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This paper analyses the abstractionist account of quantity championed by Leibniz, especially in the 1680s. Leibniz introduced the notion of quantity in an indirect way, via an abstraction principle. In the first part of the paper, I identify the context in which this approach arose in light of Leibniz's criticism of his earlier dream of an 'alphabet of human thought'. Recognising the impossibility of such a project led him to realise that, when dealing with terms referring to abstract objects, we should always consider them within the true sentences in which they occur. In the second part, I describe this approach in detail. This allows us to look at some key concepts of Leibniz's theory of quantity. In particular, I raise the problem of the relationship between the two sides of the abstraction principle: how should we think of the relation between the claim that a and b are equal, and the claim that the quantity of a is identical to the quantity of b? I argue that we can find a positive answer to this problem in Leibniz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of numerical cognition provides a fairly clear picture of the processes through which we learn basic arithmetical facts. This scientific picture, however, is rarely taken as providing a response to a much‐debated philosophical question, namely, the question of how we obtain number knowledge, since numbers are usually thought to be abstract entities located outside of space and time. In this paper, I take the scientific evidence on how we learn arithmetic as providing a response to the philosophical question of how we obtain number knowledge. I reject the view that numbers are abstract entities located outside of space and time and, alternatively, derive from the scientific evidence a novel account of the nature of numbers. In this account, numbers are reifications of the counting procedure and arithmetic statements are seen as describing the functioning of counting and calculation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his recent book Thin Objects, Øystein Linnebo (2018) argues for the existence of a hierarchy of abstract objects, sufficient to model ZFC, via a novel and highly interesting argument that relies on a process called dynamic abstraction. This paper presents a way for a nominalist, someone opposed to the existence of abstract objects, to avoid Linnebo's conclusion by rejecting his claim that certain abstraction principles are sufficient for reference (RBA). Section 1 of the paper explains Linnebo's argument for RBA. It offers a reading of Linnebo's work upon which he has two arguments for RBA: one deductive and one abductive, and argues that whilst the deductive argument is unsound the abductive one is prima facie plausible. The nominalist must therefore find a way to respond to the abductive argument. Section 2 outlines just such a response, by offering an alternative explanation of the cases Linnebo wishes to argue from. Most interestingly, it shows that abstraction in Linnebo's most difficult case (the "reference to ordinary bodies" case) can be achieved using mereological means, rather than relying on RBA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wilfrid Sellars is widely known for two positions that he calls "nominalism." On the one hand, there is his "psychological nominalism," according to which any awareness one might have of abstract entities—be they properties, relations, or facts—is a thoroughly linguistic affair, and so cannot be presupposed in thinking about the process of learning a (first) language. On the other hand, there is his ontological nominalism, according to which the world, as it is in itself, is fundamentally a world of concrete particulars and so does not ultimately contain such things as properties, relations, or propositionally‐structured facts. Sellars clearly takes these two sorts of "nominalism" to go together. However, one of the most influential inheritors of Sellars's philosophy, Robert Brandom, thinks that they do not. Brandom endorses the former, but denies that the latter "is in the end so much as intelligible." In this paper, I articulate the connection between Sellars's psychological and ontological nominalism and draw on Brandom's own development of Sellars's functional role semantics to argue, against Brandom, that Sellars's ontological nominalism not only harmonizes with the rest of his philosophical commitments, but is actually made fully intelligible by the very aspect of Sellars's theory that Brandom himself develops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses debates about the normative implications of nominalism by considering significant Enlightenment assessments of China's society and politics. Enlightenment universalism has been criticized as an insufficient bulwark against nominalist tendencies towards cultural or subjective relativism, and (in its Anglo‐French formulations) as responsible for the ills of modernity which need to be overcome by a 'spiritual turn' in Critical Realism. Yet in response to the nominalist aspects of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588‐1679), the early Enlightenment thinkers Pierre Bayle (1647‐1706), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646‐1716), and the Baron de Montesquieu (1689‐1755) countered the nominalist denial of the reality of universal concepts while conceding the validity of multiple cultural perspectives on the social and political world. Each thinker attempted to reconcile certain universal ethical standards with the fact of cultural and epistemic diversity as demonstrated by China, with differing levels of success. Indeed, their considerations on Hobbesian nominalism and views on China are tied to conceptions of the social as a sphere in many ways independent of the political order—a general development