Nominalism Cannot Be Coherently Stated

Imagine for a second the claim: 


“No ideas are universal”


There is something incoherent about that claim. Why?


What is an “idea”? Either it refers to something common or not. If it refers to something common, it is a universal (one thought standing for many/common).


If it refers to just a particular it does not refer to all ideas.


The statement is self-contradictory.


Explanation: What is Nominalism?

Nominalism is the belief that only words are universal, but ideas or concepts are not. In other words, when we use a word like "dog" or "circle," it’s just a label we apply to different things—it doesn’t mean there’s some universal "idea of dog" or "idea of circle" that exists independently of those words.


For example:


  • A nominalist would argue that the word "circle" is universal because we can use it to describe many round things, but there’s no universal idea of "circle" that exists beyond individual instances of round objects.

The Problem With Nominalism

Now let’s look at why the claim "no ideas are universal" (a key part of nominalism) is self-contradictory.


  1. What is an idea?

    • An idea is a thought or concept we can use to refer to many things. For example, the idea of "redness" refers to all red things, not just one specific red object.
  2. What happens if you claim "no ideas are universal"?

    • This statement is itself an idea—it’s a claim about all ideas.
    • To make this claim meaningful, it would need to apply to all ideas universally (because it’s describing the nature of ideas as a whole).
    • But if it applies universally, then it’s acting as a universal idea—which contradicts the claim itself!
  3. The contradiction:

    • Either the statement "no ideas are universal" is universal, which makes it false because it contradicts itself,
    • Or it’s not universal, in which case it doesn’t apply to all ideas and loses its meaning.

Why Nominalism Can’t Be Coherently Stated

Nominalism depends on the idea that only words are universal, but it denies that ideas can be universal. The problem is that to explain nominalism or argue for it, you have to rely on universal ideas—like the idea of "words" or "universality" itself. This makes the position self-contradictory because it denies the very thing it depends on to make sense.

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