Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Dinosaur Circle podcast. So this is a conversation with Dula Klima, and it's a follow-up to our earlier discussion um regarding his Stanford Encyclopedia article on the problem of universals. So this time we're focusing especially on the medieval distinction between the Via Antiqua and the Via Moderna, so the old way and the modern way. Okay, so the Via Antiqua, the old way, is associated with figures like Aquinas, Scotus, and Walter Burley, while the Via Moderna It's emerging, especially with William of Ockham. Okay. So the guiding question of our discussion is basically, you know, when it comes to the problem of universals, what is really the fundamental divide between these two approaches, the old way, the modern way is the difference mainly metaphysical about what kinds of things exist, or is it as Dula argues more fundamentally semantic about how words, concepts, and things are related. So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Speaker: All right, so to begin, could you briefly kind of remind us of how the problem of universals emerges in the first place? So we could use kind of a simple geometric example if we wanted. you know We draw one triangle on the board and prove that its interior angles add up to 180 degrees.
Speaker: um And what's interesting is that this proof somehow applies not only to that particular triangle that we drew on the board, But it applies to every possible triangle. So not even every not not simply every existing triangle, but even every possible triangle that we could construct. And so it seems like ah for you, the problem of universals emerges from asking the question you know of how could that be possible? is it Would you say that's right? Exactly. So I think what prompts the universe
Speaker: what is called the problem of universals, is really the problem of the possibility of universal knowledge. Such universal knowledge that we have, for instance, in geometry, which was the paradigm or paradigmatic science in ancient Greek philosophy, especially for Plato, just remember um and the inscription on the entrance of the academy,
Speaker: He who is unfamiliar with ah geometry must not enter. Okay, I'm quoting the Greek while it would be um useless here. Okay, so so geometry was the paradigmatic science ah which gives us this universal knowledge covering say, all possible triangles. How come we can have that kind of knowledge given that we can only experience it's a finite number of um pretty badly drawn triangles scratched into the
Speaker: sand maybe in a sandbox, et cetera. That's what they did, right? And so how come we can have this universal knowledge concerning all possible triangles that the sum of their internal angles um equals two right angles?
Speaker: Okay, now the we have the demonstration, but what is that demonstration about? And how can we know that that demonstration um and its conclusion will apply to all possible triangles drawn wherever and realized and no matter what kind of physical material?
Speaker: Plato's idea was that the reason for the possibility of this kind of knowledge is that our souls, our immaterial, spiritual core, as it were,
Speaker: um is um something that not just enlivens our bodies in our present existence, in this life, but it existed before entering the body in a purely spiritual realm, in a non-material are um realm of reality, in which it was exposed directly to the universal exemplars of all the physical shapes imitating more or less perfectly ah with the shapes that the soul got exposed to in that heavenly sphere.
Speaker: Once it got and got into the body, it sort of forgot this knowledge, but the senses prompt a recollection, her remembrance of these ah universal exemplars of all the individual shapes that are imitating and these ideal shapes that can be found in the heavenly realm. And once we are training ourselves to look up to these exemplary forms, we can
Speaker: form our demonstrations about their properties concerning is concerning these exemplary forms. And having framed our conclusions, we know that these conclusions would apply to anything in the physical realm that share in, participate, or imitate um participate in or imitate these heavenly forms. So that is pretty much the idea of Naive Platonism.
Speaker: And what you is the trouble with this otherwise perfectly beautiful and inspiring theory is that once we start about examining exactly what is the relationship between these exemplary forms and be ah their physical realizations or imitations in our sensible reality, and exactly what kind of property what kinds of properties these exemplary must have, ah we run into all sorts of inconsistencies.
Speaker: One particular kind of inconsistency that I really want to point out, based especially Boethius's argument that I analyzed in the Stanford Encyclopedia article that prompted this conversation between us in the first place,
Speaker: um is the following. um What kind of entity such a universal triangle is supposed to be? And in the first place, it is certainly something that is not visible by our bodily eyes, because it is supposed to be a plane figure um enclosed the one dimensional straight lines.
Speaker: You cannot possibly see a one dimensional straight line even if you can think of something that is such a plain figure having a three straight sides that are one dimensional lines.
Speaker: Okay, so much for the difference the first difference between the ideal object and then physical object that we can see. But now we are thinking about this ideal object. And thinking about this ideal object, we have to realize that any triangle as such, and so the exemplary triangle as well, the ideal triangle as such,
Speaker: must be um something that has either at least one pair of equal sides or no or no pair of equal sides.
Speaker: Let me call the first isosceles lumping. ah equilateral triangles under this extended notion of isosceles triangle, and the other kind of triangle, scalene.
Speaker: So every triangle as such must be either isosceles or scalene, there is no escaping that. Okay. However, the universal triangle being the exemplar of all triangles, not just isosceles triangles scalene triangles, cannot be an isosceles triangle and it cannot be a scalene triangle either.
Speaker: So it must be something that is either isosceles or scalene and neither isosceles nor scalene, and that is an explicit contradiction.
Speaker: which renders the this naive platonic idea of an ideal triangle inconsistent, just like the idea of a round square, et cetera.
Speaker: So it is ah it looks like it is unthinkable, despite the fact that we are thinking about it all the time when we are constructing the demonstration about the sum of its internal angles. So what is the way out of this?
Speaker: um a claim that they are directed by Aristotle, who said, of course, we can think of a triangle as such, And when we are thinking of a triangle, we have to think of something that is either isosceles or scalene.
Speaker: But we do not have to think that it's an isosceles, and we do not have to think that it is scalene. We just understand that it is triangle, so it must be either isosceles or scalene, but we do not think that it's isosceles, and we do not think that it's a scalene, and that it's perfectly consistent.
Speaker: Of course, we can think of something without thinking something else that is conjoined ah with the object of thought, but we just do not think of it.
