[5.2.] The Realism / Nominalism Debate.

 

Peirce’s “scholastic realism” is the claim that there are real generals. To understand this, we need some historical background...

 

We’ve already seen that Peirce held a view called realism, in the sense that he believed in a real world that is as it is independently of what you, I, or any specific group of people believe about it (but it is not independent of thought in general, in that any aspect of it can be thought or cognized—this is his cognitionism).

 

But the word “realism” has another meaning. In this second meaning of the word, realism is a position in the philosophical debate about

 

attribute agreement (df.): the state that obtains when two or more objects have an attribute in common, e.g. being pink, being a sample of copper, being a mosquito, etc.

 

For example, consider two objects, e.g., two apples, that have some of their attributes in common. They are both green, round, sweet... and they are both apples!

 

According to the pre-philosophical, common-sense view…

·         we do not create these similarities by classifying things together; we do not arbitrarily classify various objects as green, round, etc. and thereby make them green, round, etc., by classifying them that way;

·         rather, we classify them that way because they are green, round, etc.; at least some of the similarities among objects are objective, real, independent of our classifying activity.

 

Assuming that this is true, how do we explain how it is that two different things can have something in common? At least as far back as Plato, some philosophers have found it philosophically puzzling how two distinct objects, existing separately from one another, could have attributes in common.

 

The two traditional positions in the debate about attribute agreement are realism (in a new sense, yet to be defined) and nominalism.

 

Contemporary metaphysician Michael Loux describes contemporary realists and nominalists as sharing the belief that attribute agreement is sometimes “objective,” by which he means that “many of our ways of sorting things are fixed by the objects themselves.”[1]

 

As Loux describes it, the debate between realism and nominalism is over whether there is some general theoretical explanation of attribute agreement:

·         Realism is the view that (i) there is such an explanation, and that (ii) it is this: for every case of attribute agreement among objects, a ... n, there is a thing, F, and a relation, R, such that each of those objects stands in R to F.[2] The thing to which each of the objects is related is typically called a universal.

·         Nominalism is the view that either rejects both (i) and (ii) and claims that attribute agreement is metaphysically basic and that no such explanation is possible, or accepts (i) and rejects (ii), maintaining that realism’s explanation is wrong and that some better explanation is needed.[3] So on Loux’s account, anyone who rejects (ii) is a nominalist, and anyone who accepts it is a realist.

 

So, as Loux describes it, in the debate between realism and nominalism, there are three positions, two of which are nominalistic:

 

realism: universals exist	nominalism: universals do not exist, and...
	nominalism 1: there is some alternative theory that explains attribute agreement	nominalism 2: we cannot explain attribute agreement   E.g., W. V. Quine: the fact that different things can have traits in common is a metaphysically basic phenomenon for which no further explanation is possible.

 

 

[5.3.] Peirce’s Approach to the Debate.

 

In Loux’s senses of “realism” and “nominalism,” Peirce was a nominalist. He never held that attribute agreement is best explained by saying that there are things to which items with agreeing attributes are related.

 

But Peirce describes himself as a realist and vigorously objected to nominalism. This indicates that Peirce uses these terms in a much different way than Loux and other contemporary philosophers.

 

And what’s more, Peirce would definitely reject nominalism 2: Nominalism 2 seems to exemplify one of the four characteristics of Cartesianism criticized by Peirce: the commitment to inexplicable facts. On Peirce’s view, taking this sort of position is one way to “block the way of inquiry.”

 

Peirce called the position that he mapped out in the debate about attribute agreement

 

scholastic realism (df.): the claim that there are real generals (i.e., universals, including natural kinds, types, laws, etc.); that is, that there are generals that are independent of what anyone thinks about them.

 

Fully to understand what Peirce means by this, and to see how Peirce’s unique view fits in to the territory mapped by Loux, we must attend to Peirce’s distinction between reality and existence:

 

    Real: something is real if it is the way it is independent of what we think about it.

·         Recall that this is a verbal definition of “real.” One who can give this definition has a second degree understanding of the concept real.

·         Peirce used this definition of real as early as 1871’s Berkeley review (EP 1:88). There he distinguished between that which is real, the characteristics of which are independent of what we think about it, and that which is a fiction or figment, the characteristics of which do depend on what we think about it.[4]

 

·         Existent: something exists if it is real and it can “react” to or “clash” with other things. For example, individual, physical objects exist. Any individual, physical object can react against another.

