Peter Abelard (1079-1142)
Reading: Glosses on Porphyry

Abelard led a charmed life, until everything fell apart. He was born in a small town in France (near Nantes), and his father was a well educated man, who wanted his sons to be well educated as well. Abelard was brilliant, and so his father was overjoyed to hire the best tutors he could. When he was a young man, he went to study in Chartres and Paris, where he quickly impressed the most famous teachers. Unfortunately, he was a bit full of himself, and like Socrates, he had a nasty habit of asking just the right question to make someone else's philosophical position begin to fall apart. He was very quick witted and was devastating in philosophical jousting. So instead of gaining him the respect of important people, he instead gained their jealousy and enmity. His work was condemned by the Church in 1121 (when he was 42 years old), and again in 1140 (when he was 61 years old). Both of these condemnations seem to have had some political motivations, and probably a lot of personal vendetta was involved.

He also survived more than one attempt on his life through poisoning. He became Abbot of a monastery (St. Gildas) in 1125 (46 yrs old), but he had to be careful of what he ate because he suspected that some of the brothers were trying to poison him. His fears were probably true.

But perhaps what he is most known for, and he would be very ashamed that this is what he is most known for, was his affair with a woman named Heloise. Back in Paris, when he was gaining fame, students, prominence and money, he was hired as a private tutor by Heloise's uncle. Heloise was brilliant in her own right, and her uncle wanted to encourage her education. As Abelard himself described the tutoring sessions, "my hands were more often on her breasts than on the books." Heloise got pregnant, and her uncle was livid. The situation was complicated because Abelard couldn't really marry Heloise. His position as a teacher of theology, and his position in his monastery didn't exactly fit well with the married life. It would have been a serious blow to his career, and could conceivably have destroyed him. He claims that Heloise herself vehemently argued against their marriage solely on the grounds that she didn't want to impede his studies or ruin his career. Abelard decided he had to do right by Heloise, and he arranged to marry her in secret. He thought he would kill two birds with one stone: he would provide for Heloise and at the same time, soothe her uncles' anger. The uncle said he would go along with the arrangement, but that was only to lull Abelard into a gullible trust. Abelard and Heloise were married, but they lived apart to avoid suspicion. One night, Heloise' uncle got his revenge. Abelard's guard was bribed, and one night while he was asleep two men barged into his room and castrated him. The culprits were caught and severely punished, but the damage had been done. Abelard and Heloise lived in separate monasteries for the rest of their lives.

As far as Abelard's answer to the problem of universals is concerned, I'd like to skip his refutation of the first theory. [The theory is at (23)-(27), the refutation is at (28)-(40)]. Unfortunately, there are problems with the actual text (see footnote 13 on page 32), so we aren't sure exactly how one of his central arguments is supposed to go. In addition, I find some of his arguments more clever than convincing, and in order to go through them, it would take a lot of work that I think would be better spent look at what he explicitly says about his view. So let's turn instead to the second theory.

At (63) Abelard makes it clear that the second theory is the last chance for realism. He says that because these two theories have failed, "it remains to ascribe this kind of universality only to words." Clearly this has to be a kind of nominalism that Abelard has in mind. Let's start with Abelard's statement of the second theory before he divides it into two variations.

At (41)-(44) Abelard states the basic idea of the second theory. According to this second theory, particulars are different from each other not only because of the "advening forms" but because of their "personal discreteness." In the next sentence Abelard explains that the "personal discreteness" of a thing is "the discreteness according to which this one is not that one." In other words, Abelard is discussing "haecceity."

Haecceity =_df "this-ness," i.e. that in virtue of which a particular is the particular it is.

