Moderate Realism (Aquinas 101)
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Straddling between two extremes, St. Thomas Aquinas follows Aristotle in proposing a theory of moderate realism.
Against Plato, St. Thomas insists that the universals are first in things themselves. Against William of Ockham, he insists that real connections exist among generically similar things, and that we can actually know and name them.
Moderate Realism (Aquinas 101) - Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.
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2:12 I love how St. Thomas Aquinas, the good Angelic Doctor, is reaching for the dog’s head. The instinct to pet the head of a good doggo is one of humanity’s best accidents!
Edit: 2:48 AAAA HES PETTING THE DOG, SO ADORABLE I-
From Argentina, thanks for these videos. I'll see a way of using them for my students!!!! God bless you!!!
Cheers!
That was beautifully well put. Thank you for sharing some solid Thomistic truth Father.
Our joy!
@@ThomisticInstitute no joke - this channel may be one of the most important evangelization tools the Church can reference in an age that has bought into (and is drowning in) existentialism, nominalism, relativism, and scientism - thank you thank you thank you for this work - somehow all Catholic universities and high schools need to know about this channel - please continue this great ministry
@@angelicdoctor8016 Will do! Thanks for the encouragement!
There is a certain kind of depression that sets in when you subscribe to nominalism.
Would a nominalist say there's a certain kind of depression, distinct from depressions?
Hahaha good point
The same one that plagues atheists... Curious. Is atheism just a synonyms for nominalism? Was William of Ockham the first atheist friar?
If you are depressed because you accept that “dogness” is not actually an existent “thing” unto itself “transcendent of spacetime” (whatever that means) then you have much larger issues to deal with and i implore you to seek some help with your emotional state.
But whether or not the proposition makes you depressed does not affect its coherence with reality or it’s consistency with the other truths you “hold dear.” Just cuz it makes you sad don’t mean it ain’t true, buddy.
But I still don’t see how it would make anyone sad. It just means we’re looking at the world in the wrong way. What are the existential ramifications of nominalism exactly?
You wouldn’t get it.
No worries.
Those subtle matter must teach in the school system. Aristotle and Saint Thomas set the concept of universals and pave the way for immortality of the human soul. Great work, Fr Pine. I watched your video on "Pint with Aquinas" on the immortality of the human soul. Awesome.God bless you.
Each video adds a little more to my understanding of the world around me.
th-cam.com/video/s-iLc9Q4rHE/w-d-xo.html
I was just arguing with my brother seminarian till we found a good concept from this video. Thank you to this channel
The beginning of sanity.
Read today Feser's treatment of the topic in "scholastic metaphysics" and you did a great job summarizing that clearly and in just over 3 minutes!! Well done!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🐕 When recognizing different instances of something as belonging to a kind (e.g., recognizing various dog breeds as dogs), it raises the question of how we do it.
01:19 🌟 Plato's radical realism suggests that there is an eternal form for each kind, and things in our world participate in these immaterial forms.
01:46 💭 Nominalism, associated with William of Ockham, argues that there's no real connection between instances of a kind; they are simply labeled conventionally.
03:08 🧠 Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas propose that universals exist both in things themselves (forms) and in our minds as conceptual forms. They emphasize real connections among similar things and the ability to know and name them.
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Also Martin Luther held nominalism, which is the philosophy system that Protestantism comes out of
He used nominalstic language because many catholic instructors at the time were nominalists. However, being brought up in an Augustian order introduced him to platonic thought primarily. He wasn't a philosopher and probably didn't think this stuff through carefully, but he was more of a radical realist (not a moderate realist like aquinas) rather than a nominalist.
This is not true. His order had been infiltrated by nominalism. The Catholic Church and Her orders largely held to aristitalian / Tomistic thought.
So for Plato (which seems to come more naturally to me): any individual dog participates in the Form of Dogness, which we can recognize because our souls were in contact with the Forms before our birth. For Aristotle/Aquinas: each dog is given the form of dogness by virtue of its essence, and these essences exist only in the things themselves or in the mind. But the essence of Dogness is indeed a real thing, and not just a mental shortcut or quirk of language, and we can recognize these real essences by means of the innate knowledge/instinct we are imparted with by God? Please correct me where I err, many thanks.
