Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The doctrine holding that abstract concepts, general terms, or universals have no independent existence but exist only as names.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The doctrine that nothing is general but names; more specifically, the doctrine that common nouns, as man, horse, represent in their generality nothing in the real things, but are mere conveniences for speaking of many things at once, or at most necessities of human thought; individualism. ,
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The principles or philosophy of the Nominalists.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun philosophy A doctrine that
universals do not have an existence except as names for classes of concrete objects.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (philosophy) the doctrine that the various objects labeled by the same term have nothing in common but their name
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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If Nocrates lives in a possible world where nominalism is true what more needs to be explained?
An Argument from Realism Against Naturalism about Human Beings 2008
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Nocrates lives in the possible world where nominalism is true.
An Argument from Realism Against Naturalism about Human Beings 2008
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Please note that whether Socrates or Nocrates (Sid or Nid) believe realism/nominalism is true is beside the point.
An Argument from Realism Against Naturalism about Human Beings 2008
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Please note that whether Socrates or Nocrates (Sid or Nid) believe realism/nominalism is true is beside the point.
An Argument from Realism Against Naturalism about Human Beings 2008
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It doesn't depend on whether they think realism/nominalism is true in the possible worlds in which they exist, but whether it actually is so.
An Argument from Realism Against Naturalism about Human Beings 2008
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Goodman and Quine (in his pre-naturalist phase) once began an article by declaring that the basis for their nominalism was a fundamental philosophical intuition irreducible to scientific grounds (1947).
Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics Paseau, Alexander 2008
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If so, it would be classified as nominalism in ontology, and as conventionalism in logical theory.
A Special Supplement: The Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy Pears, D.F. 1969
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[10] This discussion was over what was known as nominalism vs. realism.
The History of Education; educational practice and progress considered as a phase of the development and spread of western civilization Ellwood Patterson Cubberley 1904
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This seems like the worst kind of nominalism — to assert that the essential nature of human procreation is somehow affected by what intellectual constructs we believe.
The Volokh Conspiracy » DOJ Brief in Another DOMA Case: 2009
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The kind of nominalism you're talking about is actually what many psychologists think is going on with some forms of affect: we seem have some kind of generalized sense of 'arousal' (their term, not mine) which we then transform into anger, romantic excitement, fear, and so on with post hoc explanatory narratives.
More Aesthetics Hal Duncan 2007
qms commented on the word nominalism
The patient would stubbornly claim
That things exist only in name
Till a wild paroxysm
Of nominalism
Established that “traffic” can maim.
February 21, 2019
erinmckean commented on the word nominalism
"Nominalism is the doctrine that reality is just one unique thing after another, and that general truths about those things are simply conventions of language, simply names." from The Metaphysical Club
October 16, 2021