 

On Peirce’s view:

·         Existence is one type of reality—anything that exists is real.

·         But existence is not the only type of reality—not everything that is real exists.

 

Once we make this distinction, we see that the “is” in Loux’s articulation of realism...

 

For every case of attribute agreement among objects, a ... n, there is a thing, F, and a relation, R, such that each of those objects stands in R to F

 

…is ambiguous. If the claim means there exists a thing, Peirce would reject it; but if it means “there is something that is real,” then it comes closer to Peirce’s view (although “thing” might still be objectionable, as it connotes an entity, something that can react).

 

This new terminology helps Peirce redraw the map to make room for a new version of realism, according to which universals are real but non-existent. Peirce’s preferred term for universals is “generals.”

 

For Peirce, generals include:

·         qualities (like redness, blackness, hardness)

·         relations (including two-place relations, such as being on top of, being the brother of, being larger than; and three-place relations, such as being between and giving).

·         kinds, classes or categories to which natural objects belong (dog, bear, mollusk, gold, silver, water, etc.).

·         laws, general truths about the natural world, expressed by statements like “Gold sinks in pure water” and “Water boils at 100° C at standard pressure” [note: this is a much broader use of the phrase “natural law” than that of most scientists, who would restrict the phrase to much less specific, more fundamental laws, like Boyle’s law (the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional), and Newton’s law of gravitation (bodies attract one another with a force directly proportional to their masses and indirectly proportional to the square of the distance between them)].[5]

 

But generals are not individual things or entities that get exemplified by particular objects. Peirce used “existence” to mean a type of reality—the sort of reality belonging to things which can react against one another (including individual things, entities). On Peirce’s view, generals are not individuals, things, or entities.

 

Peirce took his scholastic realism to be a hypothesis of scientific metaphysics, a metaphysical claim supported by experience and reason, specifically, an abductive hypothesis which, if true, would explain otherwise surprising facts.

 

 

[5.4.] Nominalistic Platonism.

 

On Peirce’s view, some (not all) previous realists had radically misunderstood the nature of “universals” / “generals” (that which explains attribute agreement). They were operating without the distinction between reality and existence and did not understand that generals, although real, do not exist...

 

·         Peirce’s view seems to have been that some previous realists (Plato, for one) erred by conceiving of “universals” as being too much like particulars. On these earlier versions of realism, universals were conceived as abstract particulars, individual things that happen to be non-physical.

 

·         But on Peirce’s view, particulars/individuals/entities/things exist, i.e. they can “clash” or react against other beings. So in conceiving of universals as entities, this form of realism comes dangerously close to implying that, e.g. the universal redness and the universal doghood can “bounce off” of each other, or react against each other in some sort of way.

 

·         Peirce derisively referred to this form of realism (the view that “universals exist”) as “nominalistic Platonism”

 

Loux’s description of realism seems roughly equivalent to what Peirce derisively called “nominalistic Platonism,” the view that generals are individual things capable of reacting against other individual things.[6]

 

 

·         On Peirce’s view, the general is not individual. Rather, the general and the individual are completely antithetical--nothing can be both general and individual in the same way. So generals, whatever they are, are not particular, individual things or entities.

 

 

[5.5.] Why “Scholastic”?

 

Peirce called his view “scholastic” realism because it derived from scholastic philosophy.

 

“Scholastic” connotes the “Medieval Schoolmen,” the academics teaching at universities in Europe during the medieval period, who in various ways attempted to reconcile or synthesize Christian theology with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks.

·         The years 1100-1500 are sometimes referred to as the Scholastic period of philosophy.

·         Sometimes “scholastic philosophy” and “scholasticism” are used more narrowly, to refer to the philosophy of a single medieval thinker, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)

 

One of the main problems with which the scholastics were concerned was the problem of universals (realism vs. nominalism).

 

Peirce was deeply influenced by his study (especially between 1867-68) of the scholastics. On the issue of universals, he was most deeply influenced by Duns Scotus (1266-1308). Peirce sometimes referred to his realism about generals as “Scotistic realism.”

 

(Peirce has quite a bit to say about Duns Scotus in the part of his review of Fraser’s Berkeley that you were not assigned to read.)

 

 

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday September 26. For next time, read EP1:52-53 and 87-92.