Speaker: That is what is called abstraction. Abstracting from um the thing that's conjoined with our object of thought um without actually separating it or thinking it to be separate in reality. That is how we can separate in thought that we cannot and b and that are not separated in reality and that perhaps cannot be separated in therapy. Okay, and that is the basic idea for a recital, which turns these platonic exemplars into abstracted concepts, mental representations of individuals um which fall under such a mental representation, which still applies to all individuals that
Speaker: have the same kind of, um and that fall under the same universal representation, but um we do not have to latch our thought onto a separate, really existing entity that is universal in its being.
Speaker: So we have universal all same thought, and their individualized instances in real real. So that is the Aristophelian setup that starts out thinking about universals in the Middle Ages, after the Etheists, let's say.
Speaker: And the Platonic exemplars, by the way, will migrate into the divine mind as the archetypes of divine creation in Augustine. Okay, so that is the main idea in a nutshell. Yeah, no, that's really helpful. Before, let's say, the 12th, 13th centuries in European thought.
Speaker: That's really helpful. Yeah. So just to echo a couple of points to so for the listeners. So, you know, yeah, we we start with a basic puzzle. How does geometry give universal knowledge? um And, you know, what is the demonstration in a geometrical demonstration really about?
Speaker: Plato gives the answer that the soul kind of knew the forms before embodiment and But then you go over, as you just did, you just went over a few problems with this kind of naive platonic answer. And it ah roughly the problems have to do with you know what is the form of triangle supposed to be like? It can't be a physical triangle, but it still has to be triangle-like. it It must have three sides and be enclosed.
Speaker: Anyway, so there problems emerge related to what ah is the form of the tri and triangle supposed to really be like? And then you contrasted the kind of platonic answer with a more Aristotelian answer, where in that context, we don't need a separate ideal triangle.
Speaker: What we can do is we can think about triangle through abstraction. And so, you know, although in reality every triangle is determinant, um the mind need not think about all those features like being equilateral or isosceles or scaling. The mind doesn't have to think about all those features when it thinks about a triangle. It can abstract.
Speaker: It can think of a triangle without thinking of it as scaling or as isosceles. And so abstraction is really a key key point here. And so in short, like like you said, we get to the point where it's like we have a point where um universals for aristoam and the Aristotelian setup, you know, universals do not exist as separate platonic forms.
Speaker: um Okay, so we have a little bit of a setup now. And what we want to do in this conversation is really talk about two, what you call the Via Antiqua and the Via Moderna. And so the Via Antiqua... Starting the this conversation from the early 13th century, mid 13th century rather, right and turning into the mid 14th century. So that is where the turn takes place turning from viantipa which is not leaving behind viantipa tradition but when the split happens happens with the emergence of william occam's non-lust ideas
Speaker: And that is yeah exactly yeah the start of the Via Antiqua branching off, as it were, from the Via Antiqua. When the distinction starts making sense, it was just the Via Antiqua before that. okay Right, right. And so the Via Antiqua, that approach to the problem of universals That's who, we you know, we associate Aquinas, Scotus, Walter Burley, and others with the Via Antiqua approach.
Speaker: And then, like you said, the key a figure to to kind of um cause the emergence of a new way, a new approach to universals is Occam. And so, yeah, maybe we can just start with, in broad terms, you know, what separates the Via Antiqua from the Via Moderna?
Speaker: Yeah. So, My main claim also in the Stanford Encyclopedia article is that the main split between Viantic and Viam Moderna, which is um sometimes and traditionally characterized as a difference in ontology or metaphysics, so what kind of entity is kinds of entities are there,
Speaker: um is not really the main divide. um In fact, Aquinas' version of the Antiqua Metaphysics um does not really have to contain more entities or more different more different types of entities than Occam's ontology contains.
Speaker: Occam's um
Speaker: metaphysics and and logical semantics simply recategorizes what
Speaker: belongs to what kind of home classes of entities. Okay, so what Occam really does, and what is the absolute novelty, is not a different kind of metaphysics, but rather a different kind of semantics, redefining the relationships between um words, concepts, and things.
Speaker: That is language, thought, and the reality, more generally speaking. And um in order to understand um what the novelty is and what motivated the novelty in Occam semantics, we perhaps can start with this diagram that is also present in the Stanford Encyclopedia article about the relationships between categorically common term such as man, horse, runs,
Speaker: false, et cetera, okay? So these categorometric terms and the concepts that make these terms meaningful and what these concepts represent in reality in Aquinas' understanding in particular, that would be the, um let's say, the metaphysical starting point because I think that is pretty much what is the,
Speaker: the basic setup that almost everybody would agree with and um the pre-Archemist general semantic framework.
Speaker: So we we have a common term such as man, okay, or horse. um in latin oh or homo or echos, right? um These are obviously conventionally signifying utterances and they have the same meaning, that is, homo and echos.
Speaker: man and horse and ecus in these two languages, English and Latin, because they are subordinated to or are associated with the same kinds of mental acts, concepts, whereby we think of horses and humans in general, right, universally.
Speaker: Now, What makes these um mental acts universally represented? That's precisely their being abstracted from the singular representations of singulars that ah we naturally gain from our sensory experience, right? So I see this horse, that man, et cetera, right?
Speaker: But um at the same time, um when a number of horse experiences, individual horse experience, a number of individual human experiences are stored in my sensory memory, um in the form of what the
Speaker: technically it's called phantisms, that is the singular sense of representations of singulars in their individuality. So this works here, that works there, went there, et cetera. So um we have a this huge thing database of individual horses, et cetera, in the form encoded phantisms in our sensory memory.
Speaker: And the age of intellect, just ah that is our um concept forming capacity or power, um sort of x-rays these individuals sees their intelligible skeleton, if I may use this metaphor. That is, whatever is essentially the same in this horse, that horse, that horse,
Speaker: this horsiness, whatever it is, and that man, that man, that man, ah that is humanity, whatever whatever it is, that is this um human or horse essence that renders this chunk of matter into a horse and that chunk of matter into man.
Speaker: Okay? And so ah that is what the this intelligible information that the um agent intellect abstracts or extracts, if you like, from this sensory database of phantisms is deposited in the receptive intellect or to news patheticus, as Aristotle would call it the intellectus possibilis, that is the possible intellect.
