Abstract:
The intractability of the problem of universals has persisted from its origin in Ancient Greece to contemporary thought, with no clear winner in the debate between the two dominant contenders for solutions, namely, the realist and the anti-realist views. This suggests that historically the problem has been approached from a wrong direction, and that progress might be made by focusing on epistemology instead of ontology or language. The thesis that I advance in this work is that universals are neither real entities not lexical entities; instead, they are the specifically human form of knowledge. They are our way of knowing conceptually the myriad things in our world and their features. This thesis emerges from three inquiries: an investigation into pertinent aspects of the historical material on this problem, an analysis of why the traditional solutions are problematical, and a consideration of the nature of our cognitive capacities. The first gleans valuable insights into the epistemology of universals, particularly from Aristotle and John Locke, covering a range of topics including abstraction, induction, cognitive economy and the role of essences. The second critiques realism by focusing on problems with essentialism, and critiques anti-realism by uncovering problems of closet-realism and cognitive disconnection in various versions of this approach. The third looks at the relational nature of consciousness and knowledge, the way that the nature of our cognitive faculties shapes the form of our knowledge, and the role of categorisation in knowledge. This provides the material for laying the foundations of an epistemological theory of universals that is at the same time an empiricist theory of concepts. This foundation, which is rooted in the way that the requirements of human cognition shape the form of knowledge, outlines the process by which universals are formed, showing the roles of abstraction, similarity judgments, induction and language therein. The objectivity of this process is defended, with consideration also given to the growth of conceptual knowledge.