Sorry it's me replying and not that guy - I'm not a Christian, let alone a Catholic - but I prefer Plato's realism too. This 'moderate' version might be more understandable when it comes to dogs, but I don't think it works so well with abstract concepts like Justice. In general, I think that Plato's realism seems more clearly distinct from nominalism.
Duns Scotus was apparently influenced by Neoplatonism and was contemporaneous with William of Ockham, so I'd be more interested in a comparison of those two theologians/philosophers.
Plato's realism seems like a form of idealism to me, or at least strongly linked, and I think idealism is the most coherent basis for Theism. Then again, as I say, I'm not a Catholic or Christian anyway. It's just my point of view. I watched this video because I got interested in this topic after hearing about the impact nominalism had on Western thought. I'd heard of the question of realism and universals before, but it didn't seem interesting at the time.
@@Eman_Puedama Idealism makes it impossible to prove theism, and that defies Biblical scripture.
Beautifully said - that is the same understanding I have.
Thank you for your video series. Respectfully, would Aquinas not follow Augustine, Dionysius, and others in also holding forms to exist as ideas in the Logos/Sophia/God the Son? Thus, wouldn't unniversals exist first 'before things' (as ideas in the Logos), then 'in things' (as their form and intelligibility), and finally 'after things' (as concepts in our minds)? Is he not, then, still a kind of radical realist, only one who has found a proper home for the Forms (which was perhaps implicit but not explicit in Plato)?
I've wondered about this, too, and here's what I came to: The universal form exists in God's intellect, and the form itself exists in each substance, yes, but we don't think of the form in each substance as a 'participation' in the universal in God's intellect. To Plato, the form in the heavens would be 'being,' and the substance below 'becoming' because the substance below is imperfect and conforming to the universal in the heavens. But in this Moderate Realism, the form is as complete ('act') in the substance as it is in the mind of God. If we thought of forms in substances in the Platonic sense, we 'd have to think of the forms in substances themselves as incomplete things 'becoming' more like the perfect form in God's mind; a composite of potency and act being actualized toward the perfect form in God's intellect. This makes the form itself a substance, a composite of act and potency, and that's incorrect. Form is the principle of act, and doesn't have potency.
Or another distinction: Plato says each substance is 'becoming' according to its form in the heavens, whereas Aristotle/Aquinas would say each substance is being actualized according to its form in the substance itself. So, the principle of actuality ('form') is in a different location. In other words, the universal form *is* in the intellect of God, but the substance isn't being actualized according to the form in God's mind, but rather according to the form in itself.
@@DoulosEudoxus Thank you, that is helpful. It makes sense on first reading, but I will need to digest it for a bit.
MY BRAIN HURTS!
Let us know if you have particular questions. Always happy to weigh in!
I hear ya. Philosophy and metaphysics are subjects I need to re-read/re-watch more than a few times to really get it.
I just found out how tall Fr. Pine is and I'm now wondering if Pine is a nickname or his actual name
These videos are brilliant, Father.
Cheers, thanks for watching! May the Lord bless you.
Thank you for this video!
May our Lord Jesus Christ bless you!
Studying the concepts of Realism Conceptualism and Nominalism side my side and I think I'll levitate 😭
TI, thanks for the reading selections on the lesson site. This reading was extremely helpful: Selection from An Introduction to Philosophy by Daniel J. Sullivan
(Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, 1992), 67-69.
Very well explained. Thanks.
Thanks much for this video.
Here is a philosophical critique of the video on Moderate Realism by Aquinas 101:
The video presents Moderate Realism as developed by Thomas Aquinas. This view seeks a middle ground between Naive Realism and Idealism. Moderate Realism holds that universals exist objectively in the mind of God, but particulars exist in the real world. While this offers a compromise between competing theories, it has some issues:
- Basing universals in the divine mind may be unsatisfying for those seeking a naturalistic metaphysics. Grounding abstract entities in a supernatural deity goes beyond what some philosophers deem appropriate for metaphysics.