Speaker: So the receptive intellect in which these universal representations are stored, they are called intelligible species. Now these intelligible species are,
Speaker: um those um primary universal representations that we can just um activate whenever we think about humans, horses, triangles, et cetera. And then we actively use these um universal representations to talk and think about horses, humans, triangles, universally, okay.
Speaker: um So our individual mental acts contain this universe information which is the target, the so-called objective concept of these individual mental acts. So when I think of triangles that prompt in your mind ah the this receptive intellect to form the concept of triangles based on the intellectual species of triangles that you store in your potential intellect, okay, the intellect as possible. And that is how we can target individually the same universal intelligible information content
Speaker: That is what is usually referred to as the objective concept. That is, what is the object of this mental act? What we are targeting by this mental act.
Speaker: Okay. and if we even expect from the fact that this information content is the target of this mental act or that mental act,
Speaker: then we just have the nature represented by these mental acts absolutely. And this is what is usually referred to by Thomas in particular, but based on Avicenna actually, as the nature absolutely considered.
Speaker: And that is what is horsiness as such, or humanity as such, or triangularity as such, which is precisely what is applicable to all horses, all humans, all triangles, even those that we have never experienced yet, and that is how we can talk about um all triangles universally, that we know if they approach this triangular essence that we have in our mind sufficiently in that physical reality, then the sum of their internal angles will be close enough to to two two right angles. and
Speaker: So that is the picture there. Perhaps, i should yeah which is ah which is the very important oh idea for the next step, that is, from this picture.
Speaker: What is important about this diagram that I presented in the stem for the encyclopedia. Besides the semantic relations, there are these
Speaker: horizontal arrows representing the flow of information. So it starts with um individuals is acting on our senses. This is totally natural process.
Speaker: We look at something, we see it, of we have the properly working eyes, that is visual receptors, auditory receptors, et cetera, et cetera. So we have well-working senses.
Speaker: this individual information about this individual, that individual comes in. Okay, but um all this, um
Speaker: let's say phenomenal information, how the thing appears, how it behaves, what we experience and our this in this accumulating,
Speaker: huge database of singular experiences, right? That is what is x-ray x-rayed by the intellect, as it were, um grasping what essentially connects these individuals laws and source them into these natural kinds of grasping their universal,
Speaker: but not universally existing essences. Okay? And so just as there is this idea of the same form existing in the object that informs my eyes to get visual information about the thing,
Speaker: It is the same form of the essence of the thing that informs my intellect, whereby my concept becomes applicable to all individuals having the same essence, informing their matter in real existence.
Speaker: Okay? So there is this idea of this pervasiveness of forms, whether sensible or intelligible forms, that n-form, that is shape and mold in real existence the individuals, and n-form, the mind,
Speaker: um about these individuals connecting by logical necessity or concepts to their real objects. Okay?
Speaker: So um know but how our universal concepts represent individuals is taking place through um representing their essential forms, um shaping them into the kind of individuals they are.
Speaker: and shaping our minds also to conceive of these kinds of individuals invariably, okay? And so it is not just um the set of forces that I'm conceiving by means of my concept of forces.
Speaker: On the contrary, I am capable of thinking of all horses falling into the set of horses encompassing all past, present, future, and ill.
Speaker: Possible horses is that they all share in this essence sense of forciness that I'm capable of grasping universally in my mind.
Speaker: So the hoarseness in the horse and the hoarseness in my mind are the same point form existing in different moods. In real mood, in a thing, and in an intentional mood, as it's called, that is in a form encoded information in my mind.
Speaker: Now that's the idea, that is the fundamentally important idea and the Antiqua, which was abandoned by Ocker.
Speaker: Okay, great. Yeah, so maybe I can try to echo a few a few things that you said. so Yeah, so I mean, kind of one main point you were making is that the main split between Via Antiqua and Via Moderna, it's not simply ontology.
Speaker: So it's not just Aquinas has more entities and Occam has fewer entities. um Aquinas' ontology, I guess, it doesn't necessarily need to contain more entities than Occam's.
Speaker: For you, the real novel the real novelty with Occam is more semantic. It's more, I guess, how terms signify, how concepts represent, and how language yeah relates to thought and reality. Okay.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: So, yeah, so it's really more of a semantic difference for you. And I don't know, yeah again, just to maybe echo a few things about the Via Antiqua picture. and you know So on that model,
Speaker: You know, begin with experience. I see this horse. I see that horse. I see many individual horses. These experiences leave a phantasm in the imagination, in the memory. These are kind of like stored sensory representations of singular things. And then the agent intellect, I think, right, is going to work on these these phantasms. And they and you you suggested that the agent intellect is kind of like an x-ray. Yeah.
Speaker: It x-rays the individual cases and it looks past the individuating details and it extracts what you called like a kind of an intelligible structure. So so from this horse, that horse, that horse, the intellect, the agent intellect is going to grasp hoarseness. And that's kind of the horse essence, what makes these things horses.
Speaker: And. and Then that extracted intelligible content is received into what you said is the the possible or the receptive intellect. And there, that intelligible content exists as an intelligible species,
Speaker: And it's that universal representation which allows us to think of horse, human, triangle. So basically, when I later think of horse, I'm activating this intelligible species, right?
Speaker: okay um And then that's supposed to kind of be the explanation of universal knowledge is is is is the the intelligible species. And so so the intelligible species is not just a memory of one horse.
Speaker: Instead, it manages to represent what is common to many horses. And I guess then you connected that to the avan so Avicenna. ibn sinnna So he introduced this idea of a nature considered absolutely.
Speaker: So you can consider a nature not as existing in this horse, not as existing in my mind, but simply as horsehood. That's considering the nature absolutely. So when you consider horsehood in secretariat, for example, a particular horse, famous horse, right, that's an individualized horseset horsehood.
Speaker: When you consider horsehood in my mind, that's a universal horsehood. type of horsehood, I guess. And then... Yeah, the funny thing is that it is individualized insofar as it is in your mind.
Speaker: That it is universal with regard to its objects. but that's ah Your mental act is yours. You thinking it, and when I think of it, and that's a different mental act in a different subject.
Speaker: But we can think of the same common object, horse-ness as such, or Aquinity, just to sound more elegant. but Right, right.
