I largely agree with this answer. My view is that reductionist materialism implies that names are just a convenient way of discussing similar things, but there isn’t something that inherently makes what we label a “car”; it’s just an object made up of atoms that pattern matches what we term a “car.” I suppose that likely makes me lean toward nominalism, but I find the overall debate generally confused.
I’ve taken several philosophy courses, and I’m always astonished by the absence of agreement or justification that either side can posit. I think the biggest problem is that many philosophers make some assumption without sufficient justification and then create enormously complex systems based on those assumptions. But since they don’t argue for strenuous justification for the underlying premises (e.g. Platonic idealism), then ridiculous amounts of time ends up being wasted learning about all the systems, rather than figuring out how to test them for truth (or even avoiding analytical meaninglessness).
I largely agree with this answer. My view is that reductionist materialism implies that names are just a convenient way of discussing similar things, but there isn’t something that inherently makes what we label a “car”; it’s just an object made up of atoms that pattern matches what we term a “car.” I suppose that likely makes me lean toward nominalism, but I find the overall debate generally confused.
I’ve taken several philosophy courses, and I’m always astonished by the absence of agreement or justification that either side can posit. I think the biggest problem is that many philosophers make some assumption without sufficient justification and then create enormously complex systems based on those assumptions. But since they don’t argue for strenuous justification for the underlying premises (e.g. Platonic idealism), then ridiculous amounts of time ends up being wasted learning about all the systems, rather than figuring out how to test them for truth (or even avoiding analytical meaninglessness).
So...it isn’t science.