The difficulty of doing without abstract reference provides a second, oft-cited reason to posit a plenitude of universals. Many predicative expressions—e.g., “… is hungry”—are paired with words that look like names for an abstract object—e.g., “hunger.” Moreover, for every predicate there is some nominalization by which abstract reference can be achieved: “… is a father” corresponds to “fatherhood”; “… is dark” corresponds to “darkness”; and, more generally, “… is such-and-such” corresponds to “(the property of) being such-and-such,” as in “being entirely without fear is a dangerous property to have.” When a sentence contains a name or other expression that looks like a term for a single entity, it is natural to assume that the sentence could not be true unless the entity referred to is real. Most philosophers would not be happy making assertions using names for things they regarded as nonexistent—at least not until they had explained what other function, apart from naming, these words performed.

In many cases, true sentences containing abstract singular terms can be paraphrased into roughly equivalent sentences in which no such terms appear. But some sentences stubbornly resist such paraphrase. Thus, “hunger was one thing the voyagers had in common” might be thought to say no more than “all the voyagers were hungry.” But how should “hunger was the only important thing they had in common” be paraphrased, if it is not to be taken as a statement comparing hunger itself with all the other properties the voyagers shared? It certainly appears to be equivalent to “there are some things the voyagers had in common, and hunger was the most important one.”

At this point, many philosophers would appeal to some version of the “criterion of ontological commitment,” introduced by the American philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. The criterion says that there is only one way to be sure about the ontological commitments of a philosopher’s theory—i.e., what would have to exist for the theory to be true. One must demand that the philosopher represent his theory in a certain well-understood logical language, namely that of first-order predicate calculus. In this logical language, some statements begin with an existential quantifier, “∃(x).” They are equivalent to English sentences that would begin: “There exists an x such that…” Once a philosopher has provided a translation of his theory into this canonical language, it is easy to see which sentences of this form follow from the theory. Each sentence signifies the theory’s commitment to the existence of something satisfying the rest of the sentence. If some of the xs could only be abstract things such as hunger or fatherhood, the philosopher who holds the theory is committed to universals.

Sparse theories from natural classes

Philosophers who advocate a sparse theory of universals argue that the only universals that need to be posited are those that are necessary to account for the most fundamental respects in which things resemble one another. Armstrong, for example, champions universals as the best account of the difference between what he calls “natural” and heterogeneous classes—i.e., between a class of things each member of which objectively resembles all other members in a single respect, and a class of things each member of which has little or nothing in common with other members.

Only a few terms of ordinary languages seem to determine completely natural classes. One example might be terms for shapes, such as “being spherical”: each member of the class containing all and only spheres resembles every other member in a single objective (and important) respect. On the other hand, “being a table” corresponds to a much less natural class. Tables need have little in common, intrinsically: some are made of wood, others of metal or plastic; and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some philosophers defending sparse theories of universals have proposed that universals correspond only to the predicates used in the fundamental theories of physics—e.g., “…has spin up” and “…has a mass of x kilograms.” According to this view, physics describes the real “ontological joints” in nature, dividing the world into classes of objects resembling one another precisely and in just one respect.