Speaker: and And so and so that that this is so basically, the a Avicenna's natural nature, absolutely considered, it's what it's it's key because it what it's that which allows the V Antiqua to say, we're not talking about a separate platonic form here, but also we're not just talking about a word.
Speaker: um We're doing something else. And okay That is what renders the word horse or the word equus in Latin meaningful.
Speaker: That is the mental object that we are conceiving of by means of our individual mental acts. Okay.
Speaker: And then, okay, and then let's try to get, it maybe we could just rehash really quickly, you know, where Occam changes things, what he's doing differently. So it's not... So for you, it's not that Ackham is saying we have a totally different list of beings. Maybe that applies a little bit to SCOTUS. I don't know. We'll talk a little bit about the difference between Ackham and SCOTUS in a second. But, you know, at least for Aquinas, it's like common terms. They're signifying nature's forms abstracted from individuals.
Speaker: Whereas for Ockham, maybe it's like the common terms signify the individual things themselves, but indifferently. So this this idea of indifferent signification is important. Just to yeah keep the conversation within appropriate bounds and limits, shift let me just read the relevant um two paragraphs from this paper, What's Wrong with Nominalism? Because I think that very briefly summarizes um where Scrutus parts company with Aquinas and where Aachen parts company on account of Scrutus with the rest of the foregoing tradition. Okay, so let's say we have summarized so far Aquinas' account and I claim that now Scrutus is dissatisfied with this account.
Speaker: He argues that if universality exclusively would be due to the activity of the intellect, then the mind could bring together just any odd jumble of things under one universal concept, whether they in fact belong to the same kind or not. To be sure, generally essential Aristotelian abstraction would immediately eliminate this implication. As Skotas already started talking about universality, in terms of mere indifferent representation, a façon de parler, a way of speaking, happily picked up by Occam. So there is a slight shift from Aquinas' understanding of universality is the formally
Speaker: the same universal representation of the forms that shape individuals of the same kind. For Scotus, a universal representation is just um a representation that represents individuals indifferently, regardless of their individual world differences. Okay.
Speaker: Now, thus, as Grotus continues, if our universal concepts are to represent the genuine intelligible architecture of reality, then there must be some universal entities in Rebus, that is, in reality, before or besides the operation of the intellect,
Speaker: um um as he puts it, on the operation of operation of the intellect. So there must be some universal entities in order that to, um for um for our intellect to be able to form concepts that are truthful, that adequately represent what is out there.
Speaker: Okay, so so there must be some sort of universal entities out there, even if they may not be the universal archetypes of Plato and they have enough ideas, but something that connects ah really existing individuals in reality, and that is sort of mirrored by our universal concepts. Okay.
Speaker: Of course, these universal entities are not like the individual objects of our ordinary experience. universal Universals, for Scotus, have a less than numerical unity, unitas minor unitate numerale, that is the expression Scotus uses,
Speaker: um for they exist in several distinct individual instances, and yet they are real, causally active. Indeed, it is due to the universals that their instances have their causality subject to universal laws.
Speaker: My kitchen fire can be put out not just by one designated individual kettle of water, but indifferently by any kettle of water.
Speaker: For universally, water puts out fire. So this is Curtis's main question. motivation that, hey, causality obeys the universal laws, so the real underlying causal agents should be these less than numerical individuals that somehow channel had these causal power through the individuals.
Speaker: But what really does the effective action is universal su the through the individuals, okay?
Speaker: um And so that is why, if we really want to understand this intelligible architecture of reality, architecture of reality, then our universal concepts must represent these universal entities, agents.
Speaker: that act through the individuals. Okay. And um our intellect does that by indifferently representing all the individuals that share in the same universal entity, this less than numerically one entity. Okay.
Speaker: But in the same way, according to Scotus, our senses are primarily affected also by the universals, although through their instances. But our senses actually distinguish these instances in their singularity only because in an actual perceptual situation in which their stimuli arriving from different locations at different times distinguish them.
Speaker: But if one ray of light, and this is Scotus' actual example in the text, If one ray of light is suddenly replaced by another, says Goodwes, then the senses cannot distinguish them. Ergo, even already in sensation, it is the universals that are primarily operational, indifferent to those individual differences of spatiotemporal position,
Speaker: um of which the intellect is overreads them, representing only the causally active universe of itself. And Scutus never went to a movie, but this is what we see in a movie, actually. These are earth's
Speaker: non-moving frames following one another in a rapid sequence. And that's what gives us the illusion of motion, et cetera. But um and you we cannot sensorily distinguish the individual frames. And that is why it would seem that we are looking at the same individuals moving along the trajectories on the screen, et cetera. So, um
Speaker: It is a valid observation, but the way Scutus uses it is a little weird, because he thinks that this allows him to conclude that there must be some universal, less than numerically one, entities connecting these individuals and identifying them um and sorting them into their different kinds. Okay.
Speaker: Now, as a result, Scutus' i'm sorry as a result scous' ontology immediately needs to face the question of what it is that narrows down, or contracts, come try narrows down these universals to their in individual instances, that is what the principle of individuation of these individuals is Skuta's famous answer is that it is this individual difference made infamous by his followers by the name Iksaiti, Dissness.
Speaker: Okay, so we have hoarseness in general, we conceive of that, and when we are latching our thought to this horse, then we conceive of hoarseness with Dissness.
Speaker: that's ah And that is what is um um the explanation for the contraction of universal horsiness to this individual horse.
Speaker: Okay. The problem this poses is that according to Scutus, although this individual difference is really inseparable from the universal, still it is not distinct from it merely conceptually. So it is not that the case that I'm just conceiving of forciness along with thisness in individual, but they are ah just and different ways of looking at or thinking of the same thing, there is a some sort of real preconceptual, precognitive difference between them.
Speaker: It is not merely conceptual. But they are not really distinct either. But if they were really distinct, then you could have disness without horseness, or you could have horseness without disness. It's impossible, At least by divine power. OK. So this is where all sorts of metaphysical and theological troubles crop up from this conception. And also, Ackerm would argue that some genuine logical problems, so he would argue that and this would be just a direct contradiction. If someone is interested, i have this paper on Occam's ontology of the categories in the Cambridge Companion to Occam, edited Paul Spade.