The concept of haecceity is usually associated with Duns Scotus, because he is the first to coin the term. However, the concept is clearly here in Abelard. To understand the importance of haecceity, think again about the Porphyrian Tree. Socrates and Plato are both humans, they share exactly the same essence. Doesn't that mean that they have the same essence? Doesn't that mean that they are essentially the same? Doesn't that mean that Socrates really is Plato? The same goes for all of us: if our essence is exactly the same, then how could we possibly be different? What is it that makes me not just human, but this particular human? That is the question of haecceity: if different particulars of a certain species have the same essence, how is it that they are distinct particulars? What is so particular about each individual, what is so "this" about it? Or, to use Abelard's terminology, what constitutes the "personal discreteness" of each particular? According to the first theory, the answer is the "advening forms." In addition to having the form of humanity, Socrates must also have other forms added on top of humanity, to distinguish him from Plato. But this raises a problem.

At the end of (41) Abelard alludes to an infinite regress. Here's how it goes. What makes a form the particular form it is. For example, what distinguishes the form of Human from the form of Donkey? They are both essentially Animal, so unless there is some advening form, they two forms would have to be identical. We pick Rationality and Non-Rationality as the advening forms. But now we have to ask the same about these two forms. What makes them the particular forms they are? They are both essentially Animal, so why aren't they identical? There must be some advening forms which distinguish them. But the same will be true of those advening forms, and so on infinitely. The obvious way out of the infinite regress is to say that the advening forms which distinguishe Rationality from Non-Rationality are simply Rationality and Non-Rationality. That's what he means when he says (41) that "the forms themselves are diverse from one another in themselves."

According to the second theory, the same is true of the individuals Socrates and Browny. What makes Socrates the individual he is must be something that Socrates has in himself. What makes Socrates Socrates is Socrates. If you want to understand Socrates, you have to study Socrates, not Plato or Crito, and especially not Browny or other particular animals. Now we are starting to sound like nominalists, and that is precisely why Abelard says (41) that this theory gets "closer to the true theory of the matter." Socrates is a particular and what makes him the particular he is, what makes him Socrates, is something he has in himself, his haecceity, his self, i.e. Socrates. The same can be said for every particular, and so the result is that everything that exists is particular, there is no room for universals in our ontology.

The second theory, however, tries to argue that there is room for universals in our ontology. The crucial distinction (44) is to agree that distinct particulars are not essentially the same, they are merely "indifferently" the same, i.e. some particulars are, in some respects, no different from others particulars. There are two different ways of explaining this, first is "Class Realism."

Class Realism =_df in addition to particular individuals, some universals exist, but they do not exist separately from the individuals that instantiate them, because they are classes of particulars.

You could also call this "Set Realism" if you wanted to use the mathematical notion of a set. On this view the reality a species has is the same kind of reality that a class or set has. The universal "Humanity" is simply the class of all humans.

Abelard gives a number of objections to Class Realism; I just want to focus on three. The first is in (48)-(49). He asks in what way a Class "is able to be predicated of several so that it is a universal, and yet the whole collection is not said of single things." A Class can be predicated of the members of the class simply because they are members of the set. You predicate the class of all even integers of the member 2 simply by saying that the number 2 is a member of the set of all even integers. That part is easy.

What is a problem is to claim that the Class is also "said of" each member. This phrase comes right out of Aristotle, and it is central to the theory real universals. Aristotle uses the phrase "said of" to indicate what Plato calls "participation." If universals are going to be real, they have to do some metaphysical work. According to Plato and Aristotle, universals explain unity amidst diversity; universals explain how it is that you and I are the same, in spite of the fact that we are distinct universals. Also, as we saw with Boethius, this relation between universals and particulars is a very special one: the particulars "have" the universal all at once and wholly, not piecemeal.

But this does not seem to be the relation that holds between sets and their members. Think of the set of all even numbers between 1 and 9. Here is the set: {2, 4, 6, 8}. In what sense can the set be predicated of the number 2? Just in the sense that the number 2 is the first member of the set. But that means that the set is "said of" the number 2 only in a piecemeal way. There doesn't seem to be a way that the set as a whole is "said of" the number 2.

The same thing works for non-mathematical cases. Suppose that the only reality that the universal Humanity has is just that it is the set of all humans. In what sense is that set "said of" me; or in what way do I "participate" in that set? Just in the sense that I am a member of the set, and I am the particular member of the set that I happen to be. Clearly that is not the sort of metaphysical relationship that is supposed to hold between a real universal and its instances.

