CRITIQUE OF BERKELEY’S NOMINALISM

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2018.

The Nominalism of Berkeley

Regarding the problem of the universals, the immaterialist George Berkeley (1685-1753)
advocated nominalism: only names or terms are universal; there are no abstract general ideas, no
abstract universal ideas, only particular ideas, which are reducible to schematic sense images.
Thonnard writes that, for Berkeley, “abstraction is useless in explaining the general idea, and, for
purposes of explanation, a determined image is sufficient if it be taken as the representation of
other, similar, images. One could reason, for example, on triangle in general by thinking of a
triangle which is actually scalene, but without being concerned over the nature of the angles or of
the particular relation which exists between its sides. Thus, in Berkeley’s view, ‘thinking is not
the seizure of an abstract essence, whether real or nominal, it is but a passage from one idea to
another with the aid of the sign assumed by the idea.’1 Consequently, there are no abstract ideas;
the general or universal idea is but a particular idea, taken as a sign of other particular ideas and,
in this way, designated by a common name.”2 For Berkeley, “non ci sono idee generali astratte.
Parlare di idea astratta o universale è una contraddizione, perché ogni idea è particolare: noi
conosciamo solo le nostre idee, che coincidono con le impressioni dei sensi. Queste impressioni
sono sempre particolari: è impossibile raggiungere un’idea universale o astratta. Gli uomini, dice
Berkeley, pensano di avere idee universali, ma questo è così solo grazie al linguaggio. L’uomo
pensa pure che le idee astratte sono unite alle parole, e in questo modo vengono impiegati
termini invece di idee. Ma bisogna liberarsi dall’inganno delle parole, cercando di limitare i
pensieri alle proprie idee, spogliate di parole.”3 “Nominalists claim that universals are mere
names, not concepts…After the seventeenth century, nominalism became widespread under the
form of empiricism, in as much as empiricism admits only sensible knowledge. Modern
nominalists commonly teach that a universal name corresponds only to a concrete sensible
image, which is common in as much as it is very imperfect. Thus a statue can represent some
indeterminate man or other. Representative of modern nominalists are such men as Hobbes,
Berkeley, Hume, Condillac, Mill, Taine, Ribbot, Wundt, etc.”4 Sensist nominalism “grants that
there is a general or universal term, but it insists that the term alone is universal. There are no
universal mental correlates or universal concepts which correspond to these universal terms.”5

Describing Berkeley’s nominalist position concerning abstract general ideas, with

particular reference to the idea of matter (since his philosophical system is that of
immaterialism), B. A. G. Fuller writes: “Can we so much as have an idea of matter as something
more than the combination of sensible qualities we call an ‘object’? Berkeley’s approach to this
question is made through his discussion of the nature and origin of abstract ideas set forth in the
1
E. BRÉHIER, Histoire de la philosophie, II, Paris, 1932, p. 345.
2
F.-J. THONNARD, A Short History of Philosophy, Desclée, Tournai, 1956, pp. 616-617.
3
M. FAZIO and D. GAMARRA, Introduzione alla storia della filosofia moderna, Apollinare Studi, Rome, 1994,
pp. 169-170.
4
H. GRENIER, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 3 (Metaphysics), St. Dunstan’s University, Charlottetown, 1950, pp.
137-138.
5
J. T. BARRON, Elements of Epistemology, Macmillan, New York, 1936, p. 56.

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introduction to his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge…Things, he tells
us, are experienced as groups of qualities. Though the qualities are not experienced in isolation,
we can isolate them for purposes of thought and consider them separately.

“Moreover, the mind, in comparing the combinations of qualities it perceives, notes

points of resemblances and common features. Thus the ideas of these qualities or combinations
of qualities acquire a general reference and significance. The picture may be vague and ill-
defined and without reference to any particular instance of the idea under consideration, but it is
nevertheless particular, not universal, concrete, not abstract.

“It is the particular image, taken as a sign or representation of everything falling within
the class of objects under consideration, that constitutes the so-called abstract idea. Universals,
then, are not names of real abstract natures, but of relations in which individuals stand to one
another. So-called abstracting and generalizing does not lie in getting rid altogether or
particularity and concreteness, but in making one particular concrete image or picture stand for a
whole class of objects.

