THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS

  1. INTRODUCTION

    The word "universal" comes from the Latin term universalis meaning "that which pertains to all," that is, they can be applied throughout the universe. The corresponding Greek term usually employed by Plato was eidos or "Idea." Aristotle used the Greek term to kathodos [the whole], which has about the same meaning as the Latin word given above. The word "universal" is related to the concepts of species, genus, and class. It stands in contrast to the terms "particular" and "individual." Thus the word "universal" is related to the simple classification of words as either general or singular. A singular word refers to a specific object, event, or instance of quality. For example, "Ronald Regan", "Los Angeles", "this football game", "this red here" are singular terms. A general word refers to a class or kind of objects, events, or qualities. For example, "Man," "cities," "athletics," "color" are general terms. A general term applies to each member of the class or kind. The word "man" applies to every individual man, "red" to every occurence of that property, and "running" to every instant or event of someone running. General words are indispensable in everyday human communication, as may be seen by trying to say a few sentences without them. Universals are general words. The problem of universals is concerned with the ontological status or mode of being of the referents of general words. This problem arises in connection with general words because they do not designate observable things, events, or qualities. We do not see the referents of general words, but only specific individual instants of them. For example, take the sentence, "Tom is a man." We can see Tom and we can talk him, etc. But we do not with man. No one has ever seen man walking down the street; we only see a man, a specific individual, like Tom. If the referents of general words are not obversables, then what are they?

    During the Middle Ages an intense debate took place about the ontological status of general words or universals. Three different solutions were proposed and defended: Realism, Conceptualism, and Nominalism.

    1. The Realist holds that universals have some kind of reality outside the mind.
    2. The Conceptualist holds that universals have reality only within the mind.
    3. The Nominalist holds that the universal is nothing but a name, and has reality neither within nor outside of the mind.
    Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between these three views; for example, some who call themselves Nominalist that hold that universals are names also hold that they have a reality within the mind. In fact there is no complete agreement about this classification or on the classification of various individual philosophers. In the following we shall use these classification were appropriate, recognizing that according to a different classification scheme these philosophers may be classified differently.

  2. HISTORY.
    The medieval debate concerning the ontological status of universals had its origin during the period of Greek philosophy.

    1. Socrates.
      Socrates set the stage for this problem by attempting to determine the "common nature" or univeral definition of general words by his method of question and answer called the dialectic. The question as to the status of the common nature naturally emerged from Socratic quest.

    2. Plato.
      Plato held that such common natures or "ideas" require their own reality; and that they are in fact exemplars or prototypes according to which individuals or instances are made. In the later terminology, Plato is a realist. He believed in the extra-mental reality of universals. Since the Ideas or universals are not observed in the world and do not depend upon it for their reality, they have their own eternal realm, In this sense Plato is absolute realist and his view is absolute realism.

    3. Aristotle.
      Aristotle, finding difficulty with the absoluteness or the separate reality of Plato's view, proposed that the Ideas do not exist by themselves, but that they are in individual sensible things as their form, forming their matter. Matter and form together are the constituents of the individual sensible substances. Thus Aristotle believed in the reality universals, but not apart form the sensible world but in it. He is realist, but not as an absolute realist like Plato, but as a moderate realist, and his view is called moderate realism.

    4. Stoics.
      The Stoics rejected not only the Platonic doctrine of the transcendental, universals but also Aristotle's doctrine of the concrete universals. Only the individual exists and our knowledge is knowledge of particular objects. These particulars make an impression on the soul, and knowledge is primarily knowledge of this impression. The Stoics adopted, therefore, the opposite position to that of Plato, for, while Plato depreciated sense-perception, the Stoics founded all knowledge on sense-perception. The soul is originally a tabula rasa, and, in order for it to know, there is need of perception. The Stoics did not of course deny that we have knowledge of our interior states and activities. After the act of perception a memory remains behind, when the actual object is no longer there, and experience arises from a plurality of similar recollections. The Stoics were therefore Empiricists, even "Sensualists;" but they also maintained a Rationalism which was scarcely consistent with a thoroughly empiricist and nominalist position. For although they asserted that reason is a product of development, in that it grows up gradually out of perception and is formed only about the fourteenth year, they also held, not only that there are general ideas, which are apparently antecedent to experience in that we have a natural predisposition to form them -- virtually innate ideas, we might call them. What is more, it is only through Reason that the system of Reality can be known.