In other words, if a universal has no more reality than a class or set has, then universals are not real. They are just human-made groupings of things. This leads to the second objection.

If universals are just human-made groupings, then they are essentially arbitrary. You are perfectly free to assign any sets you wish. You could just stipulate that this chair, that window, and that tree are a set. You could give that set a name, e.g. "Chwee." Now chwee is a universal, and this chair, that window and that tree "participate" in it.

The problem with this is that it violates the whole point of recognizing universals. Remember that Plato wants to "carve nature at its joints" and identify real, objective, natural unity amidst diversity. Alternatively, when it comes to the virtues like courage and temperance, he wants to find that form in virtue of which all courageous actions are courageous. If you can define courage anyway you want, then the search for definitions is inane. If you can call anything at all courageous, then there is no sense in worrying about how to define courage. If beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, then it is stupid to try to define the abstract form of Beauty. Real universals, if there are any, have to be objective and absolute; they can't be subjective or relative or, above all, arbitrary (this raises the problem of "grue.")

In (54), according to the theory Abelard is considering, it is not supposed to be arbitrary that Socrates and Plato are both put in the class of all humans. They are put in the class because they are "indifferently" the same, i.e. they don't differ with respect to their humanity. So here are two things we could say, only one of which is true.

Correct (Nominalist Version): Socrates is in the class of all humans because he is human.
Incorrect (Realist Version): Socrates is human because he is in the class of all humans.

Now compare this to what the realist about universals says.

Incorrect (Nominalist Version): Socrates participates in humanity because he is human.
Correct (Realist Version): Socrates is human because he participates in humanity.

Notice that with participation in real forms, the form takes priority. Remember that in the Phaedo, Socrates says that "nothing except beauty makes something beautiful." What makes triangles triangular is closed-three-sided-Euclidean-plane-figured-ness. Not the other way around. It is incorrect to say that a particular triangle is a closed-three-sided-Euclidean-plane-figure because it is a triangle. This is what Abelard calls the priority of the universal.

You can actually use this as a way to test your metaphysical intuitions. Take biological taxonomy. Taxonomists regularly say that the taxa are arbitrary. But face them with the following two claims, and see which they prefer:

Claim 1 (Nominalist Version): Toby my cat instantiates biological felinity because he is a cat
Claim 2 (Realist Version): Toby my cat is a cat because he is instantiates biological felinity.

The realist will say that Claim 1 is incorrect and Claim 2 is correct. The realist says that the biological form has priority in the sense that it is what does the explaining; the classification is dependent upon the biological form, not the other way around. The biological form of felinity is a cluster of properties that designed for the goal of hunting, capturing and eating mammals. Mostly this has to do with the structure of the skeleton and also the type, size and orientation of the teeth. In other words, the cats are the most highly developed carnivores. And that is precisely what makes Toby a cat: he instantiates a cluster of properties that make him designed for the goal of hunting, capturing and eating mammals.

Here is a thought experiment to test your intuitions. Imagine two giraffes in a zoo mate and instead of giving birth to baby giraffes, the female gives birth to what looks exactly like a litter of kittens. They look like kittens, they act like kittens, the eat like kittens, they develop like kittens and so on. In that case, do we say that the some giraffes look an awful lot like cats, or do we say that some cats come from giraffes? The realist will say the latter. If the offspring instantiate biological felinity, then they are feline, regardless of their origin. But if you stick to a class designation of species, then you'd have to say that the offspring are very odd giraffes.

Abelard next considers a more plausible kind of realism. According to the second version of the second theory, talk about universals can be cashed out in terms of "similarity of natures." I call this "Resemblance Realism."

Resemblance Realism =_df in addition to particular individuals, some universals exist, but they do not exist separately from the individuals that instantiate them, because they are resemblances between particulars.