Speaker: in which I analyze a number of Occam's arguments against Scotus and his different argumentational strategies as well. so But we don't have time now to go into those details. Occam, this is the, ah so all these and ah problems provide,
Speaker: um modulations for outcome. So the problem this poses is that according to Scrutus, although this individual difference is really inseparable from the universe universal, still it is not distinct from it merely conceptually.
Speaker: But then how? Well, formally, sounds the hard to understand answer from Scrutus. In fact, um I don't know what percentage, but a large part of Skotis scholarship is spent on trying to understand what Skotis means by this famous or infamous formal distinction. yeah That's why I'm a Thomas Stendhal. It okay okay it just simply simply makes more sense, what Thomas says. anded Well, okay, died young. Perhaps he didn't have time to explain everything, but...
Speaker: I still um have difficulties with wrapping mind around what he's trying to say. And I'm not alone with that. Also, devoted scrutists have the same problem.
Speaker: Okay. just yeah So maybe maybe I can just try to... And reconstruct some of the dialectic that we just went through yes in discussion to this with respect to this paper that you wrote, What is Wrong with Nominalism. So um as you mentioned you know before, it's like Aquinas, he's he wants to say, as i understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, but he kind of wants to say the universality is coming from...
Speaker: abstraction So it's universality, it's it's primarily due to the activity of the intellect. and We encounter individual things, this horse, that horse, this human, that human. By the way, may I just insert one yeah yeah yeah little a thing here? Aquinas has a tremendous authority um in Aristotle's commentary from Avaris, who says explicitly, and he quotes him several times, even if he, on other issues radically disagrees with other areas, but this is the slogan, intellectus facit universalitatem in rebus. That is, it is the intellect that makes universality in things, okay? So that is, right ah know universality is not independent from mental operations. It is the result of a mental operations.
Speaker: It's the intellect which is abstracting the common intelligible structure from the phantasms. and so what you end up with is that universality, it's existing formally in the mind, but in reality, there's only the individualized instances. And and then here comes Scotus with, I mean, i guess his worry is something like, if universal universality is just produced by the intellect, you know, what, as you just just described, you know, what stops the mind from grouping together arbitrary things,
Speaker: Why couldn't the mind form one universal out of horses, trees, spoons, and stars? you know like so So Scotus is going to make a shift. So he's goingnna he wants to say that universality must have some real foundation in things themselves.
Speaker: There must be some universal entities in reality itself before or besides the operation of the intellect. Now, these are not supposed to be platonic forms floating separately, but um they are supposed to be real common natures ah present in individuals. And to make this work, like you were saying, he has to introduce an idea of less than numerical unity.
Speaker: so So SCOTUS doesn't think that there's like one numerically identical horsehood shared by all horses. in And as you explain in your work, you know, that has to do with ah like one issue is like, okay, if there's one numerically identical horsehood shared by all horses, you know, it seems like Secretariat dies,
Speaker: That one numerically identical horsehood should also be destroyed. But if it's destroyed and it's numerically identical with horsehood and Seabiscuit, then it seems like Seabiscuit's horsehood should also die it be destroyed when Secretariat is destroyed. So so his idea is, OK, we're going to move away from that kind of crude...
Speaker: numerical identity of horsehood across horses. We're move away from that crude realism. And we're gonna go into this different one, this more sophisticated thing where we say, the common nature, it does have a kind of unity across horses,
Speaker: But it's less than numerical. It's not a numerical unity. So you have the humanity in Socrates, you have the humanity in Plato, but that humanity is not numerically one thing.
Speaker: um But they're not unrelated either. So they're less, it's a less than numerical unity. So that's and and and And Scotus, even though it's obscure, right, it's hard to understand maybe this idea of but less than numerical unity, he does think it's needed. and And you kind of really, it's really interesting what you were just pointing out.
Speaker: He's really concerned with um
Speaker: universal laws that seem to govern reality. Water puts out fire. Humans reason. Horses reproduce horses. Yeah. these laws seem to work and SCOTUS kind of thinks that, uh, there must be some kind of real, uh, universal, intelligent structure that kind of underlies these causal, uh, regularities. Um, now I guess from Occam's perspective though, all of what SCOTUS is doing here is he's kind of,
Speaker: Yeah, he doesn't want he he doesn't think we need these common natures with less than numerical unity. He thinks that we can get away with dropping that. And so so it's interesting, though, he does keep the idea of indifferent representation, because like what you were just saying is that that idea of indifferent representation is part of...
Speaker: Yeah. it's part but What Akham realized is that you can have indifferent representation without formal unity. that is And what um actually his confrere had him realize. and So he had two stages, actually, of breaking with the Antiqua tradition.
Speaker: In his first and departure, he still kept what he referred to as the ficta, as this ah universal representational content of individual mental acts that he would identify as concepts.
Speaker: But the interesting thing is that um a his ficta were sort of isolated, this turned out needless items in his cognitive psychology, because they had no longer any role in his logic.
Speaker: because um the way he criticized Scotus and broke with Scotus and with all the foregoing tradition was simply by redefining the this semantic triangle um connecting words, concepts, and things, or language, thought, and reality. So perhaps i would read the next paragraph in this paper, which summarizes, otums spra yeah sure sure with Scotus and thereby also with the rest of the tradition. So this is about at this point, namely coming to Scotus's idea of the principle of individuation, Hexiety and its relation to
Speaker: the really existing extramental universal. um It is about at this point that Occam had enough of what he takes to be mere verbal hair-splitting, kabilatio, these term he uses, which as he argues is just the outcome of an ill-conceived understanding of logic.
Speaker: um He actually talks about that logic. man Although he happily appropriates Scotus' idea of universal and universality as indifference, whether in causality or in representation,
Speaker: Nevertheless, he attributes the universality of representation exclusively to the acts of our mind, which therefore become for him the indifferently representing effects of the causality of the individuals of various kinds acting indifferently on our senses as members of the same kind.
