Nominalism definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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noun Philosophy The doctrine holding that abstract concepts, general terms, or universals have no independent existence but exist only as names.

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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. Medieval thinkers, especially those of the twelfth century, are classified as being either nominalists or realists; modern philosophers have generally joined in the condemnation of medieval realism, but have nevertheless been mostly rather realists than nominalists. The following are the most important varieties of nominalism: That of the Stoics, who held that the only sort of thing that is not universal, and indeed the only sort that is not corporeal, is the meaning of a word (Gr. λεκτόν, Latin dictio) as something different from the actual thought and distinct for each language, That of Roscellin, condemned by the Church in 1092, which, though regarded as novel doctrine by his contemporaries, so that he has often been called the inventor of nominalism, had in substance been taught for two hundred years without attracting any particular attention. His views, so far as we can gather them from the reports of malicious adversaries, in the light of other nominalistic texts, were as follows. Various relations: usually considered as real, such as the relation of a wall to a house as a part of it, have no existence in the things themselves, but are due to the way we think about the things. Colors are nothing over and above the colored bodies. He held that nothing exists but individuals, and according to St. Anselm was “buried in corporal images.” His opinion concerning universals was not called nominalism, but the sententia vocum, or vocalism. Anselm states that he field universals to be nothing but the breath of the voice (flatus vocis). This statement should not be hastily put aside as an enemy's misrepresentation, for the authorities agree that he made universals to be, not words, but vocal sounds; and since the breath was in his time and long after hardly regarded as a material thing, he may quite probably have been so “buried in corporal images”as to have confounded the breath of the voice with an incorporeal form, which agrees with a report that he was a follower of the pantheist Scotus Erigena. That of Peter Abelard (born 1079, died 1142). which consisted in holding that universality resides only in judgments or predications. Yet he not only admits that general propositions may be true of real things by virtue of the similarities of the latter, but also holds to a Platonist doctrine of ideas. Various other kinds of nominalism are allied to that of Abelard, especially the vague modern doctrine called conceptualism (which see). The terminism of the “Venerable Inceptor,” William of Occam (lived in the fourteenth century), who held that nothing except individuals exists, whether in or out of the mind, but that concepts (whether existing substantively or only objectively in the mind he does not decide) are natural signs of many things, and in that sense are universal, That of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (born 1588, died 1679), who added to the doctrine of Occam that there are no general concepts, but only images, so that the only universality lies ill the association of ideas. This doctrine, followed by Berkeley, Hume, James Mill, and others, is Specifically known as nominalism in modern English philosophy, as contradistinguished from conceptualism. That of modern science, which merely denies the validity of the “substantial forms” of the schoolmen, or abstractions not. based on any inductive inquiry; but which, far from regarding the uniformities of nature as mere fortuitous similarities between individual events, maintains that they extend beyond the region of observed facts. Properly speaking, this is not nominalism. That of Kant, who maintained that all unity in thought depends upon the nature of the human mind, not belonging to the thing in itself.

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A complete visibility and publicity, in a word, phenomenality is imaginable only in the impossible situation where the name does not verge on a de-substantialized nominalism but directly expresses the essence of the thing it names. — TELOSscope: The Telos Press blog
The nominalism, combined with his anti-filioque point, would have made him unsuitable for the West, but it is also clear, his denial to know about God turned Palamas into a fierce critic. — Vox Nova
In India, where nominalism did not triumph as it did at Trent and the Enlightenment -- at least not so far has nominalism triumphed in India, although it is trying hard -- the situation is different and a Shankara or Ramakrishna are considered central rather than marginal figures. — One Cosmos
Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as an heuristic maxim (rule of thumb) that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity, often or especially in scientific theories. — JJinuxLand
But a mere ad hoc nominalism is clearly insufficient too. — The Valve

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