“It follows that general terms or names do not signify one idea, as they are commonly
and erroneously supposed to do, but a multitude of ideas. The name ‘horse,’ for instance,
signifies a myriad different images of a horse called up in a myriad different minds by hearing
the word. But the name equally signifies all these images, since it stands for certain aspects
which they have in common.

“Names, then, do not limit the ideas for which they stand. There is no such thing as one
precise and definite signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying indifferently a
great number of particular ideas. They also arouse passions as well as evoke ideas, and acquire
halos of value which frequently do not illuminate their meaning. Hence the magic and the
authority attributed by the Schoolmen to universals is quite absurd. Abstract and general terms in
no wise enlarge our knowledge, except as convenient symbols for representing and
communicating the images of particular things. They arise from experience and terminate in
experience. Apart from their reference to sense-perception they have no meaning or use.

“With these considerations in view, let us look once more at matter. What is in our mind
when we have the idea of ‘matter’ in general? The answer is obvious. We have nothing but the
image of some vaguely extended, and resistant, particular object of indefinite shape and size,
either moving or resting, faintly stained with color or hardness or softness or other ‘secondary’
characteristics. The only difference between this image and the picture of any other ‘material’
object is that we make it representative of all other experiences exhibiting the same ‘material’
qualities. Matter, in a word, doesn’t mean anything except complexes of sensations. Where, then,
is Locke’s ‘substance’? Where is the ‘something I know not what’ underlying and supporting the
combinations of qualities we call material things? Nowhere.”6

Although he rejects abstract general ideas Berkeley claims to accept ‘general ideas’: “It
is to be noted that I do not deny absolutely that there are general ideas, but only that there are any

6
B. A. G. FULLER, A History of Philosophy, Henry Holt & Co., Part II, New York, 1957, pp. 145-146.

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abstract general ideas.”7 “An idea, which considered in itself is particular, becomes general by
being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort.”8 According to
him, universality would not consist in “in the absolute, positive nature or conception of anything,
but in the relation it bears to the particulars signified or represented by it.”9 For Berkeley,
“reasoning must be about particulars…it cannot be about abstract general ideas…The geometer
makes a particular triangle stand for or represent all triangles, by attending to its triangularity
rather than to its particular characteristics. And in this case properties demonstrated of this
particular triangle are held to be demonstrated of all triangles. But the geometer is not
demonstrating properties of the abstract general idea of triangularity; for there is no such thing.
His reasoning is about particulars, and its universal scope is made possible by the power we have
of rendering a particular idea universal, not by its positive content, but in virtue of a
representative function.

“Berkeley does not, of course, deny that there are general words. But he rejects the theory
that general words denote general ideas, if we mean by this ideas which possess a positive
universal content. A proper name, such as William, signifies a particular thing, while a general
word signifies indifferently a plurality of things of a certain kind. Its universality is a matter of
use or function. If we once understand this, we shall be saved from hunting for mysterious
entities corresponding to general words. We can utter the term ‘material substance,’ but it does
not denote any abstract general idea; and if we suppose that because we can frame the term it
must signify an entity apart from the objects of perception, we are misled by words. Berkeley’s
nominalism is thus of importance in his attack on Locke’s theory of material substance. ‘Matter’
is not a name in the way in which William is a name, though some philosophers seem to have
thought mistakenly that it is.”10

Bittle’s Critique of Berkeley’s Nominalist Rejection of Abstract General Ideas

Celestine N. Bittle, O.F.M., Cap. critiques Berkeley’s nominalist rejection of abstract

general ideas in his The Whole Man as follows: “John Locke (1690), in his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding,11 claimed that he had a general (universal) idea of a ‘triangle.’ George
Berkeley (1710) was convinced that he possessed no such wonderful faculty of abstracting ideas.
‘For myself,’ he says, “I find indeed I have the faculty of imagining or representing to myself the
ideas of those particular things I have perceived and of variously compounding and dividing
them…The idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a
straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought
conceive the abstract idea above described.’12 He is convinced that there are no such things as
abstract (general or universal) ideas.

