MEDIEIVAL PHILOSOPHY 9
DUNS SCOTUS ON UNIVERALS & INDIVIDUATION
Realist view: universal A-ness, repeatable across a variety of individual As
[humanity, justice, whiteness]
Nominalist view: A-ness is a common conception grouping individual As due to similarity (but only the As truly exist)
[‘humanity’, ‘justice’, ‘whiteness’]
Universals: res (things, entities) - realists; nomen (mental concepts) - nominalists
- important, because universals help us make secure knowledge claims
- Plato & Socrates are men: shows us something real about both, or maybe just a similarity the mind conceives of
- in all cases of ‘Socrates is…’ for realists something real must be said of him; not just a mental contrivance
- if no universals, then what objective knowledge do we have?
Realists: “there is a strong correspondence between language and reality”
- ontological challenges
Nominalists: “only individuals exist in extramental reality, and generality is a mental construct” - psychological challenges
PETER ABELARD:
- d. 1142
- first coherent nominalist
- critiqued Material Essence Realism (MER)
- material essence that is within many individuals
- the universal is like a Platonic form, numerically same in all instances of it
- his criticism: if Socrates and Rex are both essentially animals, yet one is essentially rational, and the other essentially irrational, then this animal essence must be both irrational and rational
Duns Scotus’ Response (to Abelard):
- what makes two individuals from the same species different?
- what makes one individual numerically one, yet different from another who’s also numerically one
- is a stone one from its nature?
[his recap of nominalism: the only cause for individuation are natural causes, not universal ones; all natures are singular] - an object as object is singular, the mind understands it as universal, the mind understands it via a notion not within the individual object
Scotus:
- realist
- common natures, which explain membership into ontological groupings
- needed principle of individuation
- numerical and less-than-numerical unity are contraries
Less-than-numerical-unity:
- ??? opposition, extremes, contraneity
- one contrary destroys the other
- each extreme of its opposition is real and one by some real unity
- common natures have less than numerical unity
- explains difference between individuals, but perserves our capacity for knowledge proper
- thissness-es: haecceitas
So, Plato and Socrates have multiple common natures that they share:
- substantiality, corporeality, animality, humanity
- but what makes them individuals is their this-ness: Socreitas, Platonitas
Haecceitas:
- an unrepeatable individual difference
- individual in its own right, numerically one
OCHAM:
- a nominalist
- only intrinsic and extrinsic causes of composites create individuation
- are common natures really common, or are they just elements of haecceitas-es that we mischeracterize as somehow shared