This avoids all three of the objections raised for Class Realism (CR). First, unlike classes, it makes pretty obvious sense how resemblance can be a universal. It is not clear how a whole class can be "said of" its members, but it does seem clear how a resemblance can be "said of" all the particulars that resemble each other: they all have the respect in which each resembles the other. Second, the basis of resemblance is pretty obvious: the respect in which things resemble one another. Third, the resemblance seems to be prior in the right way:

Incorrect (Nominalist Version): Toby and Fafnir instantiate biological felinity because they resemble each other.
Correct (Realist Version): Toby and Fafnir resemble each other because they instantiate biological felinity.

The respect of felinity is the basis for the resemblance, and it takes priority in explanation. So far this theory is much better, however, Abelard still has very similar criticisms of it.

To understand the universality objection in (58), remember what the second theory is supposed to say in general. What makes Socrates the individual he is must be something that Socrates has in himself. What makes Socrates Socrates is Socrates. That is why Abelard says in (58), "the man that is in Socrates and Socrates himself" are "entirely the same." The same goes for Socrates' whiteness and Socrates' literateness. We can speak of the whiteness in Socrates, if we want, but that is just an odd way of referring to Socrates. When we distinguish Socrates' whiteness, his humanity and his literateness, we don't divide Socrates up into three separate things, because all that Socrates is is bound up in one, unified individual.

Which means that "there is no difference between" the humanity in Socrates, and Socrates. The humanity in Socrates just is Socrates. Which means that his humanity is not something that is predicated of, or "said of" Socrates. It is Socrates. Resemblance Realism about universals doesn't provide for the universality of universals.

There is also a problem for the basis of the resemblance. As Abelard asks in (59), how can Socrates and Plato "agree in man" when "it is plain that all men differ from one another both in matter and form?" Take a look around the room and look at all the human beings here. At first glance you might say that we all resemble each other, but when you look more carefully, when you use scientific precision and care, don't you have to accept that really we don't resemble each other much at all? Each of us has her or his own unique height, width and depth. Each of us has her or his own unique weight. Each of us has her or his own unique hair color, skin color, eye color, and so on with every quality you can imagine. When it comes right down to it, resemblance is really just laziness on the part of the observer.

Finally, there is even a problem with priority. When I was introducing the theory of resemblance realism, I make the following judgements.

Abelard rejects this judgment in (57). He argues that there is no real "difference between a universal and a singular in virtue of being 'predicated of several,' since entirely the same way as man agrees with several things, so too Socrates agrees with several things." In other words, Abelard claims that these two statements are equally correct, and equally incorrect. It is just as right to say the first thing as it is to say the second thing. The basis for grouping my two cats Toby and Fafnir together is their perceived resemblance. It is just as true to say that the basis for our perceiving their resemblance is that we have grouped them together.

The crucial claim in the second to last sentence of (57): "neither man insofar as it is Socrates nor Socrates insofar as he is Socrates agrees with other things." As we just saw, whatever resemblance Socrates and Plato have is due simply to scientific laziness on the part of the one who claims to see a resemblance. To claim that Socrates and Plato resemble each other in respect of their shared humanity is just shorthand for saying that the human being Socrates and the human being Plato can, simplistically, be lumped together, if you ignore the respects in which they are separate and distinct. Again, the humanity in Socrates just is Socrates. It is just as correct to say that Socrates resembles Plato in virtue of their shared humanity, as it is to say that Socrates and Plato are both humans because of their resemblance.

But this is not what the realist wants. The realist wants to make the universal do some ontological work. If Abelard is right, then it doesn't, and this variation of the theory fails.

Abelard lays out his own theory very carefully and methodically. He begins by making it absolutely clear that he is a nominalist. In (63) he says that universals cannot be "things," and so the only alternative is for universals to be "words." However, it is also clear that he does not want to affirm the pure nominalism of Roscelin of Compi�gne, who said that universals are nothing more than a mere breathing through the voice, a flatus vocis. Roscelin was 29 years older than Abelard, and may even have been one of Abelard's teachers for a short time. Although Abelard agrees with Roscelin's nominalism, he thinks that there is more to universals than being "mere words." The main reason is probably that pure nominalism falls prey to one of the criticisms that Abelard has raised against Class Realism: it makes universal groupings all equally arbitrary. So Abelard is on a tightrope: on the one hand, he doesn't want to be a pure nominalist, and so he must provide some basis for our groupings of things, but on the other hand he doesn't want to be a realist, and so in some sense the basis for our groupings cannot be real.

