phi201- lect2- week7

Phi201 Med. Phil.

Reminder of our earlier discussion of universals.

Consider a true sentence: "Tibbles is feline"
                                                 ^                   ^
                                   subject term        predicate phrase
                                                                  "is feline"

Subject-term clearly picks out or denotes something real in the world, a particular cat, Tibbles. That's a different thing that is called up in my mind, the concept. There are no cats in my mind, there are concepts of cats in my mind.

We can distinguish the term itself, the concept in the mind, and the cat.

This thing being denoted is clearly a different thing from the concept that the term triggers in my mind. The concept in my mind is my idea of a cat. Different from the cat itself.

The concept is mental whereas the cat itself is non-mental.

The predicate term "is feline" also triggers a concept in my mind [the concept of cathood]. But, does it pick out something real in the world, cathood itself? Or is there nothing but the term and the mental concept? (One caveat is that we can all agree that there is definitely something real and non-mental picked out by "is feline", namely the set and collection of all cats (as opposed to the one cat Tibbles). But is there something else, the property of cathood, out by the phrase?

Some say no. They say we have no need to posit the existence of any property or quality of cathood over and above the word, the concept and set. Those are non-realists. Realists say yes. They believe that there is such a thing as Tibbles' property of being a cat and above word, concept, set. So if you are a realist you say yes to that question.

If that property, "cathood", exists in the word, is it a universal or not? To say yes, means that Tibbles' property of being a cat is the same as Garfield's property of being a cat. Another possibility is to say that Tibbles' property as a cat is qualitatively indistinguishable from Garfields' quality of being a cat, but they are in fact two different entities.

In other words, is Tibbles' property of being a cat numerically the same entity as Garfield's property of being a cat? Are they one and the same entity? Is there just one cathood, simultaneously present in all the cats? Or, is it different but perhaps qualitatively indistinguishable properties of cathood that are possessed by Tibbles and Garfield?

This latter theory is the view that properties are not genuine universals but tropes, abstract entities that can only be present in one individual at a time. Are there, then as many indistinguishable cathoods as there are cats? Or is there only one cathood present in all cats? Are properties universals, or tropes?

And then, if properties are universals, can they exist uninstantiated? I.e are they transcendent? If they can only exist to the extent they are instantiated, they are imminent.

/\
realism                       nominalism
/                     \                   /         \
universals tropes conceptualist nominalist
          /              \
imminent transcendent


The Medieval discussion approaches the issues using slightly different terminology. The jumping off point for this discussion is Porphry's 2sayme. An intro to Aristotle's Categories. It explains Aristotle's terminologies. He describes the nature and reality of universals [the "deeper questions"] as outside the scope of his introduction.

See Quote 1. Porphry explains the following terminology:

Aristotelian/Porphlatic terminology: "Genus", "species", "difference, "property" and "accident". These are the "Five Predicables" the five things that can be predicated.
So called because they are sorts of things that can be applied to or "predicated of" or "said of" individuals. A genus, a species, a difference, a property, an accident, are all things that can be predicated of individuals, they are all predicables. See quote 2.

N.B In modern usage a predicable or predicate is by definition a linguistic entity. We distinguish a linguistic entity's being predicated of an individual ("is a cat" being predicated of Tibbles) from a property's being instantiated by an individual (cathood being instantiated by Tibbles). The older usage describes both these relations as "predication" and both the phrase and the property of "predicates" C.CS Kant "existence is not a predication".

separated = transcendent

insensibles = imminent