Speaker: So for him, our concepts are no longer the forms of things intentionally existing in our minds. Therefore, our universal universal terms do not signify the essential forms or natures of individual things, abstracting from their conditions of individuation, but rather the individuals themselves acting indifferently in accordance with their natural kind.
Speaker: So there are natural kinds, but it is not their distinct formal essences individuated in them that determines what kind they belong to. They just come in these natural kinds, and since they come in these natural kinds, they act indifferently in accordance with their kind on our senses and through those on our intellect.
Speaker: So, so um Our universal terms do not signify the essential forms or natures of individual things, abstracting from their conditions of individuation, but rather the individuals themselves acting differently accordance with their natural kind.
Speaker: And this conception results in a much simpler, both semantically and ontologically radically different articulation of the Aristotelian semantic triangle representing relationships between mind, language, and reality.
Speaker: And here is the other diagram in the and also in the Stanford times Encyclopedia. um and In fact, this is the i own simplicity, this captivating simplicity of this diagram as opposed to the other one.
Speaker: That was one of the main attractive attractive features of Occamist nominalism. The famous nominalist manifesto 1473 argues that even if argue is that even if even if they're realists who are right, the nominalist logic is much easier to teach since the students more easily comprehend it.
Speaker: So that is, come can you get a more appealing argument to a university administration? Okay, this this is the kind of stuff that the students can easily get, so let's see. I think I even remarked this in the,
Speaker: parenthesis, although this may not be a particularly principled philosophical argument, with the ever-growing student populations of the universities trying to satisfy the growing demands ah for career bureaucrats, not particularly interested in metaphysical subtleties, it may have been a powerful practical argument for university administrations. Okay, so, and Interesting. So this is really a turn toward modernity, our modern times, actually.
Speaker: so Indeed, the majority of outcomes arguments for his logic is devised ah to show that in his logical framework, most of the useless problems do not even emerge in this framework. It is no longer a metaphysical question whether what the term man signifies and what it refers to are distinct or the same in reality. For this pseudo-question, is already resolved in logical semantics.
Speaker: Our common terms no longer signifies it no longer signify the forms of things, but rather things themselves, which is why we can refer to them by these terms in the appropriate propositional context. So a number of yeah metaphysical issues, the questions of the that can could be framed in the Ria Antiqua and were heavily disputed as metaphysical issues within the Ria Antiqua become simply eliminated as pseudo questions.
Speaker: This is a one of those big, um for and this is the first big linguistic term. which renders a number of old questions so just meaningless, not to be resolved, but totally absolved or eliminated.
Speaker: um How can you... be more modern than this. This is pretty much like the elimination of metaphysics through the logical analysis of language, which is the famous title Rudolf Carnap's programmatic paper, um Starting Logical Positivism.
Speaker: and um okay targeting Heidegger's metaphysics. But it doesn't matter. The important point is that now logical analysis becomes the eliminator, the terminator of metaphysical questions. yeah right So that is, and I argue in this paper, and that is pretty much the problem with it.
Speaker: this that is That it can can act as the terminator of metaphysics, um which, however, keeps bouncing back.
Speaker: ah Yeah, and and yeah maybe we can we can, in a moment, yeah we can go a little bit more into that, you know the kind of the problem the problems or problems you see with with nominalism. But yeah, just to echo some of things that you mentioned, you know um Yeah, like the nominalism of Occam, it was attractive because it was simpler. So even if the realists were right, Occam's logic, it was easier to teach, easier to grasp for students. And so you brought up that diagram. And so maybe I could, yeah, like try to echo what you were saying about the diagram. you know it's like...
Speaker: ah So for Occam, looking at this diagram, we start with singular. So reality, it's only containing individual things. This horse, that horse, Socrates, Plato.
Speaker: There's no universal horsehood ah needed in the world. And then these singulars do produce phantasms. So the phantasm remains. And you know we sense individual things. And these sensory encounters, they leave a phantasm.
Speaker: images or memory representations of the singular, the object. But actually, the funny thing is, if I may insert something here, even phantoms are already quite indifferently represent things. And even in sensory representation, you have ah determined definite sensory um representation in your sensory apparatus. as long as you are in actual causal contact with the thing that causes this perceptual representation. But um once you have just the sensory memory, oh, I don't know where and when I met that guy or that gal. um And as memory fades, there is an ever more indifferent representation of all these individuals. And what remains is, oh, I'm
Speaker: i I met someone somewhere some point yeah and I don't know anymore. And so I just have this oh a general mental representation of the kind of thing maybe encountered before.
Speaker: So there is no genuine formal abstraction It is just an ever-fading, less and less distinctive memory. And that is what the concept represents. Eventually, sorting things into their natural kinds, species, and genera.
Speaker: That's it. And yeah just and just for the the audience, I mean, indifference, when we're speaking about indifference, we're kind of talking about how it's not... something is not tied to one particular individual. So like the name secretariat for the horse, that's that name secretariat is not indifferent because it's tied to this one individual.
Speaker: Whereas horse... that term, it's indifferent in the sense that it's not tied to secretariat rather than Seabiscuit rather than another horse, right? it's It's indifferent among the individual horses. So I guess like indifference, generally speaking, means it's able to represent this one, that one, or any other of the same kind. Non-distinctive.
Speaker: Right, non-distinctive. And again, like the kind of key contrast is that I guess Is this right to say, like, scope for SCOTUS, the indifference is in reality. It's not just in the mind. The the reality itself has common natures which are sort of indifferent to individuals. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and And it only becomes this horse when that indifferent reality, that common nature is contracted by pixiety or by the individual difference. Yes. Whereas for Occam, indifference is entirely in the mental act, right? he wrote So basically he's relocating it. He's relocating indifference into the into the mind.
Speaker: um We don't need a real common nature that is indifferent in things in the world. Instead, it's just the concept horse which that's where the indifference is.
Speaker: Anyway, okay. um Good, okay. But it's not indifferent because it represents horsiness universally, which is contracted to English. It represents horses, individual horses, indifferently.
