Universals and Other Generalities (2006) (original) (raw)

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

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.