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Full Idea
Those who dislike universals have thought that they could be merely words; the trouble with this view is that a word itself is a universal.
Gist of Idea
Universals can't just be words, because words themselves are universals
Source
Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.14)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'My Philosophical Development' [Routledge 1993], p.128
A Reaction
Russell gradually lost his faith in most things, but never in universals. I find it unconvincing that we might dismiss nominalism so easily. I'm not sure why the application of the word 'cat' could not just be conventional.
| 15384 | Only words can be 'predicated of many'; the universality is just in its mode of signifying [Abelard, by Panaccio] |
| 6440 | Universals can't just be words, because words themselves are universals [Russell] |
| 7952 | If we apply the same word to different things, it is only because we are willing to do so [Goodman, by Macdonald,C] |
| 4443 | Quine has argued that predicates do not have any ontological commitment [Quine, by Armstrong] |
| 10789 | Nominalists say predication is relations between individuals, or deny that it refers [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| 8530 | Change of temperature in objects is quite independent of the predicates 'hot' and 'cold' [Armstrong] |
| 8536 | We want to know what constituents of objects are grounds for the application of predicates [Armstrong] |
| 4031 | It doesn't follow that because there is a predicate there must therefore exist a property [Armstrong] |
| 4431 | 'Predicate Nominalism' says that a 'universal' property is just a predicate applied to lots of things [Armstrong] |
| 8565 | If properties were just the meanings of predicates, they couldn't give predicates their meaning [Mellor] |
| 8967 | Not all predicates can be properties - 'is non-self-exemplifying', for example [Lowe] |
| 4205 | 'Is non-self-exemplifying' is a predicate which cannot denote a property (as it would be a contradiction) [Lowe] |
| 4457 | There can be predicates with no property, and there are properties with no predicate [Moreland] |