Philosophy), pp. 6–7. As rector, Grzegorz introduced first reforms toward leaving the scholasticism of Peter of Spain at the University of Krakow beginning 1538, and replacing it with the Renaissance Aristotelianism, including classes in logic based on Dialectics of Jan Caesarius.
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Armstrong argues that whatever it is which picks out the natural classes is not derived from the membership of that class, but from some fact about the particular itself. While Quinton's theory states that no further analysis of the classes is possible, he also says that some classes may be more or less natural—that is, more or less unified than another class. Armstrong illustrates this intuitive difference Quinton is appealing to by pointing to the difference between the class of coloured objects and the class of crimson objects: the crimson object class is more unified in some intuitive sense (how is not specified) than the class of coloured objects. In Quinton's 1957 paper, he sees his theory as a less extreme version of nominalism than that of Willard van Orman Quine, Nelson Goodman and Stuart Hampshire.
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According to Robert E. Sinkewicz, Palamas' only goal was to "preserve the realism of man's participation in the life of God." Characterizing Barlaam as a Nominalist agnostic, Meyendorff writes that, "[i]n his flight from the intellectual realism of Western Thomistic scholasticism, Barlaam clashed with the mystical realism of the Eastern monks." According to Meyendorff, this confrontation between Barlaam's nominalism and Palamas' realism began with a dispute over the best way to address the Filioque controversy with the Latins but quickly spilled over into a conflict over Hesychasm. Among his criticisms of Meyendorff's presentation of the Hesychast controversy, John Romanides reserves his harshest criticism for Meyendorff's characterization of Barlaam as both a nominalist and a Platonist/Neo-Platonist on the grounds that the histories of philosophy and theology had up to that point presented the two views as mutually exclusive.
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He notes that the case in question was anomalous, as according to Carlini's account, she was possessed by an angelic entity, Splendiletto, when she made love to Sister Bartolomea. Levack departs from the above authors in placing the event in philosophical and historical context, noting the rise of nominalism within seventeenth and eighteenth century Catholic thought, which attributed greater scope for agency and supernatural activity from demonic entities than had previously been the case. Such signs were described as convulsions, pain, loss of bodily function (and other symptoms that one might describe as apparent epilepsy from this description), levitation, trance experiences, mystical visions, blasphemy, abuse of sacred objects and vomiting of particular objects as well as immoral actions and gestures and exhibitionism. Levack argues that this provided the female subjects of exorcist rituals with the chance to engage in relative social and sexual agency compared to gender role expectations of social passivity.
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In each case classical paradigms are unsettled and a more modest and flexible path of reflection and articulation is limned. These volumes on fundamental theology advance a view of doctrinal language that is increasingly influenced by the Buddhist dyad of conventional and ultimate truth. The basic thesis is that religious traditions can function as vehicles of ultimacy, but that to do so authentically and effectively they need to fully recognize their conventional status as linguistic constructions embedded in history. Warding off nominalism and relativism, O’Leary argues against Derrida and Western interpreters of Nagarjuna on the notion of truth, in order to uphold the objective reference of doctrinal statements despite their conventional fabric. Further fruits of O’Leary's engagement with Buddhist philosophy are his Étienne Gilson lectures at the Institut Catholique de Paris, 2011 (published as Philosophie occidentale et concepts bouddhistes, PUF, 2011) and his forthcoming commentary on the Vimalakirti Sutra for the collection ‘Christian Commentaries on Non-Christian Sacred Texts’ (ed.
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On the latter book Josiah Royce wrote an article so scathing that Abbot took it as an unfair attempt to destroy his reputation, and eventually responded publicly with Mr. Royce's Libel (1891 October) in which he sought redress from Royce's employer Harvard University. The debate moved to the pages of The Nation, where Charles Sanders Peirce took Abbot's side; William James and Joseph Bangs Warner, less so. In his 1903 obituary of Abbot, Peirce praised Abbot's philosophical work and love of truth, and wrote that, in the introduction to Scientific Theism (wherein Abbot criticized nominalism and traced it through Kant among others), Abbot "put his finger unerringly [...] upon the one great blunder of all modern philosophy." (For the full texts of the public controversy and the obituary, see "External links" below.) Abbot committed suicide in 1903 by taking sleeping pills at his wife's gravesite in Central Cemetery, Beverly, Massachusetts, on the 10th anniversary of her death.
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Historians would generally assume that the failure to reform (too many vested interests, lack of coordination in the reforming coalition) would eventually lead to a greater upheaval or even revolution, since the system must eventually be adjusted or disintegrate, and the failure of the Conciliar movement helped lead to the Protestant Reformation in Europe. These frustrated reformist movements ranged from nominalism, devotio moderna (modern devotion), to humanism occurring in conjunction with economic, political and demographic forces that contributed to a growing disaffection with the wealth and power of the elite clergy, sensitizing the population to the financial and moral corruption of the secular Renaissance church. The outcome of the Black Death encouraged a radical reorganization of the economy, and eventually of European society. In the emerging urban centers, however, the calamities of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century, and the resultant labor shortages, provided a strong impetus for economic diversification and technological innovations.