in western social and political theory in the late seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Thus, the links between their responses to ethical nominalism and conceptions of the Chinese social and political order shed crucial light on debates internal to Enlightenment thought relative to non‐European cultures, and in turn on the development of classical social theory. Furthermore, their anti‐nominalist universalist theories which nevertheless accounted for particular and often incommensurable cultural frameworks can be seen as early modern precursors to ongoing efforts to navigate between extreme versions of universalism and relativism, and as constituting 'philosophical under‐labour' for contemporary social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elucidates a range of the potentials and limitations of nominalist sensibilities in social theory through an examination of their presence in Durkheim and Weber. Nominalism, which emerged in early modern western thought, holds that only individual particular cases exist and that there are no universals or generalities beyond mentally or linguistically constructed concepts; it also introduced new conceptions of will and voluntarism. Nominalism was variously transposed into classical social theories including those of Durkheim and Weber. In our theoretical methodology, we assess tensions between nominalist and realist visualities and modes of reasoning in their works. We conclude by discussing assessments of nominalism, attending to its enduring critical contributions while also explicating a reflexive critique of nominalism as mimetic of chaotic and pathological forms of social organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nominalism, while significantly affecting the history and development of modern western thought since the fourteenth century, has unfortunately been neglected in much recent social theory. In this article, we offer an introduction to this Special Forum on nominalism to help redress this circumstance. In addition to this introductory piece, the Forum consists of three articles respectively covering: questions of nominalism, relativism and universalism in relation to Enlightenment debates over China; tensions over nominalist and realist theoretical visualities in Durkheim and Weber; and a critique of nominalist sensibilities in the sociology of finance combined with the articulation of a novel sociologically realist alternative. Specifically, in this piece, we contextualize the emergence of nominalism, adumbrating how it affects a variety of metatheoretical judgments, especially concerning the nature of social reality and what can possibly be known about it. Michel Foucault's nominalism and Ian Hacking's conception of 'dynamic nominalism' are also discussed. Finally, it invites critical realists to consider how commitments to humanism might implicate them in nominalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial crisis of 2007–2009 has reignited an interest among sociologists and social scientists in finance and economics, especially in technical aspects of the economy and the inner workings of market relations. However, in these cases social studies of finance retain a distinctly nominalist character, focusing on individual interactions in a market treated as a means of coordinating exchange. The social study of finance as a field seeking to address everyday financial decisions in relation to market expansion and fluctuation is predominantly characterised by its use of actor‐network theory to explain the emergence and development of financial systems and networks, to the exclusion of equally necessary studies of the inequality that pervades newly financialised economies. I therefore argue for the need to revisit earlier political economy approaches to the study of finance, taking seriously criticisms leveled at such work by actor‐network theorists who worry about excessive structural determinism and rigidity. To this end, I contrast nominalism with realism, in order to think about financial systems as emergent properties within the contemporary social formation. By thinking about actors as individuals that enter into existing sets of social relations, which shape their actions, it is possible to understand the origins of financial inequality. As actors interact with social structures, however, they ultimately change their character, rendering them anew in different circumstances, and therefore avoid the deterministic character of structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are words? What makes two token words tokens of the same word‐type? Are words abstract entities, or are they (merely) collections of tokens? The ontology of words tries to provide answers to these, and related questions. This article provides an overview of some of the most prominent views proposed in the literature, with a particular focus on the debate between type‐realist, nominalist, and eliminativist ontologies of words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to argue for some useful distinctions in the theory of grounding. I do so by first introducing the notion of grounding, discussing some of its features, and arguing that grounds must play some role in bringing about what they ground (sec.1). I then argue that there are various distinct roles a fact may play in bringing about another, and more particularly that we should distinguish between three such roles; enablers, partial grounds, and facts that partly ground (sec. 2). Finally, I present two theoretical advantages to incorporating these distinctions into our theory of grounding. Namely, that it reframes, and arguably dissolves, the contingentist‐necessitarian debate (sec. 3), and that it helps to elegantly deal with the purported counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding and thus maintain the plausible elements of the assumption that grounding is a transitive relation (sec.4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mereological nominalism is the thesis that properties are identical to fusions of their instances. Long ignored, this paper argues that it's a plausible ontology of properties. Whilst not everyone will accept it, it's going to appeal to many philosophers and (at the least) should no longer be relegated to the annals of the history of metaphysics.