Knight
Puritan Board Freshman
Right, nothing but particulars exists in the nature of things. That's a qualifier. He doesn't say they don't exist; only that they don't exist in the nature of things.
The Stanford article is saying that, according to Ockham, they don't exist at all. A very different claim indeed.
Here is an actual quote from Ockham where he explains how he understands universals:
"Sic intentio animae dicitur universalis, quia est signum praedicabile de pluribus."
"In this way, the concept of the soul [i.e. mind] is called universal, because it is a sign that is predicable of many things."
And he backs this up with a quote from Avicenna: "Una forma apud intellectum est relata ad multitudinem, et secundum hunc respectum est universale..."
"A form in the intellect is related to a multitude, and according to this respect it is universal..."
See p. 48-49 of Summa Logicae, in vol. 1 of Ockham's Opera Philosophica.
I never denied that Ockham is a nominalist. I denied the he rejected the existence of universals, or that that is a tenet of nominalism.
The SEP article makes clear there are different kinds of nominalism. Do you agree that Ockham denied "metaphysical universals" and "was emphatically a nominalist in this sense"? I should think so, for the two quotes you cite reaffirm this, which is what the SEP article states:
Ockham: "In this way, the concept of the soul [i.e. mind] is called universal, because it is a sign that is predicable of many things."
SEP article: "Metaphysically, these “universal” concepts are singular entities like all others; they are “universal” only in the sense of being “predicable of many.”"
Your second quote makes this explicit, if read in the entire context in which it is found:
Ockham: Dicendum est igitur quod quodlibet universale est una res singularis, et ideo non est universale nisi per significationem, quia est signum plurium. Et hoc est quod dicit Avicenna, V Metaphysicae: "Una forma apud intellectum est relata ad multitudinem, et secundum hunc respectum est universale, quoniam ipsum est intentio in intellectu, cuius comparatio non variatur ad quodcumque acceperis".
Ockham: Therefore, it should be said that every universal is one singular thing and that it is not a universal except by signification, because it is a sign of several. And this is what Avicenna says in his commentary (Metaphysics V): “One form in the understanding is related to a multitude, and in this respect it is universal; for it is an intention in the understanding, whose comparison is not varied to whatever you accept”.
For Ockham, a universal concept is itself a singular thing, as is all else; hence, he rejects metaphysical universals.
If we can agree on this, then contrary to what you said at the beginning of post 18, I did give, in post 12, "examples of early modern Reformed writers getting into the different positions on universals as expressed by... Ockham." For the Reformed authors in post 12 were not merely positing universal concepts. They were not merely saying that human nature can be "predicated" of many particulars or individuals. That is, these Reformed authors affirmed metaphysical universals:
By individual, Wendelin comments, is meant a singular thing, res singularis, inasmuch as universals, such as indicate genus and species, cannot be persons. The term "subsistence" indicates, moreover, and independent individuum, inasmuch as it is distinct from an "accident," which has no independent subsistence, but inheres in something else. In short, a person must be an individual "substance" or "subsistence" insofar as "accidents are not persons" but "inhere in another thing: ... a person must subsist." Even so, "living" must be added to the definition, inasmuch as "inanimate individual," like a stone of a statue, is not a person - similarly, "intelligent," since brute creatures are not persons.
This "lively and intelligent substance endued with reason and will," must also be "determinate and singular, for mankind is not a person, but John and Peter." The attribute of incommunicability, thus, indicates that "a person is not an essence, which is capable of being communicated to many individuals," while the qualifier that a person is not part of another being sets persons apart from entities such as souls, which are part of a human being. Human nature, thus, is not a person insofar as it is "communicable to every particular man," while the individual or particular recipient of that nature is a person, incapable of communicating his nature as he has it in its particularized form to any other. A person is not directly or immediately sustained by another but is an independent subsistence - in scholastic terms, a suppositum: "The human nature of Christ is not a person, because it is sustained by his deity; nor is the soul in man a person, because it is a part of the whole."