Universals and other entia non grata

As noted above, most objections to universals are based on the claim that universals, as compared with concrete physical things, are strange entities. Yet it is pointless to claim that universals are too strange to be countenanced if avoiding them commits one to things stranger still, such as mere possibilia. Consequently, debates about universals tend to descend into name-calling. Are universals strange? Then so are tropes, possibilia, and even classes. Every metaphysician has a list of “entia non grata,” or types of entity he would rather not admit as part of the furniture of the world. But which ones are so strange as to be utterly inadmissible, and which are stranger than which? Here there is little agreement.

The disagreement between Quine and Goodman about the relative acceptability of classes and universals illustrates how much variety there can be in judgments about which entities are stranger than which. It also shows how plastic the word nominalism has become. Quine grudgingly allowed that classes must exist, since they are required by the mathematics used in physics, and physics is closer to being strictly true than any other theory. Quine did, however, agree with Goodman that, because classes are apparently stranger than concrete physical things, it would be better if one could treat them as mere fictions. As a result, both came to use the word nominalist in such a way that no one who accepted the existence of classes could be a nominalist. For this reason Quine did not consider himself a nominalist, despite his rejection of universals. Goodman found classes more distasteful than certain universals (repeatable aspects of phenomenal experience, which he called “qualities”). As Goodman saw matters, one could be a nominalist while accepting a few universals but not while accepting classes. At this point, the word nominalist becomes little more than an honorific.

Many friends of universals would agree with Goodman that classes are at least as mysterious as universals. If classes exist, then classes with just one thing in them exist. The difference between a thing and the class that includes that thing alone is extremely hard to discern. Indeed, this aspect of classes motivated Russell, Bealer, and others to attempt to do without classes entirely, replacing sentences ostensibly about classes with sentences mentioning only objects and universals.

Quine’s main reason for preferring classes to universals was that there is a “criterion of identity” for the former but not for the latter. Under what conditions is a class X identical with a class Y? If, and only if, X and Y contain all the same members. Quine argued that no comparably precise condition governs universals, and he held that things without identity conditions should not be countenanced. Critics responded in three ways: (1) Some denied that the criterion of identity for classes is precise, because it can be no more precise than the criteria of identity for the members of the classes. (2) Others offered criteria of identity for properties—i.e., ways to complete the sentence “F is the same property as G if and only if….” Rough approximations of some well-known proposals are: “…a person cannot conceive of F without conceiving of G, and vice versa,” due to the American philosopher Roderick Chisholm; and “…F and G, when fully described in the language of fundamental physics, are logically equivalent,” due to the American philosopher Hilary Putnam. (3) Still others—e.g., the English philosopher P.F. Strawson—pointed out that the possibility of providing informative criteria must come to an end eventually and asked, why not stop with universals?

There is little agreement, then, concerning where universals and classes belong on the philosopher’s list of entia non grata. Quine claimed that universals belong higher up, among the entities to be rejected no matter what, and that classes belong lower down, among the entities one may ultimately have to admit if they earn their keep. Russell and Goodman claimed just the reverse. Lewis, meanwhile, found classes and universals equally problematic, or nearly so. When additional dubious entities, such as tropes and mere possibilia, are added to the mix and questions are asked about the relative naturalness of all these items, the amount of disagreement among philosophers grows exponentially.

Frequently, the best a philosopher can do to defend a particular list is to say, as did Quine and Goodman (in a jointly authored paper), that “it is based on a philosophical intuition that cannot be justified by appeal to anything more ultimate.” Even when philosophers give positive arguments for or against realism, their success often depends upon a controversial premise that they find intuitive, although other philosophers do not. A clash of naked intuitions, however, leaves little room for further argument. Under the circumstances, the intransigence of the problem of universals comes as no surprise.