A big question in philosophy is how do I recognize

different instances of something as all belonging

to a kind?

Take for instance dogs who display dogness.

Regardless of how scientifically I know a

dog's genetic makeup, I have some sense of

what dogness is, and I can recognize it when

I see it.

When I look at a Chihuahua, I recognize it

as a dog.

When I look at a Great Dane, I recognize it

as a dog.

Chihuahuas and Great Danes are very different,

and yet I can recognize them both as dogs.

How?

Let's consider our options.

In Plato's understanding, there is one truest

expression of each kind, he calls it the form.

The form exists apart from matter in a kind

of ethereal realm.

Everything in this world only participates--only shares in--those immaterial

forms.

When asked, how do we recognize both the Chihuahua

and the Great Dane as dogs,

Plato might respond something like this, "Both

participate in the eternal form of dogness,

but we can recall that form when we encounter

its shadow in the world below."

Now this extreme view we might call radical

realism.

Universals like dogness in this case, exist

in themselves apart from this world.

Before getting to Aristotle and St.Thomas

Aquinas, let's describe the other end of the

spectrum, a position called nominalism, one

associated with a 14th-century Franciscan

named William of Ockham.

In short, and mind you, this is a gross simplification,

nominalists hold that nothing real connects

the Chihuahua and the Great Dane. They don't

share a common nature.
As a convention we refer to them both by the
same generic name to organize our speech.

For Ockham at the other end of the spectrum,

universals exist only logically.

Between these two positions is the position

of Aristotle and St.Thomas Aquinas.

St.Thomas taught that universals do exist,

but that they exist first in the things themselves.

A form is simply what makes a thing to be

what it is, it gives shape and intelligible

unity to a thing.

A dog is composed of dog form and matter,

with the dog form, making it to be a dog and

arranging and animating the matter accordingly.

Now, these forms also exist in our minds.

When we apprehend a dog, we abstract its form

generating an intentional or conceptual form

of dog in our minds.

It's not that my mind becomes a dog (in the

strict sense, it remains a mind), but rather

by interaction with the dog, I formulate a

concept of dogness, which now serves as the

kind of lens through which I encounter other

dogs.

Against Plato, St.Thomas insists that the

universals are first in the things themselves.

Against Ockham, that real connections exist

among generically similar things, and that

we can actually know and name them.

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