“Berkeley’s contention is easily tested. Consider the idea of ‘man’ as advanced by

Berkeley in the quotation just given. It is, of course, entirely concrete and particularized, not

7
G. BERKELEY, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, 12; II, p. 31.
8
Ibid., p. 32.
9
Ibid., 15; II, pp. 33-34.
10
F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, Book II, vol. 5, Image Doubleday, New York, 1985, pp. 217-218.
11
Bk. IV, Ch. 7, § 9.
12
G. BERKELEY, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Introd. 10, 14.

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abstract and universal. And now consider the following analysis of the idea ‘man’ as subjected to
a process of selective attention and abstraction.

“Human beings are individuals, and no two are altogether alike. They possess differences
in color, weight, size, bodily formation, mental and emotional peculiarities, etc., which
distinguish one human being from another. Some are, as Berkeley points out, white, some black,
some tawny; some are straight, some crooked; some tall, some short, some middle-sized. Some
are male, others female; some are vicious, others virtuous; some are healthy, others diseased…
Individual men are perceived in this manner and imagined in sense-images; perceiving and
imagining in this manner is an everyday occurrence. So far, our selective attention has been
directed toward the features in which individual men differ. But the mind does not stop with
contemplating these individual differences; it can, and does, also focus its attention on the
features in which the individual men agree and which they have in common. Focusing our
attention on the features common to all men, we find that all men, no matter what their
individual differences may be, possess a body…; man is, therefore, a ‘bodily substance.’ Like the
plants, men take in food, assimilate it, grow; man, therefore, lives and is a ‘living bodily
substance.’ Like the brutes, man has external and internal senses which enable him to obtain
sensory knowledge; man, therefore, is a ‘sentient living bodily substance.’ Unlike chemicals,
plants, and brutes, men think, reason; man, therefore, is a rational, sentient, living, bodily
substance. These features are not sensed or imagined, but they are true features of man, and they
are the features which all men have in common and which are essential to man as man,
irrespective of all individual differences. Now, a ‘sentient, living, bodily substance’ is termed an
‘animal,’ and man is thus defined as a rational animal. The individualizing features have been
left aside, and the common, essential features have been grouped together. By means of this
process of selective attention we have ‘abstracted’ the common, essential features, ignoring,
though not denying, the differentiating qualities, such as ‘white,’ ‘black,’ ‘tawny,’ ‘straight,’
‘crooked,’ etc. The result was obtained by a process of abstraction. This definition of ‘man’ as a
‘rational animal’ can now be applied in all truth to every single man, because this thought-
content is present in each individual; we are thus able to say ‘George Berkeley is a rational
animal.’ But it can also be extended in its application to all men taken collectively as a group, as
when we state that ‘Man is a rational animal.’ Now we have generalized the features common to
all men, applying the thought-content ‘rational animal’ to all men as a class and to each
individual of that class. We have performed the mental operation of a generalizing abstraction,
and through it we have arrived at an idea of ‘man’ quite different from that of Berkeley.
Berkeley’s so-called ‘idea’ of man is no idea of all, but a sense-image. Ours is a true idea or
concept, namely, the intellectual representation of ‘man.’”13

James Daniel Collins’s Critique of Berkeley’s Nominalist Rejection of Abstract

General Ideas

“Abstraction and the Sensible Thing. From his study of Descartes and Malebranche,
Locke and Newton, Berkeley familiarized himself thoroughly with the main trends in
seventeenth-century philosophy. His own position grew out of an attempt to describe experience
from the accepted starting point in the mind, having its own ideas as its direct objects. The main
question raised by his predecessors concerned how the human mind can bridge the chasm
13
C. BITTLE, The Whole Man, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1956, pp. 279-281.

