Nominalism

The nominalism is doctrines of thought which was born within the medieval Scolastique. Its founder is Roscelin. She was taxed with Hérésie because she gave an interpretation of the Christian Trinité regarded as false.

The nature of the universals

The problem which gives him birth is that of the nature of the Universaux in the Syllogisme S of Aristote (for example, in: all the men are mortals , which is the nature of man ?). Pierre Abélard tries a synthesis which gives a paramount importance to the prone compared to the object. The nominalists reject the idealistic design Platonic (also named Réalisme in the thesis: universalia sunt realia handle rem ) according to which they have an existence immanente a priori, and opposes to him that these universals are primarily defined by their names ( “nominated” ). In other words, the nominalists do not grant any universality to the mental concepts apart from the spirit which observes them.

In this direction, the philosophical systems of Épicure, Guillaume d' Occam, George Berkeley, David Hume, John Stuart Mill can be qualified nominalists owing to the fact that they do not allot universality to transcendent categories , but simply with what is built by the observer, like also does it the contemporary linguistic analysis. For them, the private individual exists, and the general is only human invention established for our convenience of reflection .

Paul Valéry will point out well later, in the same spirit, that nature does not know the expression and will caetera , and that this one is specific to the human spirit, which feels reluctant with the repetition . The automatic Classification and the Data mining will teach in the Années 1990 with the machines to build the equivalent of their own universals .

The holding principal one “realism” against nominalism is Guillaume de Champeaux.

Bertrand Russell observes that today we would permute readily these two names, since the “realistic ones” prove to handle in fine especially words, while the “nominalists” want to use them only while referring to reality.

Nominalism also finds many relays in the analytical Philosophie contemporary. Nelson Goodman thus endeavoured to work out a nominalist language resorting only to individual entities.

Forms of nominalism

In its maximalist form, practically equivalent to the Solipsisme, nominalism poses that does not exist only what a Individu indicates (thinks). The whole of the thoughts of an individual forms a coherent whole, that it is impossible for him really to test.

In a more moderate form, he recognizes an independent existence with at least certain objects, but considers that this existence is deprived of practical effect as long as the subject does not sometimes happen to integrate the thought consciously of it. Thus and for example exists for the man only the animals which it named during creation, and as long as the concept and the word of microbe were foreign for him, there remained confronted with many mysteries.

The scientific nominalism wonders about the value of the scientific knowledge : it is of truths (discoveries) or about arbitrary conventions (built). What would give to the scientific knowledge the same value as the language (see the vintage and cooks it ).

Representatives of the nominalist school

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