    5. Plotinus.
      Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) and the Neoplatonism generally held that Plato's realm of the Ideas was the first emanation of the One, called by Plotinus the Nous or Intelligence. Thus they are absolute realists. His view passed into the middle ages by Boethius' comments on him.

    6. Porphyry.
      Porphyry (A.D. c.233-304) suggested that it is beyond the power of man to know whether genus and species are subsistent entities or exist only as concepts, while treating genus and species in Aristotle's manner.

    7. Augustine.
      Augustine (A.D. 354-430) placed Plato's realm of the Ideas in the mind of God as eternal ideas, or rationes aeternas, by which God created all things. He is therefore an absolute realist.

    8. Boethius.
      Boethius (A.D. 480-525), distinguishing between abstraction and composition, held that the former, that is, the ideas of genus and species, are true ideas, while the latter, for example, a centaur, are false ideas. The former subsist in sensible things but, as thought, are universals. His discussion of the question, including comments on Porphyry, initiated the medieval discussion of universals. Boethius followed Porphyry in claiming not to decide between the views of Plato and Aristotle, but in fact in his analysis of genus and species he follows the moderate realism of Aristotle.

    9. John Scotus Erigena.
      John Scotus Erigena (A.D. 810-877), along with many early medieval theologians, held an absolute realism of ideas in the Platonic sense.

    10. Avicenna.
      Avicenna (A.D. 980-1037), the great Islamic philosopher and interpreter of Aristotle, combined Aristotelian and Neoplatonic themes in his philosophy. On the question of the universals he is a realist. He followed Aristotle's view that our active intellect frees the universal from the particulars of sense. But this operation endows it with no more than potential existence. In order to grasp it actually we must make contact with the active intellect, an intermediary between ourselves and God.

    11. Anselm.
      Anselm (1033-1109) followed the Platonic-Augustinian view, accepting the reality of abstract, intelligible objects both in sensible things and in the mind of God. Anselm participated in the dispute over universals, attacking the views of Roscelin.

    12. Roscelin.
      Roscelin (1050-1120), whose writings are lost, is taken to be the founder of Nominalism. Both Anselm and Abelard report that Roscelin held that the universal was no more than flatus vocis or "mere word." He seems to have held that, since every existent being is individual, were usage to permit, we might refer to the three persons of Trinity as three individual Gods. He was accused of tritheism and forced to renounce the theological consequences of his view at the Council of Soissons in 1092.

    13. William of Champeaux.
      William of Champeaux (1070-1120), Roscelin's student, reacted to his teacher's doctrine by going to the opposite extreme of absolute realism. At first, according to Abelard, he held the extreme view, called the identity theory of universals. According to this view, the same essential nature is present in every member of the species. Hence, their individual differences are not substantial but accidental. Abelard criticized this view on the grounds that if it were true the same substance would exist in more than one place at the same time; and that, since God is substance, all things are identical and pantheism is true. In response to these criticisms William later modified the view to hold that the individual members of the species are the same, not essentially, but "indifferently." This meant that the essences of an individual members of a species are similar, and this similarity provides the basis for the concept of the species which applies indifferently to all of its members.

    14. Peter Abelard.
      Peter Abelard (1079-1142) studied under both Roscellin and William of Champeaux, and sought a middle way between the two positions. The position he reached is called Conceptualism. Others regard Abelard a moderate realist. The universal exits, he says, in the mind; it also exists in things but not as conceived. He also held the exemplars or divine ideas are in the mind of God; hence, his view fits both Realism and Conceptualism.