4
between its own ideas and the surrounding world, so that we can have some objective certainty
about real things. The answers given to this question were quite divergent and not very
convincing to Berkeley, who viewed them in the light of the rising tide of popular, eighteenth-
century skepticism. The skeptical currents of thought would not be so strong, he reasoned, if
there were not a fundamental weakness about all the previous constructive answers. Berkeley did
not challenge the accepted mentalistic starting point of philosophical inquiry. But he did bring
criticism to bear upon the way in which the main philosophical question itself had been posed.
For, to ask how a passage can be made from mind to things, is to suppose that sensible things are
really different from our ideas or mental objects. Berkeley’s entire philosophical effort stems
from a removal of this supposition. He reformulated the major philosophical problem, to read:
how can a coherent account of the world be given, if the idea or mental object and the real
sensible thing are one and the same? If a successful explanation of sensible reality can be
furnished, under this condition, then the skeptics will forever be quieted. For, there will be no
further need to search behind our ideas for another world, to which our ideas must be shown to
conform.

“Berkeley stated this fresh hypothesis in what he termed his New Principle. In one of his
early philosophical commentaries, he gave a succinct and comprehensive formulation of the New
Principle: ‘Existence is percipi or percipere or velle, i.e., agere.’14 This statement shows that, for
Berkeley, the crucial issue in philosophy concerns the meaning of existence. His answer was that
‘existence’ has two distinct and even opposed meanings. It signifies either the state of being
perceived or the act of perceiving, which is basically the same as willing and acting. To-be-
perceived is the kind of existence belonging to the sensible thing: its entire to-be consists in its
to-be-perceived. Hence there is no real distinction between the real sensible thing and the mental
object, called the idea of the sensible thing. But there is a real distinction between the sensible
existent or mental object and the perceiver. To-perceive is the sort of existence proper to the
mind: its to-be is that of an active, perceiving, and willing principle. Hence sensible things and
minds are the sole existents – and sensible things are identical with the ideas of sense possessed
by minds.

“In order to clear the path for acceptance of his New Principle, Berkeley had to perform a
negative and a positive task. (1) The negative step was taken in his critique of abstraction. This
move was dictated by the obvious retort that any Lockean thinker would give to Berkeley’s
theory of sensible existence. The Lockean reply would be a distinction between the thing’s
mental presence and its real existence, as a movable, extended substance, outside the mind. Since
the force of this distinction depends upon our ability to abstract sensible existence, motion, and
extension from the condition of being perceived, Berkeley was obliged to criticize Locke’s
theory of abstraction and abstract, general ideas. (2) The positive move was to offer a new
definition of the sensible thing, in line with the requirements of the New Principle. Since
Berkeley agreed with Descartes and Locke that the idea is the formal and direct object of the
mind, his strategy was to show that a starting point in ideas must lead to such a definition of the
sensible thing as would confirm his theory of sensible existence. Once these two steps were
taken, there was nothing to prevent Berkeley from indicating the metaphysical consequences of

14
Philosophical Commentaries, 429-429a. All references in Berkeley are to the Luce-Jessop edition of The Works of
George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne; cf. I, 53 (italics and punctuation added). This edition is referred to hereafter as
Works.

5
his New Principle. It issues in an empirical immaterialism, in which material substance is
eliminated and the totality of human experience is explained in function of the infinite mind,
finite minds, ideas, and notions.

“Berkeley’s Critique of Abstraction. Although Berkeley decries the learned dust raised by
‘the Schoolmen, those great masters of abstraction,’15 his real target is Locke. As representative
of what is commonly meant by an abstract, general idea, he quotes the passage (see above, p.
340) in which Locke describes the idea of a triangle. Berkeley gives practically a word-for-word
commentary on this text, which was so familiar to his contemporaries.

“First, he bids us notice how Locke stresses the difficulty of forming these abstract ideas.
It follows that abstraction is not an easy process, one to be performed unthinkingly by children.
But does there ever come a time, even in our mature years, when we deliberately set about to
frame these ideas? And even if we should decide to do so, can we actually form such an idea as
Locke’s triangle? As a good empiricist, Berkeley invites us to try to picture to ourselves the
general idea of a triangle that is ‘neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon; but all and none of
these at once.’ He challenges us to try to visualize the general, abstract idea of color, which is
neither white nor black, nor any other particular shade, but something abstracted from all of
these. Little wonder that Locke should confess that the abstract, general idea contains
inconsistent elements. For his own part, Berkeley reports that he always has in mind some
particular shape or color, and never entertains a bare, abstract idea of shape as such or color as
such.