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"Father John's exposition of Palamas' doctrine of God is fairly well done. However, one must overlook his theories concerning Christological correctives and the Palamite originalities which he tries to find everywhere. [...] Meyendorff pictures Palamas as constantly (whether consciously or unconsciously is not always clear) applying to the theology of St. Dionysius Christological correctives [...] It is obvious that Meyendorff, in support of his theory concerning Christological correctives, has found differences between Palamas and Dionysius and similarities between Barlaam and Dionysius which do not exist, and at the same time has exaggerated the differences which may exist between Palamas and Dionysius all out of proportion to their actual importance for support of his thesis. One could go so far as to claim that Meyendorff fails to demonstrate even one point on which Palamas and Dionysius differ" (John S. Romanides, "Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, Part 2") According to Duncan Reid, the debate between Meyendorff and Romanides centered on the relationship between nominalism and Palamite theology.
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Schopenhauer claimed that Kant used the word noumenon incorrectly. He explained in his "Critique of the Kantian philosophy", which first appeared as an appendix to The World as Will and Representation: > The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely > overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα > [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability > between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the > Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, > and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and > realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already > present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who > completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms > φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the > terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of > things in themselves and their appearances.
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This was the case leading up to the Protestant Reformation. Following the breakdown of monastic institutions and scholasticism in late medieval Europe, accentuated by the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the failure of the Conciliar movement, the 16th century saw the fomenting of a great cultural debate about religious reforms and later fundamental religious values. Historians would generally assume that the failure to reform (too many vested interests, lack of coordination in the reforming coalition) would eventually lead to a greater upheaval or even revolution since the system must eventually be adjusted or disintegrate, and the failure of the Conciliar movement helped lead to the Protestant Reformation in Europe. These frustrated reformist movements ranged from nominalism, devotio moderna (modern devotion), to humanism occurring in conjunction with economic, political and demographic forces that contributed to a growing disaffection with the wealth and power of the elite clergy, sensitizing the population to the financial and moral corruption of the secular Renaissance church.
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During this period, he appealed mostly to the philosophy of nominalism of Stanisław Leśniewski and reism of Tadeusz Kotarbiński. Kotarbiński had the greatest impact on the formation of his views (in particular with his work Elements of the Theory of Knowledge, Formal Logic and Methodology of the Sciences, 1929). With time, especially under the influence of American philosophers, Hiż began to abandon the absolutism of his professors in favor of pragmatism and pluralistic eclecticism. From the late 1950s, “he mainly dealt with linguistics and its logical and philosophical foundations”, focusing his research program on the grammar theory of natural language. He “aimed to give a clear form to the grammar of colloquial speech”. In this way, he went beyond the interests of the Lwów–Warsaw school, claiming that it is possible and necessary to “develop formal logic so that it applies to natural language”, although “he did not postulate the full formalization of the language and its theory”.
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With the publication of the DSM-III, which omitted the terms "hysteria" and "neurosis" (and thus the former categories for dissociative disorders), dissociative diagnoses became "orphans" with their own categories with dissociative identity disorder appearing as "multiple personality disorder." In the opinion of McGill University psychiatrist Joel Paris, this inadvertently legitimized them by forcing textbooks, which mimicked the structure of the DSM, to include a separate chapter on them and resulted in an increase in diagnosis of dissociative conditions. Once a rarely occurring spontaneous phenomenon (research in 1944 showed only 76 cases), became "an artifact of bad (or naïve) psychotherapy" as patients capable of dissociating were accidentally encouraged to express their symptoms by "overly fascinated" therapists. In a 1986 book chapter (later reprinted in another volume), philosopher of science Ian Hacking focused on multiple personality disorder as an example of "making up people" through the untoward effects on individuals of the "dynamic nominalism" in medicine and psychiatry.
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Francisco made his profession of religious vows in 1514, under the reformist leader, Francisco de Quiñones, Vicar of the province and later Minister General of the whole Order. He then resumed his studies, first at the province's House of Philosophy in Torrelaguna (1514-1518), followed by theological studies at the Complutense University, then still in Alcalá (1518-1522). There he mastered the three schools of theology being taught in his day, viz., Scotism, Scholasticism and the Nominalism of Gabriel Biel. In 1523, Osuna entered the Salceda retreat house, situated near Guadalajara, one of eight retreat houses in the province of Castile. It was an isolated house, large enough to accommodate up to 24 religious, and with five hermitages in the surrounding hills, so that one could spend up to a week in perfect seclusion.Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, trans Mary E Giles, (New York: Paulist Press; London: SPCK, 1981), p6 Osuna’s life there was strictly regulated and dedicated to prayer and meditation. As part of this, he practiced recollection.
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For example, the verbal behaviorist holds that a statement like "John is scared of thunderstorms" is meaningful only insofar as it can be parsed into predictions concerning the sorts of things John is likely to say and/or do in the event of a thunderstom (i.e. "John will say, or have a propensity to say, "I am scared" when he hears thunder" or "John will hide, or have a propensity to hide, his face when he sees lightning"). Psychological nominalism extends the verbal behaviorist's explanation of psychological states (like fear, love, desire, thinking etc.) to cognitive states (being aware, knowing, etc.) while denying the premise that falsifiability criteria can give statements their meaning. The psychological nominalist concedes that survival of mental terminology in natural language can be explained in terms of the practical utility of mental-state ascriptions, but denies that this constitutes an analysis of the meaning of any particular mental-state ascription because the psychological nominalist contends that the meaning of any term, mental or otherwise, is irreducibly bound with its usage.
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