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing from a classical Reformed perspective, Horton reviews the entire history of 'Justification' and then sharply criticizes many fashionable movements in theology that he sees as a betrayal of the doctrine. These include 'the new perspective on Paul', the Finnish School of Tuomo Mannermaa, Radical Orthodoxy, and even the Lutheran–Roman Catholic Joint Declaration of 1999. Writing with theological and pastoral passion, Horton is a formidable polemicist who never loses sight of his central concern, so that his book is both an exciting debate and a moving witness to the Pauline, Lutheran, and Calvinist Gospel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay challenges an approach to political theology, exemplified by Clayton Crockett, that insists that divine sovereignty must be rejected to avoid the conception of political sovereignty developed by Carl Schmitt. Crockett conflates different understandings of God and God's power, particularly ignoring the rise of nominalism and its influence over modern political theory. By attending to this history, we see that Crockett is incorrect to reject all classical onto‐theological or monotheistic definitions of God as the basis for sovereignty. The final section explores other theological options (Oliver O'Donovan, John Milbank, Jürgen Moltmann) that also challenge modern political sovereignty from within the classical Christian tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of grounding has gained increasing acceptance among metaphysicians in recent years. In this paper, I argue that this notion can be used to formulate a very attractive version of (property) nominalism, a view that I call 'grounding nominalism'. Simplifying somewhat, this is the view that all properties are grounded in things. I argue that this view is coherent and has a decisive advantage over competing versions of nominalism: it allows us to accept properties as real, while fully accommodating nominalist intuitions. Finally, I defend grounding nominalism against several seemingly troublesome objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of quantification into predicate position on the metaphysics of properties, arguing that two familiar debates about properties are fundamentally altered by recasting them in a second‐order setting. Two theories of properties are outlined, differing over whether the existence of properties is expressed using first‐order or second‐order quantifiers. It is argued that the second‐order theory: (a) provides good reason to regard debate about the locations of properties as contentless; (b) resolves debate about whether properties are particulars or universals in favour of universals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Primitives are both important and unavoidable, and which set of primitives we endorse will greatly shape our theories and how those theories provide solutions to the problems that we take to be important. After introducing the notion of a primitive posit, I discuss the different kinds of primitives that we might posit. Following Cowling ( ), I distinguish between ontological and ideological primitives, and, following Benovsky ( ), between functional and content views of primitives. I then propose that these two distinctions cut across each other leading to four types of primitive posits. I then argue that theoretical virtues should be taken to be metatheoretical ideological primitives. I close with some reflections on the global nature of comparing sets of primitives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The platonism/nominalism debate in the philosophy of mathematics concerns the question whether numbers and other mathematical objects exist. Platonists believe the answer to be in the positive, nominalists in the negative. According to non-factualists (about mathematical objects), the question is 'moot', in the sense that it lacks a correct answer. Elaborating on ideas from Stephen Yablo, this article articulates a non-factualist position in the philosophy of mathematics and shows how the case for non-factualism entails that standard arguments for rival positions fail. In particular, showing how and why non-factualists reject nominalism illuminates the originality and interest of their position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of nominal rigidity for nonlinearity and asymmetry of exchange rate pass-through. For this purpose, we rely on company-level data of French importing firms. We find that the well established fact that 'prices rise faster than they fall,' which is characterized by the convex import price reaction function, lies primarily with the presence of nominal rigidity. Once price stickiness is controlled for, there is empirical evidence that the import price reaction function is rather concave if the linearity assumption can be rejected, indicating that firms aim primarily to protect their market share. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about several diagnosis about reading and explains the difficulties about target reading. Topics include identifying the several forms of words, the arguments and views covered by nominalism doctrine, the parallels between target reading, and the basic explanation of wordings using symmetry and identifications. Other topics include the approaches to understanding the concept through formalisation.