Speaker: And so there is no question about whether this horse and its hoarseness are one and the same item in reality or um and distinct in reality or merely the same horse differently conceived or represented, et cetera.
Speaker: Okay, so all these metaphysical questions become pseudo questions in Occam's semantic framework. Yeah, now for the viewer, I mean, or listener, I mean, and for me too, I guess, um I guess the obvious question, the thing that that jumps out at you here is like, okay, if Occam is going to reject um common natures as the kind of like semantic object of universal terms,
Speaker: then how is he still going to have natural kinds? right like Why are horses really horses and humans really humans um rather than us? This is a brute act of nature. that um Okay, here we go. yeah and There are individuals that have the
Speaker: same sort of phenomenal features as it were and their appearance, their behavior, and their causality, their powers, et cetera, et cetera, which do not distinguish them as opposed to their position in space-time or their particular shade of color or particular shape, etc et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: And those are the accidental individual differences. But um it is a brute fact of nature that um ah there are um
Speaker: huge numbers of individual entities classifiable under on same one, same un universal representation that represents them indifferently, disregarding these um individual differences, such as spatiotemporal position, um particular shape, particular color, and particular noise, et cetera.
Speaker: Yeah, so this is, okay, so interesting. Okay, so it's like, yeah, so the alchemist wants to say, yeah, it's just a brute fact, like you said, that there are many individual things that behave alike, appear alike, or have, you know, similar causal powers. So,
Speaker: Um, so when we think about horses, they're not grouped together because they share kind of one common, uh, universal entity called hoarseness. Instead they're grouped because there are many individual bank beings that are naturally similar in terms of their like phenomenal, uh, features, their behavior, their causal powers. Now, um, I guess, I mean, so to me, I imagine, i don't know. So you were saying you're you're kind of, um,
Speaker: partial to to the Thomistic position toward a more realist position. And um I guess to me, is it would be the reason why you're partial that way rather than partial Occam is that Brute facts, it's not ideal. I mean, right, like a realist will want to say, hey, that's not enough. You're you're stopping the explanation too early, Ockham, right? Like the realist wants to know why do these individuals resemble each other, right? um So I find SCOTUS's answer kind of appealing, right? That, well, here's the here's the we can explain that. It's because they share a real common nature.
Speaker: Yeah. How is that an explanation without explaining? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Whereas Occam wants to just say that's, that's the, that explanation stops at, they resemble each other because they have the same kind of, because they they are the same kind of individual thing. So explanation stops there. I mean, sorry anyway, I guess, so I guess the issue is like when, you know,
Speaker: When is a brute fact acceptable? When are we are we are we going to be okay with a brute fact? you know um Well, there's another oh host of epistemic questions, right? Yeah, yeah. And these are ones that Occam would not even explicitly address, I would say.
Speaker: that Of course it's given that this is a man, that is a man, that is a monkey, that is a zebra, right? And we would have all sorts of empirical clues in their, let's say, phenotypes, right? In their phenomenal appearance, et cetera. And this is not an infallible process. So we may mistake
Speaker: um um an aid for a human or whatnot. right okay Let's say it's just walking a in the jungle, and it looks like, or a yeti, or whoever, and may look like a human, perhaps it is not, or an alien, now there are.
Speaker: revelations from the White House about aliens, et cetera. So who knows? so These are, as far as alchemists concerned, of course there are disputable instances, et cetera, that would not eliminate um the validity of the categories themselves.
Speaker: So just because there is purple, doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense to distinguish blue from red.
Speaker: Right. Right. Right. Um, good. Yeah. Well, so I'm not sure where you want to go from here, but I would like to maybe, maybe we could hit on the point that like, uh, you, you emphasize this in a lot of your work, you know, that there's lot of misunderstanding related to nominalism. So you kind of emphasize that, you know, they're not skeptic skeptics. They're not relativists. They're not atheists.
Speaker: Um, They're not saying classification is arbitrary. They don't deny natural kinds. That's what we were kind of just pointing out. um They're not saying language is meaningless. um They're not saying only words exist. um But...
Speaker: um Yeah, they are anti-realists when it comes to universal entities. Yes. And theres there is one crucial, epistemically perhaps so the most crucial point of abandoning the idea of formal unity between object and concept.
Speaker: which is what allows for the emergence of what the form of skepticism that came to be known after Descartes' as demon skepticism.
Speaker: um What if our minds and are subject to the manipulations of an omnipotent deceiver, and whatever whatever appears to us the reality is not there at all.
Speaker: or There is something that is totally inaccessible to all of our cognitive faculties, not just senses, as in the matrix, but also to our intellects, as in hypermatrix, whatever it is. Okay, so but i um we we may be completely blocked from an external reality.
Speaker: This is why it is an emerging possibility. so um
Speaker: There's the historical fact that this sort of demon skepticism, ah was there existed all sorts of involved different sorts of forms of skepticism about the fallibility of our senses and the weakness of our intellect, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: um And um yet this possibility of total isolation of a cognitive subject from anything that appears to be a external reality was not there.
Speaker: How come? Were the at the ah thinkers coming before Aqqa just too dull to acknowledge or recognize this possibility, i would not risk a that assumption.
Speaker: It was generally a not a plausible and plausibly acceptable possibility which became such after Akka, because these merely indifferently representing concepts um which are not formally identical with their objects, can remain exact same mental contents appearing to represent whatever they represent, whether there are matching objects in external reality or not.
Speaker: So I may have exact same horse concept, concept the thats exact same or a pre visual horse appearance, et cetera, as in a matrix, ah whether there is a real horse there or not. And I can...
Speaker: speculate about what a universal law's course is, or just in chemistry, just to think of simpler entities that we understand or think we understand better. So whether this is, say, mercury or gold,
Speaker: um or um our scientific theories about them, et cetera, regardless of whether there really is um any instance of, whether there is a spatiotemporal reality at the all around us, we could have the exact same mental contents as far as our concentric is concerned.
Speaker: Whereas, you know we are anti-cosmetics. I can only have a mercury concept if it is nothing but the form of mercury existing intentionally in my mind.
Speaker: If I have something
Speaker: that appears to represent to me what normally would be represented as Mercury, and it is not the nature of Mercury, then it is not the Mercury concept. It is the concept of fake Mercury.
