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Full Idea
All real forms of Nominalism should hold that the only objects relevant to the explanation of generality are concrete particulars, words (i.e. word-tokens, not word-types), and perhaps sets.
Gist of Idea
Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets
Source
Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16)
Book Ref
Macdonald,Cynthia: 'Varieties of Things' [Blackwell 2005], p.255
A Reaction
The addition of sets seems controversial (see Idea 7970). The context is her rejection of the use of tropes in nominalist theories. I would doubt whether a theory still counted as nominalist if it admitted sets (e.g. Quine).
Related Idea
Idea 7670 Kant is the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil [Kant, by Berlin]
| 17619 | We renounce all abstract entities [Goodman/Quine] |
| 8529 | Deniers of properties and relations rely on either predicates or on classes [Armstrong] |
| 8501 | Quineans take predication about objects as basic, not reference to properties they may have [Devitt] |
| 8858 | Philosophers keep finding unexpected objects, like models, worlds, functions, numbers, events, sets, properties [Yablo] |
| 4478 | Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux] |
| 10310 | Objections to Frege: abstracta are unknowable, non-independent, unstatable, unindividuated [Hale] |
| 7971 | Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets [Macdonald,C] |
| 14596 | Call 'nominalism' the denial of numbers, properties, relations and sets [Dorr] |
| 19122 | Nominalists can reduce theories of properties or sets to harmless axiomatic truth theories [Halbach/Leigh] |