The problem of universals in contemporary philosophy (original) (raw)

International conference on Ontology The problem of universals in contemporary philosophy∗

2010

The three-day conference opened in the afternoon of July, 5 and, after taking a quick look at the programme and the names of the important thinkers standing out on it, one could have expected to find a crowded audience room. Actually that was not quite the case. What I could afford to follow and am going to write about here is only the first day of the conference. The debate started right on time, after a short introduction given by Gabriele Galluzzo, both organizer of the conference and member of the scientific board. I would ac-tually like to underline the word debate: each speech (about 40 minutes) was immediately followed by a short discussion of the issues introduced by the proponent. Unfortunately, de-spite of the accurate and punctual speeches, the little time dedicated to each is what most penalized the conference, in my opinion: this inevitably obliged both the speakers and the audience to be plunged in medias res, without standing too much on ceremonies. I take this to be ...

Universals and Other Generalities (2006)

Peter F. Strawson and Arindam Chakrabarti, eds. Universals, Concepts and Qualities: New Essays on the Meaning of Predicates (London: Ashgate), 2006

P.K. Sen’s reconstruction of an account of universals – an account that is presented in various of the writings of P.F. Strawson – combines sympathetic exegesis with telling criticism. His method is one he describes as philosophical ‘pruning’ – cutting away the metaphysical dead wood in order to uncover a healthy and elegant theory beneath. These are certainly not minor alterations to the theory Strawson has put forward, and we shall have to ask if the result of any one of them, or of all taken together, is compatible with, and indeed a development of, the underlying considerations which motivate that theory, this being, I take it, the substance of the idea of a ‘pruning’. With regard to the proper extension of the domain of universals, I shall have little to say, other than to observe that Strawson is willing to remark that it is only if ‘we stretch the notion of a universal sufficiently’ that we can bring under it types, numbers and ‘mathematical entities generally’ (1974, p. 134), but that he still maintains that there are nominal constructions, such as that-clauses, gerundial phrases and accusative and infinitive constructions, whose function is the ‘individual specification of propositions or facts’ (ibid., p. 130). I shall have more to say about the treatment of features as universals, and about Sen's putative elimination of the characterizing tie.

The Problem of Universals Reconsidered: Towards a Better Philosophical Understanding of Reality

Universals in this monograph are examined in their original medieval context. From this context the ontological and metaphysical status of universals are re-examined. Idea(l)s, symbols, and objects or matter were reckoned as absolutes or hypostases exclusive or preeminent of one another. This thesis supplies an alternative solution to the problem of universals in which all three elements mentioned above are rendered into a unified philosophical system with axioms, methods, and goals. Church, State, and Academia are denied as the source of authority regarding universals. The veritable efficacy of reality is asserted as the basis all epistemological and metaphysical claims and upon which all reliance should be placed.

Philosophy (New Titles -September 2014)

After the vehement critique of metaphysics in the twentieth century, ontology has again found its place at the center of continental philosophy. Yet this does not mean that the way in which metaphysics and ontology are understood has not been affected by these criticisms, the socalled "linguistic turn" of hermeneutics and deconstruction. In fact, as Gert-Jan van der Heiden demonstrates, the themes and concepts of contemporary continental metaphysics are highly influenced by the different versions of the account of classical metaphysics as ontotheology. Thus, contemporary thought seeks to recover a sense of the absolute, but without recourse to specifically theological underpinnings.

DIALOGUE AND UNIVERSALISM No. 3/2017

DIALOGUE AND UNIVERSALISM, 2017

In the last decade, robustness has been extensively mentioned and discussed in biology as well as in the philosophy of the life sciences. Nevertheless, from both fields, someone has affirmed that this debate has resulted in more semantic confusion than in semantic clearness. Starting from this claim, we wish to offer a sort of prima facie map of the different usages of the term. In this manner we would intend to predispose a sort of "semantic platform" which could be exploited by those who wish to discuss or simply use it. We do this by starting from a core distinction between the robustness of representations, which is a philosophy of science issue, and the representations of robustness, which instead pertains to science. We illustrate our proposal with examples from biology, physics and mathematics.