“Berkeley was unable, however, to press this psychological argument very far. For it
rested on the assumption that an idea is only a percept or image, and that abstraction is a process
of picturing or concrete visualization of the object. If this assumption is admitted, it is obvious
that some concrete image must always be kept in mind. But the Cartesians would reply that, at
the philosophical level of clear and distinct ideas, abstraction is act of purely intellectual
apprehension, which cannot be confined to the conditions of sense imagery. Furthermore, the
psychological argument may prove too much, if it implies a denial of universal meaning. For
them, philosophical inference is rendered impossible, and even a system of empirical
immaterialism is ruled out.

“These considerations forced Berkeley to introduce a capital distinction between the

abstractness and the generality of ideas. He sought a way to reject the former trait and yet retain
the latter. The abstract character of ideas is founded on two pretended operations of the mind: (a)
the claim to be able to frame an ‘absolute, positive nature or conception of any thing,’16 such an
idea of motion as such, apart from any particular kind of motion, and yet corresponding to them
all; (b) the claim to be able to separate mentally those traits or qualities that cannot possibly exist
separately, such as the idea of motion as such, apart from the body that moves. These two

15
The Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, 17 (Works, II, 35). This Introduction to the Principles (Works,
II, 25-40) is the locus classicus for Berkeley’s attack on abstraction. See also An Essay Towards a New Theory of
Vision, 122-131 (Works, I, 220-24).
16
The Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, 15 (Works, II, 33-34); the Scholastic manuals familiar to
Locke sometimes called this the direct universal. On the two distinctive acts of abstraction proper, cf. loc. cit., 7-10
(Works, II, 27-30).

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operations constitute what Berkeley termed abstraction proper. He remained unalterably
opposed to abstraction proper and to the abstract ideas, which are its supposed outcome. For,
each of these abstracting operations would provide an entering wedge against the validity of his
New Principle. Thus, the Cartesians would separate extension and motion as such from their
particular modes, and would then give a clear and distinct definition of extended substance and
thereby prove its extramental reality. And the Lockeans would separate sensible existence as
such from the conditions of perception, and would then attribute it to the extramental material
substance. Both of these procedures illustrate what Berkeley regarded as a vicious sort of
abstraction, since they disintegrate the concrete unity of the sensible existent. (a) If the New
Principle holds good, then to grasp the absolute nature of an isolated quality as an object of
perception is equivalent to attributing to it a real, sensible existence. The real existence of motion
or extension, as general natures, is in violation of the commonly accepted principle that only the
concrete individual can exist. (b) According to the New Principle, it is impossible to separate or
abstract the esse from the percipi of a sensible thing. Hence it is only verbally possible to treat of
a sensible existent independently of the condition of its being perceived by the mind. Berkeley
regarded abstraction proper as a psychological impossibility, only because it is basically a
metaphysical and epistemological impossibility, granted the truth of his New Principle.

“Nevertheless, he agreed with Locke that generality of meaning is required for scientific
knowledge and demonstration. Having eliminated the abstractness of our ideas, he now
attempted to defend their general signification. Of the two operations invoked by Locke in
explanation of general ideas – separating and relating – Berkeley rejected the first, insofar as it is
a process of abstraction proper. Still, he admitted a legitimate kind of mental separating or
considering, ‘as when I consider some particular parts or qualities separated from others, with
which though they are united in some object, yet, it is possible they may really exist without
them.’17 Thus the eye or the nose can be considered apart from the rest of the human body, since
they may also exist in some other animal. Berkeley was quite willing to call this sort of
separating or considering an abstraction, but in an improper sense. It never terminates in
abstract, general ideas but only in nonabstract, general ideas. He made this concession, since it
did not involve the crucial separation of an absolute nature from particular things, or of sensible
existence from the condition of being perceived.