    15. Gilbert of Poitiers.
      Gilbert of Poitiers (1076-1154) was a realist, finding forms both in things and in the mind of God. He seems to have held that, although the form is individual in each thing, we find by comparison a likeness in the members of any species or genius.

    16. Hugh of Saint Victor.
      Hugh of Saint Victor (1096-1141) essentially followed Abelard, he held that universals are gained by abstraction, although the forms of sensible do not exist in universals outside the mind; hence the universal do not exist as such in reality.

    17. Thomas Aquinas.
      Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) adopted the position of moderate realism which he found in Abelard and in John of Salisbury, while retaining some aspects of Augustine's view. Consequently he viewed universals in three ways:
      1. the universale ante rem [before the thing], existing in the mind of God (although not as a plurality);
      2. the universale in re [in the thing], is the concrete individual essence of the individual thing, numerically distinct but alike in all members of a given species;
      3. the universale post rem [after the thing], is the abstract universal concept in the mind.

    18. Duns Scotus.
      Duns Scotus (1266-1308) contributed to the discussion of universals his concept of a "formal distinction," less than a real distinction and more than a virtual distinction (purely mental with no objective distinction in the thing itself). As an examples of formal distinction Scotus pointed to the distinction between God's attributes, between essence and existence, and between the nature or universal of a thing and its haecceitas. With respect to universals he held that there is a formal distinction between the haecceitas, or individual essence, of Socrates, and the universal, "human nature." Hence, we cannot say simply that the universals are founded in things, or are not in things. It is grounded in the haecceitas of the thing.

    19. Peter of Aureol.
      Peter of Aureol (c.1280-1322) was a predecessor of Ockham not only with respect to Nominalism, but also in his opposition to Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and his tendency to avoid unnecessary complexity (Ockham's Razor).

    20. William of Ockham.
      William of Ockham (c.1290-1349) is usually considered to be a Nominalist, holding that universals are simply general names. Ockham attacked all forms of realism. He held that there are no universal things corresponding to universal or general terms. Whatever exist is individual; and anything predicable of many things is of its nature in the mind. Since there are no exemplars of creation in the divine mind, the similarities which we discern among things are only so from the perspective of human nature.

    21. John Locke.
      John Locke (1632-1704) may be considered as a representative of Conceptualism in the late 17th and early 18th century, asserting the reality of abstract ideas while holding that only individual things exist in nature. But there are other tendencies in his philosophy, such as nominalism, to which his emphasis on the principle of association contributed.

    22. Immanuel Kant.
      Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) divides intellect into the faculties of sensibility Sinnlichkeit) and thought (Denken). The former involves perception, that is, awareness accompanied by sensation, and leads to the space-time schemata ordering the manifold of sense. The latter, Thought, is divided into Understanding (Verstand), Judgment (Urtheilskraft), and Reason (Vernunft). From Understanding or Verstand comes the categories and it gives us the conception of nature. But Thought is pressing beyond Understanding (Verstand) and toward Reason (Vernunft), that is to say, Thought is calling for a completeness which goes beyond the phenomenal world. Reason or Vernunft is the power to systematize into unity on the basis of the most inclusive principles. This most inclusive standpoint involves the Ideas of Reason, that is, God, freedom, and immortality. Since Understanding or Verstand gives us the conception of nature and Reason or Vernunft gives us the conception of ultimate ends, the two together require the idea of end in nature; this is given in Judgment (Urtheilskraft). Since both sets of ideas of the Understanding and Reason originate in man's mind and have universality, and since we can make no judgments about things-in-themselves (Ding an Sich), Kant's view about universals would seem to fit into the framework of Conceptualism.