Notice that this seems to give Abelard an impossible task. He needs a basis for our groupings which is simultaneously non-arbitrary, but unreal. But if it is unreal, doesn't that automatically make it arbitrary? And if it is non-arbitrary, doesn't that automatically make it real?

In this section, Abelard is referring back to Aristotle's definition of a universal that he quoted in (16). The definition says that a universal is "what is apt to be predicated of several." He takes this definition apart in three states. First he explain the "what," then he explains predication, then he explains the "several."

Basically, the "what" means words. Universals are words, not things. So Abelard begins with a careful discussion of words (64-75). If universals are a type of word, then we must first get clear on the different types of words if we are to be clear on the nature of universal words. He draws an important distinction in (65). He says that a universal word is "apt to be predicated of several things one by one." On the contrary, "a singular word is one that is predicable of one thing only." Given this distinction, is the word "Socrates" a singular word or a universal word? The problem is that more than one person can be named "Socrates," and so the proper name seems "apt to be predicated of several things one by one," thus making it a universal word. But proper names are usually thought to be the paradigmatic example of singular words. How does Abelard get out of this?

He says that proper names are equivocal when more than one person has the same name. The word "Socrates" means two different things when it names the teacher of Plato, and when it names some other person named "Socrates." It is just like when the word "bank" means financial institution, and also river bank. The one word has two distinct meanings.

Next, Abelard addresses predication. Here is where the idea of "status" comes in. At (67) Abelard requires truth in predication. He reiterates that in (72). There he says that syntactically, you can predicate stone of man. "A man is stone" is a perfectly grammatical sentence. However, grammatical predication is not the same thing as dialectical (philosophical) predication (71). The crucial sentence is near the end of (72), "Nevertheless, 'stone' is not predicable of it [i.e. man] in the nature of things." In the second sentence of the paragraph he says that the predication he has in mind "pertains to the nature of things and to indicating the truth of their status." We could call this "status-predication," but I think it would be clearer to call it "truth-predication." When you indicate the status of something, you are saying something true about it "in the nature of things." To make sure we don't confuse the grammatical and the dialectical types of predication, we might distinguish between "grammatical predication" and "truth-predication." The kind of predication involved in universal words is truth-predication.

Finally, at (70) he points out that the "several" of which a universal word is predicated must be several distinct basic subjects. "This pale thing is Socrates" and "This philosopher is Socrates" grammatically predicates "Socrates" of two distinct grammatical subjects. Nevertheless, since this pale thing and this philosopher are one and the same basic subject, the word "Socrates" is not being predicated of "several" things here. So to sum this all up, here is Abelard's definition of universal words:

A universal word is a word that is univocally truth-predicated of several basic subjects.

Once he's defined universal words, he then goes on to examine them more carefully (76).

In this next section, from (77) to (87), Abelard raises and answers what he takes to be the central philosophical problems about universal words. He raises the problems at (77-85) and then answers them very quickly in (86-87).

The problems all come about in (77-79). The rest of the section before the solution is an elaboration of the problems. The problems all start because Abelard has denied that universals are things. Since universals are not things, they cannot be named. So in particular, the word "humanity" doesn't name anything at all. But if the word doesn't signify anything at all, then it must be a meaningless word. Universal words "establish no understanding of any thing" (79).

Abelard accepts the first two steps. He agrees that universals are words and not things; he also agrees that universal words do not name or signify any thing. However, he wants to resist the claim that universal words "establish no understanding of any thing" (79).

Very briefly, at (86-87) his solution is to say that although universal words do not name any thing, nevertheless they succeed in signifying many "diverse things." How? It names "diverse things" on the basis of a "common cause," and hence it can establish some understanding of things. Although it doesn't establish an understanding arising from things, nevertheless it establishes an understanding pertaining to things. In order to explain what he means in more detail, he organizes the next section around three questions. His answer to the third question is not very important (as he himself notes), and so I'll skip it.

