William of Ockham · Philosophy
Ockham’s claim that nothing universal exists out in the world: there are only individual things, and universals such as ‘humanity’ or ‘redness’ are concepts, signs in the mind that stand for many individuals at once. What this dissolves, and what it still has to explain.
You learned that Ockham denied the reality of universals: everything that exists is a singular individual, and a universal is only a concept (a natural sign) that signifies many things, standing in for them in our thought and speech. Explain what nominalism dissolves (the shared ‘common natures’ of the rea…
Leads to Thomas Aquinas.
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