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Gyula Klima on Ockham, Nominalism, and the Via Moderna
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Gyula Klima discusses the medieval problem of universals, focusing on the divide between the via antiqua and the via moderna. The conversation centers especially on William of Ockham’s break with the older realist tradition, drawing on Klima’s article “What is Wrong with Nominalism?” (Divinitas, 2, 2025). Klima argues that the deepest shift is not simply metaphysical, but semantic: a new account of how words, concepts, and things are related.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Discussion
00:00:00
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
Medieval Philosophical Distinctions: Via Antiqua vs. Via Moderna
00:00:12
Speaker
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
The Problem of Universals: Metaphysical or Semantic?
00:00:32
Speaker
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
Plato's Ideas on Universal Knowledge and Pre-bodily Existence
00:00:55
Speaker
are related. So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
00:00:58
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.
00:01:16
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
00:01:50
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,
00:02:21
Speaker
He who is unfamiliar with ah geometry must not enter. Okay, I'm quoting the Greek while it would be um useless
Challenges in Naive Platonism: Universal Contradictions
00:02:33
Speaker
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
00:03:03
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?
Aristotle's Abstraction and Understanding of Universals
00:03:20
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?
00:03:49
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,
00:04:04
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.
00:04:50
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
00:05:27
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.
00:05:56
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.
00:06:38
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,
00:06:56
Speaker
um is the following. um What kind of
Influence of Boethius and Scotus on Metaphysical Realism
00:07:01
Speaker
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.
00:07:23
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.
00:07:41
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,
00:08:06
Speaker
must be um something that has either at least one pair of equal sides or no or no pair of equal sides.
00:08:18
Speaker
Let me call the first isosceles lumping. ah equilateral triangles under this extended notion of isosceles triangle, and the
Ockham's Semantic Shift and Rejection of Universal Entities
00:08:29
Speaker
other kind of triangle, scalene.
00:08:31
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.
00:08:56
Speaker
So it must be something that is either isosceles or scalene and neither isosceles nor scalene, and that is an explicit contradiction.
00:09:07
Speaker
which renders the this naive platonic idea of an ideal triangle inconsistent, just like the idea of a round square, et cetera.
00:09:19
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?
00:09:38
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.
00:09:56
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.
00:10:15
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.
00:10:27
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
00:11:23
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
Via Antiqua vs. Via Moderna: Semantic vs. Ontological Differences
00:11:38
Speaker
entity that is universal in its being.
00:11:41
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.
00:12:01
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.
00:12:28
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?
00:12:46
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.
00:13:14
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.
00:13:33
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.
00:13:57
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.
00:14:21
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
00:15:07
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.
00:15:33
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?
00:15:54
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,
00:16:26
Speaker
um is not really the main divide. um In fact, Aquinas' version of the Antiqua Metaphysics um does not really
Ockham's Nominalist Approach: Concepts and Individuals
00:16:45
Speaker
have to contain more entities or more different more different types of entities than Occam's ontology contains.
00:17:01
Speaker
Occam's um
00:17:05
Speaker
metaphysics and and logical semantics simply recategorizes what
00:17:14
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.
00:17:38
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,
00:18:24
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,
00:18:54
Speaker
the basic setup that almost everybody would agree with and um the pre-Archemist general semantic framework.
00:19:06
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.
00:19:30
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.
00:19:50
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,
Avicenna's Influence on Medieval Universals
00:20:11
Speaker
right? So I see this horse, that man, et cetera, right?
00:20:15
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
00:20:37
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.
00:21:02
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,
00:21:32
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.
00:21:56
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.
00:22:26
Speaker
So the receptive intellect in which these universal representations are stored, they are called intelligible species. Now these intelligible species are,
00:22:37
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.
00:23:04
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
00:23:48
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.
00:23:59
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,
00:24:10
Speaker
then we just have the nature represented by these mental
Medieval Metaphysical Framework: Universals and Sensory Abstraction
00:24:15
Speaker
acts absolutely. And this is what is usually referred to by Thomas in particular, but based on Avicenna actually, as the nature absolutely considered.
00:24:29
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
00:25:15
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.
00:25:31
Speaker
What is important about this diagram that I presented in the stem for the encyclopedia. Besides the semantic relations, there are these
00:25:50
Speaker
horizontal arrows representing the flow of information. So it starts with um individuals is acting on our senses. This is totally natural process.
00:26:03
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.
00:26:15
Speaker
this individual information about this individual, that individual comes in. Okay, but um all this, um
00:26:29
Speaker
let's say phenomenal information, how the thing appears, how it behaves, what we experience and our this in this accumulating,
00:26:42
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,
00:27:04
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,
00:27:27
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.
00:27:46
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,
00:28:09
Speaker
um about these individuals connecting by logical necessity or concepts to their real objects. Okay?
Scotus vs. Ockham: Debate on Universal Entities
00:28:23
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.
00:28:48
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.
00:29:08
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.
00:29:19
Speaker
Possible horses is that they all share in this essence sense of forciness that I'm capable of grasping universally in my mind.
00:29:32
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.
00:29:54
Speaker
Now that's the idea, that is the fundamentally important idea and the Antiqua, which was abandoned by Ocker.
00:30:06
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.
00:30:23
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.
00:30:35
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.
00:30:55
Speaker
And so...
00:30:59
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,
00:31:11
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.
00:31:38
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.
00:32:01
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,
00:32:17
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?
00:32:31
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.
00:32:44
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.
00:33:02
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.