The first two questions address each step of the problem I just discussed. Abelard says that universal words don't name things, but they do "signify diverse things." He explains this in his answer to the first question: universal words "signify diverse things" in virtue of the fact that there is a "common cause" of the status of the diverse things signified by the universal word.

Next, Abelard says that universal words don't establish an understanding arising from things, but they do establish an understanding pertaining to things. This is because a universal word establishes a "common conception" of the diverse things it signifies.

In (89) Abelard comes right out and says what he means by the "common cause" of the status: "Single men, who are discrete from one another since they differ both in their own essences and in their own forms ... nevertheless agree in that they are men." You might wonder why this is different from what the realist says. That's why he adds, "I do not say they agree in man, since no thing is a man unless it is discrete."

Right away Abelard is concerned to identify the status of a thing as not being something that a realist would recognize. That's why he compares the status of man to the status of "nonman" in (90). Socrates has the status of man in exactly the same way that Browny has the status of "nonman." But surely a realist wouldn't want to recognize a form of "nonman."

Right here I need to call your attention to something very important. Look at (92). Abelard says that the status of being is the "common cause" of imposing the same name on all men. But he hastens to point out that just because the status is a cause, that doesn't make it a thing. He gives an example of something else that is a cause but not a thing: someone was flogged because he didn't want to go to the forum. Not wanting to go to the forum is a cause, but it is not a thing, it is not an "essence." The reason I have to point this out is that it calls into serious question what Abelard is really doing. Not wanting to go to the forum may not be an "essence," but it certainly is real. It has to be real, because it was able to cause the person's flogging. Unreal things cannot have real effects.

I'm not sure how hard to press this, but it is not clear that Abelard is aware of a crucial distinction. Aristotle distinguished between what he calls "primary substances" and what he calls "secondary substances." The primary substances are the basic subjects, you and I and individual horses and so on. We are the basic entities upon which all other things are ontologically dependent. All the grins of the world are ontologically dependent upon there being individuals with lips. The one with the lips is a "primary substance." The "secondary substances" are the real universals, but they are real in a way that is different from the "primary substances." The "primary substances" are real by being the things upon which properties are ontologically dependent; the "secondary substances" are real, according to Aristotle, by being the things about which scientific knowledge has primarily to do. They are not ontologically dependent, and in Aristotle's view, they are incapable of separate existence. The universal humanity exists only so long as there are humans. Nevertheless, when there really are humans, then humanity really exists.

My worry is that Abelard has sound arguments against recognizing universals as Aristotelian "primary substances," but never considers the possibility that universals have real existence as Aristotelian "secondary substances." This may be a confusion on Abelard's part, or it may be that the Neoplatonists of his time really did argue that universals exist as "primary substances." In any case, this alternative kind of realism about universals is not something that Abelard ever seems to argue against. It is a gap in his argument for nominalism. We need to see how this gap affects the rest of his argument.

So far Abelard has given us only a negative description of what he means by "status." He has told us that the status of being a man does not consist in some essence. What, then, does it consist in? In (92) he tells us that the various things which have the status of man have it because of the "common likeness of which he who imposed the word conceived." What we seem to have here is Resemblance Nominalism. What we need to look for are clues as to whether his Resemblance Nominalism is a kind of Concept Nominalism or Paradigmatist Nominalism.

In (96) Abelard sets up a comparison. He says that "just as sense is not the thing sensed, to which it is directed, so the understanding is not the form of the thing it conceives."

Sense => Thing Sensed

Understanding => Form of thing conceived, model, exemplar

Just as our physical senses, e.g. sight, have objects, so also the understanding has objects. However, unlike the objects of sense, which are external, physical things; the objects of the understanding are "imaginary and made-up." He seems to have in mind that the understanding has as its objects our conceptions of things. Just as the architect has a conception of the building he will make before he makes it, and the end product can look quite different from his original conception, so also whenever we exercise our understanding about anything, we do so via our conceptions of things, which can, unfortunately, be different from the things themselves. We can suffer under misconceptions of things. If I am from a rural area and have never been to a big city, then my conception of a big city might be very different from the reality if I ever get the chance to visit one.