- The relationship between universals in the divine mind and particulars in the world is unclear. How exactly do physical objects participate in or exemplify universals grounded elsewhere? This participation relation requires further elucidation.
- The view retains a form of dualism between universals and particulars that other theories seek to overcome. Accounts that reject this dualism, like Nominalism or Trope Theory, offer a simpler ontology.
Alternative views that address these issues include:
- Conceptualism - Universals exist only within the human mind, not in a separate realm. This provides a naturalistic account of abstract entities.
- Nominalism - Denies real existence to universals, accepting only concrete particulars. This provides a parsimonious singular ontology.
- Trope Theory - Particulars exemplify property instances (tropes), not universal properties. This allows properties to exist concretely within objects.
While Moderate Realism seeks a reconciliation of universals and particulars, it faces challenges from views that reject abstract entities or explain them via particulars alone. Its grounding in a divine mind may also be unsatisfying to naturalist philosophers. Exploring alternatives can lead to more explanatory and ontologically parsimonious accounts.
@ThethomisticInstitute Assuming, biological macro evolution were true, how would forms evolve? And if so, wouldn't this blur the distinction of what a thing is, as it could simply have the potential to become actualized to a different form?
Thank you for your help!
There are a lot of different theories as to how one can explain this. I know that Fr. Nicanor Austriaco has tackled the question, though I don't know the precise article in which he does so. De Koninck's "Cosmos" provides some nice context of the question. I benefitted a great deal from that.
I am a Neoplatonist Catholic.
I prefer Augustin solution to this problem.
Go TI! Biggest fan! Bless you guys!
God bless you!
Good video! I have a question. If you’ve heard of the animal called a liger, it’s a hybrid between a lion and a tiger. Both a lion and a tiger are connected by being in the feline family. They’re both cats. So I guess technically, they both have cat form. However, how would this work for a liger? Would it have both tiger and lion form? Or is there a completely separate liger form? Here’s another thing which I’m confused with. We typically call something with four legs and a surface a table. It’s used to put items on it. But a chair can also have the exact same parts. The only difference is that they’re used to be sit on. But what if someone decided to use the chair as a table? One could say that they’re just using the chair wrong which is technically correct. But what if slight modifications were made so that the chair was now practically indistinguishable from a table and everyone else who came across it recognized it as a table? Are they just simply deluded? If not, did the form somehow switch from chair to table? Sorry if these are bad questions. I’m somewhat new to universals.
These aren't bad questions at all - they're classic questions, in fact. When you try to slice the distinctions between, say, animal forms or essences very finely, it can be very hard to draw lines. That doesn't mean that there are no essences or forms, but simply that we shouldn't expect more certitude than is reasonable. So it is very clear, I think, that we can distinguish an animal essence or form from that of a rock. It is a little harder (but not much) to distinguish plants (which are living) from animals (which are living and sensate). There are some things that we'd probably classify as plants, but that seem to display some more sophisticated traits of sensate life -- and so, perhaps at the margins of each category of thing, it becomes hard to distinguish them. So in the case of cats within the broader category of the cat family: probably we could very easily come up with real examples where it starts to become hard to distinguish between what modern biology would classify in different groups.
As for artificial things like tables and chairs: these have an artificial "form" but it is better to start with natural things if you want to understand forms.
@@ThomisticInstitute Thanks for the answer! One more question, is it possible for a rational being to be confused or deluded about certain forms or essences? One example would be mimicry in the animal kingdom, particularly baby cheetahs and honey badgers. It is thought that baby cheetahs evolved to look like honey badgers because these badgers are particularly dangerous and aggressive. At first, if I just walked through the savannah and saw black and white fur, I'd probably think the animal was a honey badger, get scared, and then after I take a closer look, I'd realize it was just a baby cheetah. What would Thomas Aquinas' answer be to the fact that people can initially get things wrong about two completely different things, not just with universals and particulars that can blur the lines a bit(like with the liger example), but with two totally different universals? Sorry if I accidentally missed the answer in your previous comment.
Do you have any videos/suggestions on Mathematical Platonism and Thomism/Divine Simplicity?. Thank you!
