Property Nominalism in the Contemporary Analytic Metaphysics

Abstract

This article aims to give an introductory overview of Property Nominalism in contemporary analytic metaphysics for a Russian-speaking reader. The question of the level and order relations between different properties has been much debated in analytic philosophy over the last 100 years. However, analytic philosophers have often given much less attention to more fundamental questions of the ontological status of properties and how properties relate to the objects that instantiate them. The most plausible answer to these questions would be Property Nominalism which is well compatible with Physicalism – the Weltanschauung currently dominant among analytic philosophers. As in the case of medieval nominalism, the pathos of Property Nominalism is in eliminating redundant entities in our ontology. However, it should be distinguished from the nominalism of Willard V.O. Quine, Alfred Tarski and Nelson Goodman, which extends not only to universals but to the entire class of abstract objects. Property Nominalism is subdivided into Non-reductive (Ostrich) and Reductive Nominalism. The latter includes Predicative (or Conceptual) Nominalism, Class Nominalism, Tropes Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism, presented in the works of Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra. In the opinion of the author of this article, we will arrive at an optimal solution to the problem of universals if we adhere to the explanatory models of Ostrich Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism. The advantages of these theories are that they do not postulate any additional entities and do not require us to develop a specialized theory of substance.