Is moral realism compatible with the existence of moral disagreements? Since moral realism requires that if two persons are in disagreement over some moral question (that has a determinate answer) at least one must be objectively mistaken, it seems difficult to uphold that there can be moral disagreements without fault. Alison Hills argued that moral realism can accommodate such disagreements. Her strategy is to argue that moral reasoners can be faultless in making an objectively false moral judgement if they followed the relevant epistemic norm, i.e. follow your conscience, when making their judgement. I will argue that Hills' strategy does not work. The putative epistemic norm follow your conscience does not trump moral truth, because believing something wrong for the wrong reasons is worse than believing something right for the wrong reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws together two strands in the debate over the existence of mathematical objects. The first strand concerns the notion of extra-mathematical explanation: the explanation of physical facts, in part, by facts about mathematical objects. The second strand concerns the access problem for platonism: the problem of how to account for knowledge of mathematical objects. I argue for the following conditional: if there are extra-mathematical explanations, then the core thesis of the access problem is false. This has implications for nominalists and platonists alike. Platonists can make a case for epistemic access to mathematical objects by providing evidence in favour of the existence of extra-mathematical explanations. Nominalists, by contrast, can use the access problem to cast doubt on the idea that mathematical objects play a substantive role in scientific explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I here investigate whether there is any version of the principle of charity both strong enough to conflict with an error-theoretic version of nominalism about abstract objects ( EN), and supported by the considerations adduced in favour of interpretive charity in the literature. I argue that in order to be strong enough, the principle, which I call '(Charity)', would have to read, 'For all expressions e, an acceptable interpretation must make true a sufficiently high ratio of accepted sentences containing e'. I next consider arguments based on (i) Davidson's intuitive cases for interpretive charity, (ii) the reliability of perceptual beliefs, and (iii) the reliability of 'non-abstractive inference modes', and conclude that none support (Charity). I then propose a diagnosis of the view that there must be some universal principle of charity ruling out ( EN). Finally, I present a reason to think (Charity) is false, namely, that it seems to exclude the possibility of such disagreements as that between nominalists and realists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on German philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano's ontological theory of reism as a specific variety of truthmaker nominalism. It discusses the relation reism to modern-day nominalism. Also outlined is the use of the term nominalism in the philosophy-of-mathematics literature to designate the rejection of abstract objects and in the literature on the metaphysics of properties to designate the rejection of universals.

This paper focuses on a central aspect of the 'picture theory' in the Tractatus - the 'identity requirement' - namely the idea that a proposition represents elements in reality as combined in the same way as its elements are combined. After introducing the Tractatus' views on the nature of the proposition, I engage with a 'nominalist' interpretation, according to which the Tractatus holds that relations are not named in propositions. I claim that the nominalist account can only be maintained by rejecting the 'identity requirement.' I then consider an opposite - 'realist' - interpretation, according to which Tractarian names include names of properties and relations. I argue that, although it can accommodate the 'identity requirement,' the realist interpretation falls short of providing a correct interpretation of the Tractatus' conception of a name. I conclude by presenting an alternative account (to both nominalism and realism) of the Tractatus' conception of a name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discusses the principle of the universal-bundle theory developed by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra. It offers a brief overview of the arguments between the two characters about the identity of indiscernibles. It describes the universal-bundle theory as the theory that particulars are entirely constituted by the universals that they instantiate.

In this article I consider what it would take to combine a certain kind of mathematical Platonism with serious presentism. I argue that a Platonist moved to accept the existence of mathematical objects on the basis of an indispensability argument faces a significant challenge if she wishes to accept presentism. This is because, on the one hand, the indispensability argument can be reformulated as a new argument for the existence of past entities and, on the other hand, if one accepts the indispensability argument for mathematical objects then it is hard to resist the analogous argument for the existence of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I articulate and respond to an epistemological challenge to meta-normative realism. The challenge has it that, if realism about the normative is correct, and if evolutionary forces have significantly influenced our normative judgments, then it would be a remarkable coincidence if the content of the normative facts and our normative judgments were aligned. I criticize David Enoch's recent attempt to meet this challenge, but provide an alternative response that is structurally similar. I argue that if realism is correct, then it would be remarkable if the content of our normative judgments and the normative facts were not significantly aligned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the concept of 'animal individuals' and puts forward a nominalistic approach. Nominalism is an ontological thesis (only individuals exist), but also an epistemological claim: that our 'nouns' are