The next step (102) is to "distinguish the understandings of universals and singulars." He gives a nice example in (108). There is a notorious problem in art history. Sometimes paintings are intended to represent specific individuals with known histories, and sometimes they are intended to represent just a generic individual. How is an art historian supposed to know which is which? Answer: you have to look for distinguishing characteristics. For example, if the myths about a certain character say that he had been hacked with a sword on his left thigh, and you see a painting or sculpture of someone which a wound on his left thigh, then perhaps the character is supposed to represent that specific person. However, if the sculpture doesn't have any identifying marks or scars, if all it has is just what any person might have, then it could just be the painting or sculpture of a generic man.

That is just the difference between "the understandings of universals and singulars." It is the difference between generic and specific. Universal understandings are generic, or as he says in (102), "common and confused" images. The image is "confused" simply in the sense that it is not specific or precise. It is like a police sketch of a criminal that doesn't succeed in picking out one particular person; you look at it and say "well, it could be Jake, but then again it could also be Fred; I just can't tell from that sketch."

So Abelard's theory is that universal words refer to these "common and confused" images or conceptions of things, these generic conceptions. So Abelard is a Concept Nominalist.

Now let's face Abelard with the three objections he's raised against realism. Concept Nominalism does have a way to explain the universality of universal words. Universal words name generic concepts, and generic concepts identify diverse things in a "common and confused" way. The universality of a universal word consists in its being applicable to many things. Unlike Class Realism, in which the Class isn't really applicable to the members of the class; and unlike Resemblance Realism, where there is no real resemblance to apply to diverse things; Concept Nominalism does have something universal to apply to diverse things.

What is the basis of the status of different particulars? If my concept of humanity is "said of" all the different things I recognize as human beings, what is the basis for this recognition of unity in diversity? Answer: the diverse particulars are united by my "common and confused" conception. The problem is that this introduces an arbitrariness or relativity into universals.

Look at (103). Abelard says that "when I hear 'man', a kind of model rises up in my mind." That model is my conception of humanity. But what model rises up in your mind? Yours might be very different from mine. Either universality is relative, or it is arbitrary, or both.

Abelard does not want to be stuck with this conclusion. Remember back in (50) that Abelard criticized Class Realism by saying that "any such random collection would even be called a species." Now it looks as if his own theory is guilty of the same problem. But he has a way around this problem.

Go back to the idea of the architect's conception of a building he will make. Here there is a kind of relativity or arbitrariness. An architect is free to design whatever kind of building he wants. There are no necessary constraints that bind him. If he wanted to make an unsafe building, he could; if he wanted to make a building that would fall apart in a few days, he could. The design is up to him. Among artificial things, universals are arbitrary or relative.

But this same arbitrariness or relativity doesn't extend to the natural world. Why? Because God made the natural world. At (112) he points out that as the architect of the world, God has certain conceptions in His Divine Mind. Those are the basis for His design of the world, and the resulting particular things are in turn, the basis of our conceptions of things. So when it comes to our conceptions of natural things, our conceptions may differ to some degree, but that doesn't make them arbitrary or relative.

A realist has an objection at this point. If God has a concept of humanity, and designed human beings according to that conception, then we all really are human beings. The blueprint for humanity is a real universal. All we have to do is figure out what that blueprint is, and we will have access to real universals. This is exactly what "abstraction" is all about according to Boethius.

Unfortunately, according to Abelard, we cannot have access to the blueprint of humanity. In (113) Abelard argues that only God has access to the blueprint for humanity, and the blueprints of all the other natural things. The problem is that we are limited by sense perception. All we know, we know through perception, and sense perception is restricted to sensible particulars. (See also (95)). In order to know the universal Human, I would have to be able to perceive the universal Human. But I can't do that. Whenever I look for the universal Human, all I ever see are particular human beings. It is impossible for me to form a genuine conception of humanity in itself, because every time I think of humanity, my mind is flooded with the images of the particular human beings I have seen. The result seems to be that there are real universals, we just can't know them. According to (114-115), we can have opinion of them, but not intelligence.