“In further explanation of the general significance of ideas, Berkeley developed Locke’s
doctrine on the relating of particular ideas. Berkeley called this process a considering by the
mind. Although the mind can never frame an abstract idea of an absolute nature, it does have the
power to confine its attention to only certain aspects of the concrete, particular idea. In thinking
about an isosceles triangle, for instance, the mind can focus its consideration upon this figure,
precisely so far as forth as it is triangular, without paying special attention to the equality of the
angles or sides. The idea remains particular in its own formal nature, but it becomes general in
its signification, since it indifferently connotes other particulars of the same sort. It can now be
taken as a sign for all other particular triangular figures, toward which it stands in the functional
relation of representative sign to represented objects. Similarly, although the mind never attains
the abstract, general idea of man, as an absolute nature, it can consider Peter precisely insofar as
he is a man. Although his particular traits are not evacuated, attention is directed toward those

17
Ibid., Introduction, 10 (Works, II, 29-30). For Berkeley’s behind-the-scenes development of the distinction
between abstraction and considering, cf. Philosophical Commentaries, 254, 318, 440 (Works, I, 32, 39, 54).

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aspects in him which hold equally true of any other particular men. The universality of meaning
does not reside in an abstracted common nature but in the function of considering certain
particular traits as a sign, applicable to several other individual objects.

“Berkeley’s explanation of general ideas modifies Locke, in two important respects. First,
he bypasses the abstract, common nature, so that there is generality of meaning, without
abstractness of an ideal nature. Locke had already remarked that the abstract, general idea is
imperfect and cannot exist. But Berkeley’s New Principle now assures him that the inability of
this presumed absolute nature to exist is sure proof that it cannot be perceived at all by the mind,
since to exist and to be perceived are correlative in the sensible order. Locke was led astray by
the peculiarities of language into supposing that an abstract general, mental entity corresponds to
an abstract, general name. It is only in a verbal way that one can infer the existence of abstract,
general ideas, because there are abstract, general names. Berkeley holds that words stand for
particular operations, attitudes, and ideas of the mind, rather than for abstract, general ideas. In
the second place, Berkeley amends the nature of the real particular things, to which any general
idea is related by signification. The other particular ideas to which a general idea relates, are
themselves the sensible existents, and bear no further reference beyond themselves, as far as
sensible things are concerned. Such a reference is impossible to think about, and hence
impossible to reach through abstraction, since the only to-be proper to sensible things is their to-
be-perceived. On both these counts, Berkeley’s corrections are dependent upon the validity of
the New Principle itself.

“Even after this emendation of Locke, however, Berkeley does not escape from his
predecessor’s basic difficulties. Lockean abstraction is not a realistic process, since it involves a
manipulation of ideas, rather than a penetration of the intelligible structure of the real. Berkeley’s
remedy is to identify the percept with the sensible existent. He formally raises the question of
how we can know that a meaning holds true for several particular ideas, considered now as
particular sensible existents. His answer, however, consists in a repetition of his description of
the operations of considering and signifying, whereas the question requires an explanation of
how and why these operations can validly be performed. How can the mind determine which
other particulars are, in fact, ‘ideas of the same sort,’ so that it can be sure that a certain set of
traits ‘indifferently denotes...[and] holds equally true of them all?’18 To reply that the mind
attends only to those features which can be found in all other particular men, triangles, or
motions, merely restates the question of how we know that other particulars can be signified
together, as being human, triangular, or mobile. On what grounds is the mind justified in
attending to a certain group of traits and in making no mention of others? What guides the
operation of considering, so that it views Peter precisely so far forth as he is a man, and carefully
distinguishes these factors from the ones peculiar to himself?

“The latter questions must remain unanswered in the Berkeleyan system, since a
definitive answer would involve a dilemma. Either Locke’s absolute nature must be reinstated
(with the consequence, for Berkeley, that this object of perception also has sensible existence) or
else the barrier of mentalism must be broken through, and the admission made that the mind
grasps certain similar traits in the essential natures of things, whose mode of real existence is
distinct from the intentional being of the idea (with a resultant undermining of the New
18
The Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, 11, 12 (Works, II, 31, 32).