practical tools for a quick dispatch of things, but do not correspond to anything real. Hence for a consistent nominalist, 'animals' do not exist, except as a powerful fiction. First, we show that the word 'animal' commits what we call (after Plato) the 'fallacy of the crane': it encompasses a huge range of living entities that have only one thing in common: they are not humans. Differences between our term 'animal' and the ancient Greek 'zoon' also show the fluctuating boundaries of 'animality.' Besides, our ways of speaking systematically deny individuality to nonhuman animals. The philosophical meaning of the term 'individual' implies a genuine dimension of artistic singularity and a political claim for emancipation. Portraits of apes are striking instances of such individuality, captured by photography, as is art produced by particular animals. Methodologically, this leads also to the collection of anecdotes and a focus on animal biographies. The eighteenth-century controversy between Buffon and Condillac helps us understand what is at stake in the tension between species and individuals. Buffon claims that each nonhuman animal species can be represented by a 'specimen,' whereas Condillac shows that animal individuals feel like us and that their nature is impenetrable to us. Finally, a focus on individuals is not only a way to renew or extend historical methods. Biologists are also increasingly concerned with individuals. They develop tools to distinguish individuals from one another: 'animal bertillonage' for morphology. They question standard norms of behavior and preferences. This emphasis on animal individuality has not only theoretical but also ethical and legal consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clues about what Berkeley was planning to say about mind in his now-lost second volume of the Principles seem to abound in his Notebooks. However, commentators have been reluctant to use his unpublished entries to explicate his remarks about spiritual substances in the Principles and Dialogues for three reasons. First, it has proven difficult to reconcile the seemingly Humean bundle theory of the self in the Notebooks with Berkeley's published characterization of spirits as 'active beings or principles.' Second, the fact that Berkeley did not publish his Notebooks insights on mind has led some to claim that he later rejected his early views. Third, many of the Notebooks entries on mind have a '+' sign next to them, which has been understood for decades to comprise a Black List of views about which Berkeley had doubts or subsequently rejected. In my dialogue, I describe how Berkeley's 'congeries' account of mind (1) differs from Hume's bundle theory in a way that complements Berkeley's published remarks and (2) undercuts the claim that he later rejected his early views. Most importantly, (3) I show how a careful analysis of the British Library manuscript of the Notebooks refutes the Black List hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevailing approach to the problem of the ontological status of mathematical entities such as numbers and sets is to ask in what sense it is legitimate to ascribe a reference to abstract singular terms; those expressions of our language which, taken at face value, denote abstract objects. On the basis of this approach, neo- Fregean Abstractionists such as Hale and Wright have argued that abstract singular terms may be taken to effect genuine reference towards objects, whereas nominalists such as Field have asserted that these apparent ontological commitments should not be taken at face value. In this article I argue for an intermediate position which upholds the legitimacy of ascribing a reference to abstract singular terms in an attenuated sense relative to the more robust ascription of reference applicable to names denoting concrete entities. In so doing I seek to clear up some confusions regarding the ramifications of such a thin notion of reference for ontological claims about mathematical objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay begins by exploring the extent to which the narrative of secularization presented in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age might be complicated or otherwise challenged by taking account of parallel processes within Islamic thought and practice. It then considers whether Taylor's argument might nevertheless be applicable to, or illuminative of, contemporary struggles with modernity in the Muslim world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the difference of constituent and relational ontologies. It discusses the division of ontologies into polycategorial ontologies which implies that there are two or more primary categories while monocategorial ontologies entails that there is only one primary category. It states that the classical bundle theory that entails that concrete particulars have properties or constituent can serve as a constituent ontology paradigm.

The article discusses the value of essentialism in the science context. It presents essentialism as references to the real instead of nominal essences wherein the author examines the essentialist structure of chemistry and define the branch of science as a essentialist ontology. It also mentions reductionism as part of the essentialism value that generates a coordinated forgetfulness.

The article offers the author's insights on the arguments of John Skorupski in his book "The Domain of Reason," particularly the buck-passing account of normativity. The author argues that cognitive irrealism, or meta-ethical view, depends on considering normative facts as nominal facts. He further argues against cognitive irrealism, citing that facts about reasons are not nominal facts. Moreover, he says that Skorupski failed to show the purpose of passing every normative buck.

The article discusses the new framework for conceptualism. It states that the irreducibility thesis points out the two closely related but diverse conscious mental states, one which pertains a subject to a proportional content while the other refers to a subject not to a proportional content, rather a relation, individual, or property. Moreover, the second aspect is the property awareness thesis, which is motivated by the objects of introspective awareness.