The problem is that this theory of knowledge just seems false. In (115) Abelard claims that we cannot have knowledge of the "internal forms that do not reach the senses," but geometrical knowledge seems to be a counter-example. By rational reflection on particular diagrams of triangles, we can come to knowledge of what triangularity consists in. Or think about another kind of knowledge of unobservables. How do we know that electrons exist when they are too small to be seen? Answer: critical reflection upon things that we can see. Cloud chambers get vapor trails in them that we can see, and we have to then make develop some explanation of what caused the vapor trails. If the best explanation is that an electron passed through the chamber, forming a line of condensation, then we have reason to believe that electrons really exist, in spite of the fact that we can't see them.

Or take another example that was to occur a few hundred years after Abelard. Using Newton's laws of motion, together with the masses of the sun and known planets, it was possible to come up with a mathematical description of the orbit of Uranus. The problem was that Newton's laws came up with the wrong answer. Newton's laws predicted a different orbit from the observable orbit of Uranus. On this basis, scientists hypothesized that there was another planet beyond Uranus that they couldn't see. The estimated its distance and size on the basis of what would be needed to get the right answer about Uranus' orbit. Sure enough, they later found Neptune. Again, rational reflection upon what we can see, can give us knowledge of what we cannot see.

One more example, and this one I'll take from the medieval and ancient world. Aristotle argued that the world was round and not flat. The problem with this is that there is no way you could tell back then which theory was correct, because both theories predicted that from our perspective, the earth would look flat. One piece of evidence Aristotle used, and this later convinced Avero�s, was the appearance of a certain stars when you go very far south, that you can't see when you go very far north. You can explain this by the curvature of the earth. Although we can't stand off of the earth to see whether it is a ball or a disk, we can use rational reflection upon things we can see, and make educated guesses about unobservables.

So why can't we do things about the blueprints for natural objects. By studying Toby and Fafnir, and lots of other cats, can't we figure out God's conception of a cat? Can't we figure out the structural or genetic nature of what it is to be a cat, i.e. the universal cat-ness which is instantiated in all particular cats? If so, then we have let all the air out of Abelard's nominalism.

Finally, which are prior: particulars or concepts? Clearly Abelard, as a nominalist, wants the particulars to be prior. We get the concepts we have from the particulars we observe. So here is what Abelard wants.

Correct (Nominalist Version): Toby and Fafnir instantiate biological felinity because they match the concept of a cat.
Incorrect (Realist Version): Toby and Fafnir match the concept of a cat because they instantiate biological felinity.

What we observe are just individuals. Because God has designed reality along a certain plan, we begin to develop concepts of things. We get "common and confused" images of things, and then make up words to name those images. Those universal words then get applied to the particulars. Biologists label Toby and Fafnir as being biologically feline because they fit the "common and confused" image they have of a cat, which they got, in turn, from observing diverse particulars.

The problem is that Abelard's own theory doesn't support this nominalism. The diverse particulars are what they are because of God's blueprint for reality. I got my "common and confused" image of a cat from observing diverse particulars, but why did I pay attention to certain particulars and not others? For example, many small dogs are sort of like cats. Why didn't I include some of them in the group that produced my "common and confused" image? Racoons look a bit like cats, so why didn't I include some of them in the group that produced my "common and confused" image? Answer: they just don't look enough the same. Why not? God's blueprint. But that is not enough by itself. God also designed me to be able to detect the real differences between things. Perhaps I can't detect them easily right off the bat, but by rational reflection on the things I do observe, I can come to know more and more about God's plan.

What is prior is God's blueprint for reality. It turns out that in God's blueprint for reality, some features are repeated, i.e. there are real universals. It didn't have to be this way, but it seems as if it is true.