Aristotle's Theory of Universals is

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

's classical solution to the

Problem of Universals The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist be ...

, sometimes known as the

hylomorphic Hylomorphism (also hylemorphism) is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which conceives every physical entity or being (''ousia'') as a compound of matter (potency) and immaterial form (act), with the generic form as immanently real w ...

theory of

immanent realism Moderate realism (also called immanent realism) is a position in the debate on the metaphysics of universals associated with the hylomorphic substance theory of Aristotle. There is no separate realm in which universals exist (in opposition to P ...

Universals In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...

are the characteristics or qualities that ordinary objects or things have in common. They can be identified in the

types Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * Typ ...

properties Property is the ownership of land, resources, improvements or other tangible objects, or intellectual property. Property may also refer to: Mathematics * Property (mathematics) Philosophy and science * Property (philosophy), in philosophy and ...

, or relations observed in the world. For example, imagine there is a bowl of red apples resting on a table. Each apple in that bowl will have many similar qualities, such as their red coloring or "redness". They will share some degree of the quality of "ripeness" depending on their age. They may also be at varying degrees of age, which will affect their color, but they will all share a universal "appleness". These qualities are the universals that the apples hold in common. The Problem of Universals asks three questions. Do universals exist? If they exist, where do they exist? Also, if they exist, how do we obtain knowledge of them? In

's view, universals are incorporeal and universal, but only exist only where they are instantiated; they exist only in things. Aristotle said that a universal is ''identical in each of its instances''. All red things are similar in that there is the ''same universal'', redness, in each thing. There is no

Platonic Form Platonic realism is the philosophical position that universals or abstract objects exist objectively and outside of human minds. It is named after the Greek philosopher Plato who applied realism to such universals, which he considered ideal fo ...

of redness, standing apart from all red things; instead, each red thing has a copy of the same property, redness. For the Aristotelian, knowledge of the universals is not obtained from a supernatural source. It is obtained from experience by means of active intellect.

Overview

In Aristotle's view, universals can be instantiated multiple times. He states that ''one and the same universal'', such as applehood, appears in every real apple. A

common sense ''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political argu ...

challenge would be to inquire what remains ''exactly the same'' in all these different things, since the theory is claiming that something remains the same. Stating that different beautiful things, such as the Pacific Ocean, The Eiffel Tower, or the nighttime sky is beautiful is just to say that each thing is the same (qualitatively) in terms of beauty. Aristotle is talking about a

category Category, plural categories, may refer to: Philosophy and general uses * Categorization, categories in cognitive science, information science and generally *Category of being * ''Categories'' (Aristotle) *Category (Kant) *Categories (Peirce) * ...

of being here that is not a thing but a quality. A common defense of Aristotle's realism is therefore that we should not expect universals to behave like ordinary physical objects. To say the same universal, beautiful, occurs simultaneously in all these things is no more strange than saying that each thing is beautiful. A second issue is whether Aristotelian universals are abstract: if they are, then the theory must deal with how to abstract the concept of redness from one or more red things. Aristotle argued that people form concepts and make generalizations in the manner of a young child, who is just on the verge of grasping a generic concept such as ''human being''. In his view, the child is gathering his or her memories of various encounters with individual humans, searching for the essential similarity that stands out, on reflection, in every instance. Today, it might be said that one mentally extracts from each thing the quality that they all have in common. When the child grasps the concept of a human being, he or she has learnt to ignore the accidental details of each person's past experiences and individual differences, and has paid attention to the relevant quality that ''they all have in common'', namely, humanity. In Aristotle's view, the universal ''humanity'' is a ''natural kind'' defined by the essential properties that all humans have in common.

References

External links

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Aristotle's Metaphysics. 10. Substances and UniversalsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Medieval Problem of Universals. 4. Boethius’ Aristotelian Solution

* ttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00048407512341271?journalCode=rajp20 M. J. Cresswell: What is Aristotle's theory of universals?(subscription required) {{Aristotelianism Epistemology Ontology Philosophy of Aristotle

Overview

See also

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External links