We don't currently have anything on Mathematical Platonism. We do have one on Divine Simplicity here: th-cam.com/video/53wHJiGoBpI/w-d-xo.html
So clear
When does a pile become a heap or red become orange? I can create infinite number of universals at will. Maybe universals are just concepts/ideas in our minds? Nominalism.
Wiliam de Ockham es el auténtico padre de la modernidad y, por tanto, de sus errores.
If forms exist first in the things themselves, then forms are individualized. That means forms are not universal, each individual would have its form. I am more keen to see forms first exist in themselves (not in a Hyperuranium but in God), and then, by participation, in the essence of things.
That's an excellent comment. Forms do exist in God. This is what St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas later called the divine ideas. You can find St. Thomas's description in Ia Q. 15 (aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/st-ia-q-15#FPQ15OUTP1) and Fr. James talks about it in this video: th-cam.com/video/3j79qY0RqRw/w-d-xo.html
@@ThomisticInstitute Thanks a lot! Dio vi benedica
@@albericominucci5154 Cheers!
As I understand Aquina's "De ente et essentia", "dogness" or "humanity" or any other essence would be precisely that: essences. And essences, as being what makes things be what they are, are not purely the form, even though we tend to reduce the essence to the form only, for it gives the definition. Nonetheless, essences are made of Form and Matter (non-determined matter when it comes to universals). That said, I think you make a mistake somewhere, because realism does not exactly state that forms exist first in things themselves, only that concepts (universals) exist in things themselves (in re), not only in our spirits (post-rem). Besides, saying that the forms are individualised existing first in things themselves ends up in a paradox: if forms (or even the essence) are particular, and not universals, and considering that they are the DEFINITION of things, then --> universals wouldn't have a definition. Yet, only what is universal can be defined.
I see it as a necessity then for forms not to be individualised. Aquinas was having a similar problem in his reasoning, cocnerning the individualisation of the essence, because of the essence being composed of form and matter, and matter being considered the individuation principle. He then solves this problem by stating 2 different types of matter: determined matter and non-determined matter, this latter being the one composing the essence in universals.
The determined matter would be the matter as individuation principle, that is, the body as part, and would compose the essence of particular things as it composes the essence of an animal for example: body and soul.
Moderate realists view realism itself as a nominalistic concept.
In Genesis chapter 1 we were told that things produce after their kind. Doesn’t it it indicate that there is a kind Dash nurse that exists in reality. While the particular also exist in reality. So wouldn’t then Biblical realism also be nominalist combining the two.?
They have several videos on this topic and I just don't get why they argue so much against Reductionism. It's not like it's incompatible with their religion. They should make a video explaining why they prefer these positions and not just the positions themselves
Something I've never understood: If for Aquinas, the dog does posses "dogness," which is instantiated in matter, then "dogness" does exist, and seems (when considered qua "dogness") as distinguishable from material causation - thus: dogness seems immaterial. What really is the difference between Platonism and Aristotelianism, then? For Plato, the forms cannot exist some WHERE, some other place, can they? If not, then there exists for Plato an immaterial dogness in which things participate, and there exists for Aristotle, immaterial dogness, which can characterize material things. What is the difference/ what am I missing?
Great question! So, here's a rough and ready answer. Let's start by distinguishing essence from form. Form is what makes a thing be what it is. It, taken together with the matter, constitutes the composite. In the case of man, the form is the human soul. In the case of dog, the form is the dog soul (which, on St. Thomas's understanding, is not immaterial, by the way). Now, in the case of the dog, the soul just makes the thing to be alive and makes the matter to be the body of dog, structuring and organizing and animating it.
Essence by contrast describes the very "whatness" or quiddity of the thing. The essence, while itself an immaterial concept in the mind of the human knower, accounts for matter. Now, to be a dog entails that the dog be embodied, and so dogness has a note of embodiedness or includes embodiedness.
So, the dog doesn't so much possess dogness as instantiate dogness (as you describe). And dogness doesn't exist except either 1) as instantiated (or particularized) in the individual dog or 2) intentionally (immaterially) in the mind of the knower.