Abstract: The intent of this paper is to indicate a development in Sellars' writings which points in another direction than the interpretations offered by Brandom, McDowell, and A. D. Smith. Brandom and McDowell have long claimed to preserve central insights of Sellars's theory of perception; however, they disagree over what exactly these insights are. A. D. Smith has launched a critique of Sellars in chapter 2 of his book The Problem of Perception which is so penetrating that it would tear Sellars' philosophy of perception apart if it were adequate. However, I try to show firstly that Brandom's and McDowell's interpretations are unsatisfying when Sellars' late writings are taking into consideration. And secondly that we can give another interpretation of Sellars that is not vulnerable to some of the problems of which Smith accuses Sellars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English words 'middle class' have experienced much more connotations and denotations-typically 'bourgeoisie,' 'white-collar,' and professional-than any other class-referring word since the latter half of the 18th century. On the one hand, in response to such diverse narrations during about two and a half centuries, I partially agree with some of the nominalistic theories of class, in that the middle classes were not created until they were named by contemporaries. On the other hand, my view diverges from those theories, in my asserting that the contemporaries have had an interpretative freedom to recognize 'middle classes' only within the bounds of plausibility on the side of the realistic social world. The typical middle class in each period has emerged in such a way that Schumpeter's new combination is performed in a stage of recession by new entrepreneurs, who will move into the 'middle' strata and hold some cultural leadership but still obtain inconsistent statuses, to be recognized as 'middle class' ex post facto in a boom time. Two Kondratieff's cycles have had one recognition of the typical 'middle class.' The new combination is one of the pressures bringing middle classes into a modern society, contrary to the so-called class decomposition into the two poles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide range of conflicting interpretations that exist in regard to Locke's philosophy of mind and body (i.e. dualistic, materialist, idealistic) can be explained by the general failure of commentators to appreciate the full extent of his nominalism. Although his nominalism that focuses on specific natural kinds has been much discussed, his mind-body nominalism remains largely neglected. This neglect, I shall argue, has given rise to the current diversity of interpretations. This paper offers a solution to this interpretative puzzle, and it attributes a view to Locke that I shall describe as nominal symmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of conceptualism. Conceptualism declares that the content of human experiences are completely conceptual. It mentions that conceptualist use experience of any subject to represent it's object, property and relation. The article further discusses the three main arguments against conceptualism including, the Fineness of Grain Argument, the Richness Argument and the Learning Argument.

This introduction sets the stage for four papers on Nicholas Wolterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs, written by Harold Attridge, Oliver O'Donovan, Richard Bernstein, and myself. In his book, Wolterstorff defends an account of human rights. The first section of this introduction distinguishes Wolterstorff's account of rights from the alternative account of rights against which he contends. The alternative account draws much of its power from a historical narrative according to which theory and politics supplanted earlier ways of thinking about justice. The second section sketches that narrative and Wolterstorff's counter-narrative. The third section draws together the main points of Wolterstorff's own account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nominal concepts represent things as tokens of types. Recent research suggests that we represent principled connections between the type of thing something is (e.g., DOG) and some of its properties ( k-properties; e.g., having four legs for dogs) but not other properties ( t-properties; e.g., being brown for dogs). Principled connections differ from logical, statistical, and causal connections. Principled connections license (i) the expectation that tokens of the type will generally possess their k-properties, (ii) formal explanations (i.e., explanation of the presence of k-properties in tokens of a type by reference to the type of thing it is), and (iii) normative expectations concerning the presence of k-properties in tokens of the type. The present paper investigates the hypothesis that representing principled connections requires representing properties as aspects of being the relevant kind of thing (Aspect Hypothesis). Experiment 1 provides a direct test of the Aspect Hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 provide indirect tests of the Aspect Hypothesis. All three experiments provide support for the Aspect Hypothesis. Experiment 4 investigates a prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis concerning the manner in which formal explanations are licensed by principled connections. Finally, Experiment 5 investigates a prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis concerning the nature of the normative expectations licensed by principled connections. Together these results provide strong evidence for the idea that representing principled connections involves representing a property as being an aspect of being a given kind of thing. The results also help clarify the manner in which formal explanation differs from other modes of explanation. Finally, the results of the experiments are used to motivate a proposal concerning the formal structure of the conceptual representations implicated by principled connections. This structure provides a domain-general way of structuring our concepts and embodies the perspective we take when we think and talk of things as being instances of a kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceit that either mind is reducible to matter or that mind is utterly ethereal is rooted in a mind-versus-matter dichotomy that can be characterized as the modern error, a fatally flawed fallacy rooted in the philosophy and culture of nominalism. A Peircean semiotic outlook, applied to an understanding of social life, provides a new and full-bodied understanding of semiosis as the bridge between mind and matter, and human biology and culture. I begin by first delineating the false divide and showing Charles Sanders Peirce's alternative to it, then explore the implications of a semiotic approach to mind as transaction, then consider the self-transcending nature ofthe human body- mind. Finally I outline my ecological, biosemiotic account of mind, which reveals that, indeed, mind matters, and in ways that unexpectedly resemble the forms of animism that characterized the hunting- gathering foragers through whom we anatomically modern humans emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the non-eliminative understanding of austere nominalism. It defines austere nominalism as the view that there is nothing over and above concrete particular objects. It presents an argument over the resemblance between concrete particular objects and differentiates eliminative physicalism with non-eliminative physicalism. A distinction between eliminative austere nominalism and non-eliminative austere nominative nominalism is also given. The article further discusses the reasons for embracing or rejecting austere nominalism as an account for resemblance.