    23. Georg Hegel.
      The German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831) seems to be a return to the view of Realism concerning universals, although with a distinction between the abstract universals of the understanding and the "concrete universals" of the world and history. The classic definition of the term "man" as "man is a rational animal" is abstract, for it omits all the qualities with respect to which men differ from each other. A similar definition of "animal" would be still more abstract and connote fewer qualities. Hegel claimed that the logical categories are not abstract but concrete universals; that is, they include all specific differences within themselves. These concrete universals are at once implicitly universal, particular, and singular. The Absolute of Spinoza and Schelling (in his third period) is an abstract universal; it is a mere Identity; one can only say of it that it is; all specific differences would be limitations and so have to be left out of it. Hegel's Absolute, on the other hand, is wholly concrete; it is all reality comprehended within a whole, not something apart from other things. Hegel attempted to show that each of his categories, which is a concrete universal, implies all the others, including the Absolute, and that the Absolute includes all of them, in an organic system. Thus the concrete universals play a role in the dialectical process of the world. Thus Hegel's ontology of essentialism, no less than that of his idealistic successors, identifies the rational and the real.

    24. Absolute Idealism.
      Many of the Absolute Idealists, who followed the position of realism with respect to universals, accepted the Hegelian "concrete universal." The British philosophers F. H. Bradley (1846-1924) and Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923), and the American philosopher Brand Blanchard (1892-1987) are some of them. The American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916) is in the same tradition, although construing the the entire world as a community of finite selves, relating to each other, interpreting each other, as part of the infinite. The world is a single "Community of Interpretation" including all of the social communities of the empirical world. Even physical objects relate to each other in physical communication. And the laws of nature are the forms of this communication. In his book The Problem of Christianity published in 1913, Royce broadens this framework to make it a religious community, a community of loyalty, which is the love of the individual for community. He employs this doctrine of loyalty in an interpretation of Christianity. Loyalty is the most important and enduring truth that Christianity has discovered and taught the world. The implications of loyalty are the essence of Christianity, and are bound to survive in some form or other, whatever may become of the other doctrines and institutions of the Church. No individual can be saved in his isolation; he can be redeemed only through loyalty to the Beloved Community; he obtains salvation through atonement and grace afforded to him by the divine community. The Absolute or God is the universal Mind inclusive of all the finite minds in the world, that is, the Beloved Community. This Great Community is not so much an actuality as a task, that to which one ought to be loyal, and that in which one ought to believe. And God himself is simply the "spirit-of-the-community" and the essence of loyality.

      Royce does not presume, like Hegel, to deduced all the categories and conceptions of the Absolute in a dialectic. Royce is Kantian enough to admit that detailed information about matters of fact and the general principles of scientific descriptions requires sensuous experience in addition to the categories of the mind. Only some general principles about the nature of reality as a whole can be established a priori; that is, only propositions which cannot be denied without inconsistently assuming them in the very act of denial. Only in this way can we be absolutely certain about the Absolute itself and some related principles of metaphysics, logic and ethics; but for the rest of knowledge, they must depend on observation and experience.

    25. A. N. Whitehead.
      The British philosopher, A. N. Whitehead (1861-1947), returned to the view of Platonic realism concerning universals. All that is, whether thought or thing, gains its definiteness from combinations of what Whitehead called "eternal objects." These have their own reality, outside the mind and outside the actual world, although constitutive of that world.

    26. Bertrand Russell.
      The British philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), in his The Problems of Philosophy made his famous distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and the knowledge by description. The first type of knowledge is certain, and forms the basis for the second type of knowledge, which can have only varying degrees of probability. Knowledge by acquaintance extends from one's own sense-data, present and past, to the awareness of one's self, and of universals; memory is a form of knowledge by acquaintance. Some direct knowledge of universals is inevitable. One might be able to dispense with all universals other than the universal of resemblance; this universal is indispensble to the life of the mind. Thus Russell argued that in order to explain classes one is forced to admit the universal of resemblance; and having admitted resemblance as a universal, one might as well go on and admit universals of relation and quality, and whatever else may be helpful and convenient to us. Russell rejects the notion of "the concrete universal" which is the foundation of absolute idealism doctrine of the Absolute; he contends that it is a formulation which arises out of confusing the "is" of predicate with the "is" of identity.