# Need for postulating universals?



## Christoffer (May 10, 2010)

I don't understand the fuss about universals, can someone explain the reason why they are postulated?

For example, it is claimed that they are needed in order to explain why the statement "bill and bob are red" is true.

Isn't this kind of a pseudo-problem? Bill and bob are red, that is why the statement is true. Then the platonist presses on and asks how I account for them being red...

but is that question even intelligible? It doesn't sound meaningful, to me it sounds like being asked how I differentiate between my cup of coffee.

I don't understand the problem of universals. Can someone help?


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## ValiantforTruth (May 10, 2010)

*The Problem of Universals*

As I understand it, the problem of universals is how we account for unity in diversity. Since Bill is not Bob, what does it mean that they are both red, or tall, or good? More specifically, what is the ontological status of universals? Are they simply mental constructs or do they really exist somehow? Redness, tallness, and goodness are not physical entities like trees and electrons, so what are we talking about when we use these words?

Bertrand Russell has a pretty standard discussion of it in _The Problems of Philosophy:_

http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus9.html


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## Peairtach (May 10, 2010)

If redness, tallness and goodness are not physical entities a further Q would be, Are they only in the mind of individual men or are they also in the mind of God? And does God need to exist for them to exist?


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## Christoffer (May 11, 2010)

Richard Tallach said:


> If redness, tallness and goodness are not physical entities a further Q would be, Are they only in the mind of individual men or are they also in the mind of God? And does God need to exist for them to exist?



But that is what I am wondering about. Why should we assume something like "tallness" exists apart from the particulars that are tall?


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## ValiantforTruth (May 11, 2010)

Nominalism says that universals don't exist - they are just names or conventions that we use to describe particular instances. The problem is that this makes it difficult to see how such terms are not arbitrary. But it seems like in Christianity God is the source of universals, and therefore they have to be taken seriously. Imagine a totalitarian society where no one had ever even heard of the idea of liberty. Would that mean that there was no longer any such concept? The plan of God is another universal. Truth is another. These things do not depend on our linguistic naming conventions. To me they do not quite seem to depend on whether there happen to be any current particular instances of them.


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