So, for Plato, there is some preexisting and separate form of dogness in which the instances participate. Whereas, for Aristotle there is not.
@@ThomisticInstitute That's a great explanation. The one thing I'm having trouble understanding is, if form doesn't exist apart from/before its instantiation, then how can we talk about formal causes? Stuff that doesn't exist doesn't cause all things to be.
@@claymcdermott718 Cause is being used here in an analogical way. As moderns we're accustomed to think of cause as just material cause or efficient cause, but the causal picture is more complex. Perhaps you've already watched this installment, but if not, check out this video: th-cam.com/video/QDVON6DeZaM/w-d-xo.html
@@ThomisticInstitute
I’ve taken a while to think about this, haha, but I might have it.
So, is moderate realism the notion that: when we talk about “those qualities that define what it is to be a dog,” we are talking about a real set of qualities - and we describe all things which possess them with the word “dog.”
This feels not far from conceptualism.
Unless, we add to that description of moderate realism, the detail that “dogness” is a real phenomenon. Like, “dogness” is something dynamic, particularized yet submaterial (organizing those qualities that define what it is to be Dog) that puppies inherit from bitches and sires. And dogness, observed in nature, only ever exists in either the mind of someone who is making a robot dog (for example) or in the particular dog who can then transmit dogness to his offspring.
Wasn't nominalism already formulated by Abelard, before Ockham?
Dear brother, was Bonaventure also a proponent of Moderate Realism?
Despite the fact that I have few books about history of philosophy, It´s hard for me to find serious information about this....
Pax+
Unfortunately, I know very little about the thought of St. Bonaventure.
S Bonaventure followed and developed S Augustine on most questions (who was generally a neo-Platonist), and they were both more ultra-realist (what this video calls 'radical realist). Blessed John Duns Scotus followed Ss Augustine and Bonaventure as well in this.
This is pretty much the default position of most of Christianity East and West until Aristotle's greater corpus was brought back to the West. When that happened, a lot of people started following Aristotle too much, going so far as to deny Catholic dogma. That caused a lot of problems.
What S Thomas did was to try and 'baptize' Aristotle and try to make him more 'compatible' with Christianity. Thomists generally believe that he was successful in doing so. Those who follow the Franciscan school (S Bonaventure, Bl John Duns Scotus) and the Augustinian schools would argue otherwise.
That was actually difficult for me to comprehend. I think the basic gist is that you could take an elephant and reshape it in exactly the shape of any sort of dog, but that wouldn’t make it a dog, because dogness first exists in a thing that is a dog, regardless of that dog’s form. But since elephantness only exists in things that are elephants, it wouldn’t matter if one was reshaped to resemble a dog, because it’s first and foremost an elephant, regardless of its shape. Am I understanding that correctly? If so, then I can see how that perfectly carries over to gender.
If you dont mind... what is up with the thing On his forehead? other speakers also have it.
2:12 - Wouldn't it be first in the mind of God? Msgr. Paul J Glenn explains the moderate realism position as "universalia ante rem, post rem, et in re...Before the reality in the mind of God, who contains the exemplary causes of all things, knows them as they are essentially; after the reality in the mind of man, who forms Universals by abstraction of the intellect after sensation of extramental realities; in the reality, inasmuch as the essence represented in the mind by the Universal is found verified in each of its inferiors extramentally."
it is called, Size. that is how you tell a bigger dog than a small dog.
Ali
3:42 was not enough time for this subject.
Thanks for watching! We have some additional materials on our website: aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/moderate-realism. May the Lord bless you!
Spiritus Sanctus anyone
How would a moderate realist account for Mermaidness? There are no particulars to ground them.
There are particular drawings
Dear Fr. Pine, my understanding about universals was that they did not exist in a thing, but that was the form. In the process of abstracting the intentional form, the mind generates a universal. In this video you seem to say that the universal is in the thing itself, seemingly using form/universal interchangeably. That is to say: the truth value of that universal generated by reasoning is within the animal (i.e. the form which informs us to generate a universal), but not the universal itself.
