In addition, CT is wed to
nominalism, roughly the theory that only particular things exist; unlike in realism, in
nominalism there are no universal, literally shareable qualities in reality.
Eltschinger sees these critiques as rooted in the basic Buddhist tendency toward
nominalism, with its "condemnation of hypostases and reifications" and its tendency to view classes of all kinds, including social denominations, as "mere designations," as "nothing but conventions" (pp.
While medieval scholastic philosophy considered nature to be a series of instantiations of what might be described as thoughts in the mind of a rational god,
nominalism, which emerged in the 13th and 14th centuries, challenged this conception and was critical of its Aristotelian underpinnings, and eventually came to supersede it.
Hearn admirably situates the theorizing of power in metatheoretical positions such as "realism, naturalism and
nominalism" (3), showing sympathies with a Weber-inspired
nominalism because, "[i]t is a call to be vigilant about the fact that the language and concepts through which we do social science, which must generalize and abstract from particulars, is ever prone to misrepresenting reality" (x).
I also found Popkin's hesitation between
nominalism (which she ultimately adopts) and realism to be a way of placing her essay firmly in the twenty-first century.
Some of our Supreme Court justices are suffering from a form of
nominalism. Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg both want to declare capital punishment unconstitutional (NCR, July 17-30).
Nominalism is a view about the kinds of things there are in general.
Eagleton simplifies the debate into a question of realism versus
nominalism. "Realism", as understood in philosophy or theology, presupposes the existence of a category "literature" existing outside our subjectivities.
Occam's philosophy is called
nominalism or sometimes terminism because it sought the simplest explanations that could account for phenomena.
It provides a brief overview of Field's nominalisation program--which Colyvan calls the hard road to nominalism--before canvassing alternative lines of resistance, so-called 'easy roads' to
nominalism. Easy road strategies are easy because they do not attempt to undertake the daunting task of stripping mathematics out of our best scientific theories.
Volume 4/1 has eight sections: 15th-century
nominalism open to humanism; 15th-century ethical turn to humanism; 16th-century Scholasticism, the authors; 16th-century Scholasticism, the themes; 16th-century humanists; reform: its spirituality and its morality; ethics and the Protestant Reformation; the "tough times" (Tiempos Recios) of religious intransigence.