{"id":9878,"date":"2012-03-07T15:31:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T15:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/07\/nominalism-and-being-2\/"},"modified":"2012-03-07T15:31:26","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T15:31:26","slug":"nominalism-and-being-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/07\/nominalism-and-being-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Nominalism and Being"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I preach on an old text of long-time commenter and sparring partner, London Ed:<\/span><\/p>\n

Nominalism is the doctrine that we should not multiply entities  according to the multiplicity of terms. I.e., we shouldn't  automatically assume that there is a thing corresponding to every  term. Das Seiende is a term, so we shouldn\u00e2t automatically assume there is a thing corresponding to it. Further arguments are needed to show that there is or there isn\u00e2t. A classic nominalist strategy is to rewrite the sentence in such a way that the term disappears.<\/span><\/p>\n

 My first concern is whether this definition of 'nominalism' is perhaps too broad, so broad that it pulls in almost all of us. Does anyone think that every term has a referent? Don't we all hold that there can be no automatic assumption that every occurrence of a term in a stretch of discourse picks out an entity? For example, one would be hard pressed to find a philosopher who holds that 'nothing' in<\/span><\/p>\n

   1. Nothing is in the drawer<\/span><\/p>\n

refers to something. (Carnapian slanders aside, Heidegger does not maintain this, but this is a separate topic about which I have written a long unpublished paper.) Following Ed's excellent advice, the<\/span>
apparently referential 'nothing' can be paraphrased away:<\/span><\/p>\n

   2. It is not the case that there is something in the drawer.<\/span><\/p>\n

This then goes into quasi-canonical notation as<\/span><\/p>\n

   2*. ~(Ex)(x is in the drawer).<\/span><\/p>\n

In (2*) the tilde and the particular quantifier are syncategorematic elements. On the face of it, then, there is no call to be anything other than a nominalist about 'nothing,' using 'nominalism' as per the<\/span>
suggestion above.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether there is call to be a nominalist about 'being' is another matter. Before proceeding to it, consider the following example:<\/span><\/p>\n

   3. Peter and Paul are blond<\/span><\/p>\n

which could be parsed as<\/span><\/p>\n

   3*. Peter is blond and Paul is blond.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I rather doubt that anyone maintains that every word in (3*) — or rather every word in a tokening of this sentence-type whether via utterance or inscription or some other mode of encoding — has an <\/span>entity corresponding to it. This suggests a taxonomy of nominalisms:<\/span><\/p>\n

Mad-Dog Nominalism<\/em>: No word has an existing referent, not even 'Peter' and 'Paul.' (I write 'existing referent' to disallow Meinongian objects as referents. The waters are muddy enough without bringing <\/span>Meinong into the picture — please pardon the mixed metaphor.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Extreme Nominalism<\/em>: The only words that have existing referents are names like 'Peter' and Paul'; nothing in reality corresponds to such predicates as 'blond.' And a fortiori <\/em>nothing corresponds to copulae and logically connective words like 'and' and 'or.'<\/span><\/p>\n

Nominalism Proper<\/em>: Particulars (unrepeatables) alone exist: there are no universals (repeatables). This view allows that something in reality corresponds to predicates such as 'blond.' It is just that what this predicate denotes is not a universal but a particular, a trope say, or an Aristotelian accident.<\/span><\/p>\n

Methodological Nominalism<\/em>: This is just Ed's suggestion that we not assume that for each word there is a corresponding entity.<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope no one is crazy enough to be a mad-dog nominalist, and that everyone is sane enough to be a methodological nominalist. The two middle positions, however, are subject to reasonable controversy. What I am calling Extreme Nominalism has little to recommend it, but I think Nominalism Proper is quite a reasonable position.  There has to be something extralinguistic (and extramenal) corresponding to the predicate in 'Peter is blond,' but it is not obvious that it must be a universal.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Now let's think about whether we should be nominalists with respect to words like das Seiende<\/em>, that-which-is, the existent, beings, and the like. Heidegger has been known to say such things as Das Seiende ist<\/em>,  or<\/span><\/p>\n

   4. That-which-is is. (Beings are.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Now is there anything in reality corrresponding to 'that-which-is' and 'beings'? Well of course: absolutely everything comes under 'that-which-is.' There is nothing that is named by 'Nothing.' And if I <\/span>met nobody on the trail, that is not to say that I met someone named 'Nobody.' But absolutely everything falls under 'a being,' 'an existent,' ein Seiendes, das Seiende<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I see no reason to have any nominalist scruples about the latter expressions. I don't see any problem with forming the substantive das Seiende<\/em> from the present participle seiend<\/em>.  But you will be forgiven if you balk at the transformation of the infinitive sein<\/em> into the the substantive das Sein <\/em>and take the latter to refer to Majuscule Being.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I preach on an old text of long-time commenter and sparring partner, London Ed: Nominalism is the doctrine that we should not multiply entities  according to the multiplicity of terms. I.e., we shouldn't  automatically assume that there is a thing corresponding to every  term. Das Seiende is a term, so we shouldn\u00e2t automatically assume there … Continue reading “Nominalism and Being”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,283,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-existence","category-heidegger","category-nominalism-and-realism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}