Aquinas says: "...the universal is drawn from singulars....Prudence belongs to the sensory power of judging called particular reason. Hence this sense is called understanding whose object is the sensible and singular." - (1249, Commentary on NE) - I suppose the question here is what do we mean from "drawn." Are we drawing out the form or universal or both ? I though it was an act of the intellect to generate a universal which speaks true of reality.
Lately I've been liking Plato. Could someone recommend a theologian which works in a more platonic way? I'm interested in Scotus, Buenaventura, Kolbe. But I'm not sure any is a good guess.
I'll appreciate anyone who will in his kindness help me.
Pseudo-Dionysius, the Church Fathers, Boethius, and a few others.
@@kuu2856 the church fathers is a very broad label jajaja but I'll look up pseudo Dionysus
But we don’t only recognize actual dogs as dogs; we can recognize dogs as dogs in counterfactuals and have truth or false statements about them and their properties besides dogness
Comment
Romans 10:13
“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
I read the other day that scientists have determined that Hyenas are more related to cats (felines) than dogs (canines) but my logic tells me that scientists got it wrong this time.
If the universal of Dogness does indeed exist, and it does infact exist in the dog we are perceiving: why do dogs not all look the same? Sorry if that is a stupid question.
Is it simply because the thing "Dog" that we perceive possess other universals too in which it shares also?
Did Plato think Dogs looked different because they shared in other universals, or did he think they where different because of the imperfection of their dogness.
Oh and also, why is it that when i perceive a dog, the primary universal that jumps out at me is it's Dogness, and not first say the size of it? Or its colour?
Please forgive me, i am extremely new to philosophy.
I heard that Aquinas was a nominalist by
Aquinas on the Problem of Universals
Jeffrey E. Brower, Purdue University
In reply to the last question, the contemporary Anglo-American Analytic philosophical tradition has coined newer meanings for the terms "Realist" and "Nominalist" that are only somewhat related to their historical roots in the Middle Ages. I think the older groupings are much more helpful, but whichever ones you use, you really have to get into more details and nuances to fully understand any one thinker's position and, no doubt, to understand what is really true. These videos are meant to be helpful introductions.
They all look different because a form's exemplification is limited by material contingencies, hence imperfect copies of "dogness". The speciation of the form is epiphenomenal and molded by circumstances not prescribed by the forms themselves; something clearly seen in the likes of the theory of evolution, but also the general deformity and volatibility of all physical things. I abhor Aristotle's hylomorphism, for if indeed a thing's essence were a composite of body and form, what would account for epiphenomenal attributes in matter? Tis inconceivable that a thing with no spatio-temporal extension could ultimately be comprehended by a plenum.
Thank you.
@@alternateperson6600 I thought the difference in the appearance of different dogs was called 'accidents' while form is what persists and is unchangeable in all dogs: dogness
@@vwissler5470 the appearance of different dogs is indeed accidental, but the dogness itself is never incorporated, at least per Platonic exegesis. Plato and Aristotle had different views on teleology stemming from their respective philosophies. For Plato everything in the material world was merely conducive to contemplation of the forms, hence love is a central theme in Plato's works, whilst for Aristotle things in the world tended towards the fulfillment of their (hylomorphic) essence. It's not for any reason that Aristotle's Organon was meant to closely observe his Physics and vice versa.
Surely if I haven't ever been told that wolves aren't dogs, I would certainly think they are a kind of dog.
Does that make you nominalist?
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it just may be a duck
Awesome video! Thus Saint Thomas is a nominalist. Wow, I never knew that. Dogness exists before the individual dog and not after its incarnation. How else could it be created and known and recognized universally. Both Chinese and Hawaiians know what dogs are without knowing each others dogs. Triangles are abstracted from the nowhere-existing -in-nature-triangle form?? Thomas is a heretic, me thinks.
What exactly is at stake in this debate? Whether you're a nominalist or radical/moder realist --- what practical difference does it make in one's life?
Btw I'm genuinely curious and intrested to know (did not mean it in a condensing way).
'My understanding is limited, but I believe one's position on realism has a lot to do with one's broader theory of the mind. This in turn has implications for wider nature/grace discussions with the more Augustinian/Neo-Platonic tradition holding to something like an "illumination" theory whereby God is directly intervening in our cognition to bring us to true knowledge whereas Aquinas emphasized the human mind's natural capacity for understanding (keeping in mind that the very nature of our minds is a gift we receive from God).