00:33:23
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.
00:33:38
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.
00:33:49
Speaker
But we can think of the same common object, horse-ness as such, or Aquinity, just to sound more elegant. but Right, right.
00:34:00
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.
00:34:19
Speaker
um We're doing something else. And okay That is what renders the word horse or the word equus in Latin meaningful.
00:34:30
Speaker
That is the mental object that we are conceiving of by means of our individual mental acts. Okay.
00:34:41
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.
00:35:12
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.
00:36:05
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
00:36:50
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.
00:37:11
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,
00:37:29
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.
00:37:53
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.
00:38:15
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,
00:38:32
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.
00:38:49
Speaker
My kitchen fire can be put out not just by one designated individual kettle of water, but indifferently by any kettle of water.
00:39:00
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.
00:39:27
Speaker
But what really does the effective action is universal su the through the individuals, okay?
00:39:38
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.
00:39:55
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.
00:40:15
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.
00:40:39
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,
00:41:05
Speaker
um
Ockham's Impact on Medieval Philosophy and Semantic Clarity
00:41:06
Speaker
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
00:41:24
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
00:41:56
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.
00:42:25
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.
00:43:04
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.
00:43:19
Speaker
that's ah And that is what is um um the explanation for the contraction of universal horsiness to this individual horse.
00:43:31
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.
00:44:11
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.
00:45:04
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,
00:45:27
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.
00:45:42
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...
00:46:24
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.
00:46:37
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...
00:47:00
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.
00:47:58
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,
00:48:32
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.
00:48:49
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.
00:49:14
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,
00:49:35
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...
00:49:59
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,
00:50:14
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.
00:50:27
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.
Ockham's Linguistic Turn and Educational Appeal
00:50:43
Speaker
and And you kind of really, it's really interesting what you were just pointing out.
00:50:47
Speaker
He's really concerned with um
00:50:52
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,
00:51:23
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...
00:51:51
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.
00:52:16
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.
00:52:34
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.
00:52:55
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
00:53:42
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.
00:54:03
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,
00:54:22
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.
Nominalism and Its Modern Implications
00:54:44
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.
00:55:12
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.
00:55:37
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.
00:55:59
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.
00:56:15
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.
00:56:37
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.
00:56:58
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,
00:57:21
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.
00:57:53
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.
00:58:22
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.
00:58:55
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.
00:59:16
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.
00:59:36
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.
01:00:01
Speaker
this that is That it can can act as the terminator of metaphysics, um which, however, keeps bouncing back.
01:00:14
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...
01:00:50
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.
01:01:01
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.
01:01:18
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
01:02:15
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.
01:02:32
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.
01:02:53
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.
01:03:15
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.
01:03:41
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.
01:03:59
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.
01:04:23
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.
01:04:37
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.
01:04:55
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.
01:05:16
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,
01:05:47
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
01:06:08
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.
01:06:33
Speaker
And those are the accidental individual differences. But um it is a brute fact of nature that um ah there are um
01:06:45
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.
01:07:12
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,
01:07:33
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,
01:08:03
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.
01:08:45
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,
01:09:12
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.
01:09:37
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
01:10:10
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.
01:10:33
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.
01:10:55
Speaker
So just because there is purple, doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense to distinguish blue from red.
01:11:07
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.
01:11:31
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...
01:11:46
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.
01:12:07
Speaker
which is what allows for the emergence of what the form of skepticism that came to be known after Descartes' as demon skepticism.
01:12:20
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.
01:12:35
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.
01:12:58
Speaker
This is why it is an emerging possibility. so um
01:13:06
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.
01:13:31
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.
01:13:47
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.
01:14:05
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.
01:14:43
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...
01:15:01
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,
01:15:22
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.
01:15:50
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.
01:16:06
Speaker
If I have something
01:16:10
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.
01:16:23
Speaker
Or just to illustrate that with the... um
01:16:29
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.
01:16:49
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,
01:17:05
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.
01:17:36
Speaker
um which i would claim that in the framework of the Antifa was not even a possibility.
01:17:45
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
01:18:00
Speaker
our living in a virtual reality with merely virtual features, merely virtual values, et cetera, et cetera.
01:18:10
Speaker
And, um, um So, when we are eventually trained to be willing to settle for the idea that appearance is what matters,
01:18:30
Speaker
is
01:18:33
Speaker
That is the essence, that is of the essence, what things appear to us, and not what they really are.
01:18:45
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.
01:19:03
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.
Conclusion and Reflections on Modern Philosophy
01:19:14
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.
01:19:33
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,
01:19:57
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
01:20:32
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.
01:21:17
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,
01:21:41
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.
01:22:00
Speaker
that soon came to the fore and people started thinking about the and this as a genuine possibility.
01:22:13
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.
01:22:37
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.
01:22:52
Speaker
However, as just happens to be a brain in a bat, a BIV for short, in the clutches of the proverbial net scientist.
01:23:03
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?
01:23:18
Speaker
Now,
01:23:20
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.
01:23:33
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.
01:23:47
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.
01:24:00
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.
01:24:10
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.
01:24:26
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.
01:24:42
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.
01:25:12
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.
01:25:36
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.
01:25:51
Speaker
That's the idea.
01:25:54
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.
01:26:12
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.
01:26:26
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.
01:26:44
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.
01:26:54
Speaker
But yeah, thanks again, Dil, for coming on. Appreciate it. Well, thank you. i really enjoyed our conversation again. okay Thank you, Rons.