Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
discriminate among lower-level characteristics, fostering some and eliminating
others. (Dull-colored or non-displaying male bower-birds have no descendants.)
Well-trained drivers ignore lights of many shapes and colors, but actively respond
to (interpret) bright red circles. The training and experience of the driver
determine
her response, but as a reason rather than as an agent.
6.8 Nominalism Rejected
One of the main themes of Peirce
—the
erroneous doctrine of fourteenth-century Ockhamists (and present-day analytical
philosophers) that only individuals
s work was an attack on
nominalism
'
'
'
really exist
—this is to be contrasted with the
'
'
realist
opinion that some composite entities are
real.
Dewey describes a usual,
'
'
'
'
but highly damaging, result of nominalism:
Ability to regulate, to guide and direct, the ongoing course of life-experience, as well as
furtherance or prevention of occurrence of this or that special event, depends on breaking
down the actual total event into a number of lesser events. But the history of human beliefs
shows that two connected errors have accompanied the performance of this necessary task.
...
[T]he events which are analyzed into more minute events have been assigned a
secondary degree of reality, and the actions in virtue of which the lesser ones constitute
the original gross event are lost from view, or what is even more harmful, are treated as
themselves simple or elementary static entities. It is one of the functions of philosophy to
recall us from the results of analyses, which are made for special purposes, to the larger,
if coarser and in many respects cruder, events which alone have primary existence.
14
(Dewey
2012
, 324)
Peirce maintained that “the nominalist error” has wide significance.
though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of logic,
its branches reach about our life. The question whether the genus
Homo
has any existence
except as individuals, is the question whether there is anything of any more dignity, worth,
and importance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life.
Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered
as an end in itself, and if so, what the relative value of the two factors is, is the most
fundamental practical question in regard to every institution the constitution of which we
have it in our power to influence (CP 5.38).
Searle
...
s question with which this paper began contains a subordinate clause—
“in a universe consisting entirely of physical particles in fields of force.” The word
'
'
in this clause, if taken seriously, would wipe chemistry completely off
the map of significance. Chemists have good reason to be wary of nominalism.
For Searle, nominalism needs no supporting argument: facts inconsistent with that
approach are invisible to him. However, if the world consists
entirely
of particles in
fields then John R. Searle does not exist.
entirely
'
14
At this point Dewey added the footnote: “It is one of the merits of C. S. Peirce that he
appreciated so thoroughly this aspect of philosophy.
”
...
