nominaalist

Nominalism is a philosophical view concerning the existence of universals. Universals are abstract concepts or properties that can be ascribed to different individuals, such as "redness" or "humanity." Nominalists argue that universals do not exist as independent entities or in any form separate from particular things. They contend that only individual objects are real.

There are different varieties of nominalism. Resemblance nominalism, for instance, suggests that things are grouped together under a common name because they resemble each other in some way. Other forms of nominalism propose that terms like "redness" are simply names or labels that we apply to sets of individual red objects for convenience or linguistic purposes. These names do not refer to any underlying universal entity.

Nominalism stands in contrast to realism, particularly Platonic realism, which holds that universals exist in an abstract, non-physical realm, and conceptualism, which posits that universals exist as concepts in the mind. The debate between nominalism and realism has been a significant and enduring issue in the history of philosophy, impacting fields like metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. The core of the nominalist position is a commitment to the reality of particulars and a skepticism about the existence of abstract universals as separate real entities.