What is 'nominalism'?

Question

remy-would Russell's theory from On Denotation be considered a form of nominalism?

Answer 1

Words express a universal which can be found in the thing itself. For example man is a rational animal, every man represent the possibility of being a rational animal and this is his essence (everyone having the potentiality of being a rational animal is a man). For nominalists essences do not exists, they are only a label decided by man, therefore you can decide to call a category of people men and exclude another. The problem with nominalism arises when they have to explain what is a similarity, since for them essence does not exist. How can you say this man is similar to another, when the word indicating man is only a convention and has no concept behind inherent to a reality?
Hope this is of help.
----------------------------
As far as I know (and remember from lessons) Russell is a realist, even though he does not accept essences in the traditional meaning, he does accept a form of universals. Hope this helps you.

Answer 2

Define Nominalism

Answer 3

Nominalism Definition

Answer 4

Nominalism is a refutation of Platonic Idealism. Plato asserted that the things we perceive in this world have less reality than their ideal forms: each actual horse is only an imperfect copy of the ideal form of a horse, and so on.

The medieval philosophers who were later called "Nominalists" asserted that individual things are enough, without adding the (supposed) universal versions of them to the list of existing things. Most famous of these scholastic philosophers was William of Occam; and the most famous statement of this principle of parsimony is now called "Occam's Razor" -- do not multiply entities unnecessarily.

Russell could be called an idealist, in these terms! His attempt to derive all of mathematics and logic from basic axioms foundered on a logical rock when it became apparent that his primal "sets" would not always behave logically. In the end, sets were an unnecessary addition to the list of things. The high status Russell sought for maths was later to be lowered by Gödel and Wittgenstein.

Answer 5

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What is 'nominalism'?

Answer 6

Nominalism is a trend in medieval philosophy . It asserts that only individual things with their individual properties really exist ..General concepts created by our mind , far from existing independently of things ,do not even reflect their properties and qualities .

Answer 7

nominalism - HighBeam Encyclopedia
nominalism in philosophy, a theory of the relation between universals and particulars. More information on blingo.com