In this paper, I examine the crucial relationship between Locke’s theory of individuation and his theory of kinds. Locke holds that two material objects—e.g., a mass of matter and an oak tree—can be in the same place at the same time, provided that they are ‘of different kinds’. According to Locke, kinds are nominal essences, that is, general abstract ideas based on objective similarities between particular individuals. I argue that Locke’s view on coinciding material objects is incompatible with his view on kinds. In order for two material objects to be in the same place at the same time, they must differ with respect to at least one nominal essence. However, Locke thinks that it is impossible that x and y have the same real essence but differ with respect to any nominal essence; and coinciding material objects have the same real essence. Therefore, Locke cannot hold what he in fact holds, namely that distinct material objects can be in the same place at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically investigates the social construction of ‘identity talk’ in relation to the Irish Question in the 1980s. Our contention is that the utilisation of ‘identity’ imagined people as bounded groups in a particular way – as the two traditions or communities in Northern Ireland – and that this way of imagining people was deployed against ‘will’-based conceptions of politics. The first part of the article places the emergence of ‘identity’ as a concept in its historical context and suggests four phases in the use of ‘identity’. The second part focuses on ‘identity’ as a concept and locates its emergence within the meta-conflict regarding Northern Ireland. The article concludes by reflecting on Brubaker and Cooper's (2000) analysis of ‘identity’ as a category of analysis in light of our case study of ‘identity’ as a category of practice regarding the Irish Question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “species-as-individuals” thesis takes species, or taxa, to be individuals. On grounds of spatiotemporal boundedness, any biological entity at any level of complexity subject to evolutionary processes is an individual. From evolutionary theory flows an ontology that does not countenance universal properties shared by evolving entities. If austere nominalism were applied to evolving entities, however, nature would be reduced to a mere flow of passing events, each one a blob in space–time and hence of passing interest only. Yet if there is genuine biodiversity in nature, if nature is genuinely carved into species, and taxa, then these evolutionary entities will be genuinely differentiated into specific kinds, each species being one of its kind. Given the fact that evolving entities have un-sharp boundaries, an appropriately weak, “non-essentialist” concept of natural kind has to be invoked that does not allow for strong identity conditions. The thesis of this paper is that species are not either individuals, or natural kinds. Instead, species are complex wholes (particulars, individuals) that instantiate a specific natural kind. © The Willi Hennig Society 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concessive nominalism of the existence of numbers, properties, and propositions, It is noted that denying the existence of properties and propositions can be answered if both are pleonastic entities. The author also highlights the argument of Hartry Field in considering that non-existent objects such as the Fountain of Youth are pleonastic entities.

This paper programmatically outlines a case for “nominalism”. If brown and colored are so related logically that being colored is nothing over and above being brown, then whatever “exists” other than concreta is nothing over and above concreta. Possibilities of rain and “universals” like the shape, circularity (= the logical possibility of being so shaped), lack “existence” in another sense. (“There are things that don't exist” shows that ‘there are’ is used even more broadly than ‘there exist’.) The univocity of ‘exist’ is disproved by “A prime number between 6 and 10 exists” being analytic despite the invalidity of ontological arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the combination of materialism, empiricism, nominalism and subjectivism to generalize about tendencies in the historical development of philosophy as depicted in the book "Realistic Rationalism," by Jerrold Katz. Reinstatement of the duality between the abstract and the concrete and between the a priori and the empirical; Necessity for knowledge of abstract objects; Proof required for mathematical knowledge to be possible.