I think an example of the practical difference is whether you believe it's possible to upload a human into a digital virtual construct. Let's say it's Kurzweil. When the construct tells you "yes I'm Ray" will you believe it? Can Kurzweil in the body be dispensed with? There's a lot of pressure these days to lop off/discount human qualities & the meaning of the body to achieve the upload.
🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
We abstract universal dogness from THIS dog and THAT dog. From things which resemble one another. This talk of forms existing outside of minds is misleading. Common natures or forms are concepts, not extra-mental properties which all things which we call dogs share. This is why Leftow calls Copleston’s Aquinas, which is correct, resemblance-nominalist.
you might add that "dog-ness" also means: same number of teeth, same bones, same behaviors. Despite the size and weight differences, bot breeds are still dogs.
Exactly.
a[A]quina seems to make this more ..complicated
This is so overly complicating things, you guys. It's why Occam proposed that we not "multiply entities unnecessarily." Dogs do not have a "dogness." Even the word "dogness" is your clue to how silly this idea is. Every particular bundle of atoms is unique in the universe. Yet, it is our egoistic human minds that like to think that the pattern recognition and organizing we naturally process conceptually are actually real and external to us. "We recognize it, therefore it must be real! Go us!" What is really happening is the Chihuahua and the Great Dane are being perceived by humans as having all the attributes that humans have decided to label as "dogs." First, humans experience patterns in nature. Then, they come up with ways to organize these patterns conceptually for the sole benefit of humans alone. Humans need to group things to make sense of their environment. It's all being done by us internally. The groups do not really exist; they are mental constructs. There is no problem of universals.
Bundles of atoms are only the material cause whereto forms are exerted phenomenally; it's why such patterns are evinced in the first place. Atoms are merely vessels for the forms and bound to produce exemplifications of a certain form (e.g. tree); they don't just converge by chance or accident, that's ludicrous and preposterous. Exemplifications of forms are imperfect, however, being constrained by the limitations of material contingency.
"dogness"
Ockham was right, btw same problem is with an individuality in embryo and in development after fertilisation. its again question of universals. Soul, individuality, person, is universals but in other hand there is original DNA, embryo, organism, spiecies, so Its really a question of language that scientific knowledge and our understanding is no longer connected to the language that we use, its somehow out of date.
I think The problem was already discussed in Ancient Greek where they said we can never walk into the same river once，if nominalism is right then we wouldn’t even be able to communicate our thoughts in the first place because they are just words
Just seems to me that the Aristotle position is an unnecessary stepping stone to nominalism. Why can't there be eternal forms in God's mind in which things are participating?
The real strength of moderate realism is that it solves the problem of change. If things exist with just an abstract form how does a kid grow into an adult if there is only one perfect form of human? Moderate realism leads to the principles of act and potency which allows you to explain that objects have potentials, and actuals so an object changes when it’s potentially is actualized
We must affirm that all created being comes from the divine ideas, but we must be careful not to posit any "eternal forms" outside of God's essence. This is because if such "ideas" existed apart from God's act of understanding himself, it would divide the divine essence and imply some form of passivity, which is utterly incompatible with God's simplicity and perfection. We must say that in God there is only his living act of self-understanding, and all created perfections preexist virtually but not formally distinct from the divine essence. The divine ideas are nothing other than God's one essence variously understood, not some external archetypes. This way creatures participate not in any eternal natures separate from God, but in the divine essence itself, which contains within itself the perfect exemplar of all possible being, without any composition or passivity in God.
Dogness...
Nominalism rulez
What an utterly ridiculous video.
A dog is a dog due to its taxonomical classification.
Welcome Lewis. Could you please quote the sentence from the video that troubles you?
What causes a person to create a taxonomical classification, if not awareness of the universal nature of dogness? Before the classification is made, a human being is able to notice that which links all dogs. You're skipping that cognitive awareness, Lewis, as outlined here.
I guess DNA makes us all realists.