Speaker: Or just to illustrate that with the... um
Speaker: example of the Matrix, if people still watch it. There is this guy, the traitor of the rebels, Cypher, whose name is, by the way, no means nothing.
Speaker: That is the meaning of the name cipher, okay. it It has a long since history. it It goes back to Arabic, meaning void. Okay, and so cipher goes on to,
Speaker: goes on to saying that he knows that the virtual stake that he is holding on the virtual, a piece of stake that he's holding on on his virtual fork, maybe a total illusion, but he's enjoying it. Okay, so this, and ah so just go for appearances. And now there is David Chalmers ah building up an entire um philosophy around this virtual, possibly merely virtual reality.
Speaker: um which i would claim that in the framework of the Antifa was not even a possibility.
Speaker: So, there is another thing that is wrong with phenomenalism that allows the emergence of all this um all all these fantasies is about um
Speaker: our living in a virtual reality with merely virtual features, merely virtual values, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: And, um, um So, when we are eventually trained to be willing to settle for the idea that appearance is what matters,
Speaker: is
Speaker: That is the essence, that is of the essence, what things appear to us, and not what they really are.
Speaker: Okay, so this is this is where I would, okay, maybe this is ah just a little... um well yeah Lose her speculation about what further maybe axiological consequences such yeah views can have.
Speaker: um I'm actually about working on spelling these out in a monograph about the loss of form and the importance of recovering it.
Speaker: and for contemporary use. The loss of this yeah free modern notion of form that is pervasive and acts as a real bridge between subject and object.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's really a fascinating point you're making. So it's like, you know, you know't you're not saying that nominalism just equals skepticism or is skepticism. What you're saying is that the semantic shift that you have in Occam, it helps make the modern skepticism conceptually possible, right? Like,
Speaker: um Because, yeah i mean, it's like you said. springboard It's more like a springboard into an ocean of skepticism. Yeah. Yeah. and because, because and like you said, you know there were kind of older types of skepticism related to the fallibility of the senses, you know, related possibility of illusion and dreaming, hallucinations and stuff like that. But the you're saying that the kind of stronger modern possibility is is a kind of total isolation of
Speaker: where you put it, yeah, like total isolation in the cognitive subject. By the way, in in this paper, I have an argument with independent from this a demand for formal unity, so in the independent from this semantic framework of the idea antiqua that um uses a very spruced up, sharper form of demon skepticism to show that it is not really possible because um it would it it can be reduced to self-contribution.
Speaker: That's another issue. Yeah, it doesn't anyhow. I mean, sit Yeah, so, um yeah, I mean, it's it's really a fascinating idea that that the Via Antiqua, given the way they understood concepts as, you know, the form or the nature of the thing existing in the mind, um,
Speaker: it kind of blocks the matrix style total deception. like that That's not genuinely possible, that type that that kind of scenario. It is not built into the system, but it it is something that is a logical implication of the system.
Speaker: that soon came to the fore and people started thinking about the and this as a genuine possibility.
Speaker: So um perhaps ah here is ah in a nutshell me ah my argument against the possibility of a very truly sharpened and a strengthened version of demon skepticism, which however i claim is the implication of the Lea Moderna semantics.
Speaker: So let us take a cognitive subject named S. um who agrees with us seeing all our basic cognitive capacities capable of forming the same time type of cognitive acts that we can.
Speaker: However, as just happens to be a brain in a bat, a BIV for short, in the clutches of the proverbial net scientist.
Speaker: Accordingly, S is a cognitive subject who has no veridical cognitive acts, whether simple or complex ones. Veridical meaning genuinely representing in reality what it appears to represent to the subject, okay?
Speaker: Now,
Speaker: However, since S is capable of forming all cognitive acts that we do, S can form the thought we would express by the sentence, S is a BIV.
Speaker: Now, by our hypothesis that S is a BIV, that is a true thought. So, since can form this thought, S is thought that is a B-I-V is true.
Speaker: However, since by definition as has no veridical commentary of X, S is thought that s is a B-I-V is not true, which is in direct contradiction to the previous conclusion.
Speaker: But then, since our hypothesis that is a B-I-V entails a contradiction, it cannot be true. So there cannot be an S that is a B-I-E.
Speaker: The apparent possibility is not a genuine possibility. Just like the apparent possibility that there is a greatest as prime number is not a genuine possibility because assuming that there is, that there is one leads to a contradiction.
Speaker: Okay, so, and to the apparent possibility, of there being such a BIV. That is a cognitive subject, just like us, that is no veridical cognitive act.
Speaker: You know it's a perception that actually is representing yeah that actual what it appears to represent. up right um It is an implication Occam's idea that our mental acts are just um in different representations of whatever and happens to come into our sensory experience.
Speaker: And ah they these mental acts, or cognitive acts, could be the exact same acts, even if they were not produced by genuine natural entities, by natural causality, because this natural causality could be overridden by the author, and by the power of the author of nature named God.
Speaker: That is, God could create a mind or a cognitive subject that has the exact same mental contents that you have now without creating the rest of the reality. around you.
Speaker: That's the idea.
Speaker: Yeah, fascinating. and And so that argument, just to be clear for everyone, that's coming in your paper, what is wrong with what is wrong with nominalism? And yeah, you have this section, how the demon can be exercised. yes And so yeah, definitely would point everyone to that.
Speaker: to that paper. Well, Julia, thanks so much for joining me today. Yeah, we obviously we reviewed the medieval problem of universals, kind of looked at the divide between the Via Antiqua and the Via Moderna.
Speaker: We talked about Occam's radical semantic shift. And and and yeah, we just know touched on how that change, that that radical semantic shift may have kind of opened the conceptual space for modern demon creation.
Speaker: ah skepticism before entering with your with your argument of of against that strengthened form of skepticism. So yeah, recommend to everyone that article, What is Wrong with Naman Wilson.
Speaker: But yeah, thanks again, Dil, for coming on. Appreciate it. Well, thank you. i really enjoyed our conversation again. okay Thank you, Rons.
