Blackwell Reference Online

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From Latin nominalis (“pertaining to names”). In scholastic philosophy, the position that the only real universality expressed by nominalized predicates or common nouns resides in their status as names that are capable of referring to many particular things. More recently, the view that assertions are meaningless, false, unverifiable, or lacking in economy of reference, unless discourse is interpreted and theories are reconstructed so as to avoid commitment to any entities other than individuals. While nominalists have shared a rejection of universals in favor of particulars or individuals ( see universals and particulars ), such rejections have been as varied as the functions that universals allegedly perform: one objected to classification of individuals by virtue of their entering into some relation to a non-individual; to non-particular designata or extensions of common nouns or predicates; to abstract meanings or intensions determining applicability of phrases to many things; to objects of knowledge or conception such that several people could grasp the same one; to ideals, idealizations, merely possible or potential entities; and often to abstract or non-physical items of any sort. ( See extension/intension .) Just as varied were the grounds for such rejection: nominalists have been suspicious of entities which, if spatial and temporal at all, could be wholly in two ... log in or subscribe to read full text