8
Principle). Since neither alternative is acceptable to Berkeley, he prefers simply to point to the
fact of general meaning, without trying to supply the adequate metaphysical and epistemological
bases for the fact. His removal of Lockean abstraction still leaves the problem of the relation
between general meanings and particular existents fundamentally unresolved.”19

J. T. Barron’s Critique of Nominalism

Giving various arguments against nominalism in his Elements of Epistemology, Joseph

Thomas Barron writes: “We have concepts in the strict sense of the term. We prove this by
introspection which shows us that there is a difference between concepts and percepts, or images.

“First argument. (1) Concepts represent the nature or essence of whatness of a thing,
prescinding from all its individuating notes. The percept and the image do not represent the
nature or essence, but only the external qualities of an object, such as its color and size. They
represent an object more or less concrete, with certain individuating characteristics, in a definite
situation etc.

“(2) The concept is universal, since it is capable of representing equally all members of a
class. This is because it represents the essential characteristics, and these alone, of all the
members of a class. For example, the concept ‘horse’ is predicable of all horses, no matter what
their size or kind of color may be. The image, whether it is distinct or obscure, is not universal; it
can picture only one individual, of some particular kind and color. If we think ‘horse’ and note
the accompanying imagery we see at once that the concept is not to be identified with the
imagery since the concept can be applied to all horses indiscriminately, while the image can be
attributed only to a horse which it resembles.

“(3) The concept is immutable and necessary; it cannot be otherwise than it is. If we add
to it, or subtract any note from it, it no longer represents its object. The image, on the other hand,
is unstable, contingent, and fluctuating.

“This can be verified by introspection. My concept of a man has the two notes of
rationality and animality. If my concept is to be a concept of a man it must contain these two
notes and these alone. If I add a new essential note, or if I take away either animality or
rationality, I no longer have the concept of a man. In other words, my concept is unchangeable
and fixed. But the same is not true of images. They change even in the same person as
introspection shows. The same concept will be accompanied by varying imagery in the same
person at different times.

“(4) Concepts may be perfectly clear but the concomitant imagery may be extremely
hazy. My concept of a million-sided figure is clear – I know what such a figure is. The same is
true of my concepts of minute things; my concept of a cell that is one one-thousandth of an inch
in diameter is perfectly clear. But is the accompanying imagery as clearly defined? What is the
verdict of introspection? If the concept is clear and the image is hazy they cannot be identified.

19
J. COLLINS, A History of Modern European Philosophy, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1961, pp. 368-374.

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 “Second argument. Appealing again to introspection I find that my concept is not a sense
datum, but that it is a thought-object apprehended apart from all sensory characteristics. Granting
that I am conscious of an image when I think ‘horse,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘triangle,’ it is not about these
sensuous images that I enunciate the judgments. ‘The horse is an animal,’ ‘Virtue is good,’ ‘A
triangle is a figure.’ I certainly am not speaking of ‘the (pictured) horse,’ ‘the (pictured) virtue,’
or ‘the (pictured) triangle.’ In making these judgments I mean ‘all horses,’ ‘all virtue,’ and ‘all
triangles.’ The image, to repeat, can only picture the individual, and if we had no concepts we
could make no universal judgments.

“Third argument. Nominalists admit that the name or term is universal, but they hold that
there is no mental correlate which is really universal corresponding to it. But it would seem that
the term can have no universal significance unless its mental correlate is universal, because
language derives its significance from thought – not thought from language. The term itself,
whether written or oral, is concrete. It is general or universal because it is the expression of an
idea that is universal. If there is no concept of which it is the expression it is a more concrete
symbol of experience. Hence its universality is given to it by the concept for which it stands. The
admission of nominalists that there are universal terms is thus an argument against their theory.

“Our position is strengthened by the results of psychological investigation. Psychologists

have established two facts concerning the relation between image and thought: (1) that different
persons differ considerably as regards the images that accompany their thought on one and the
same objects; (2) that images vary in the same person. Hardly anyone experiences the same
images on successive occasions when thinking of the same thing.

“If our images were our concepts how could words be used as vehicles of thought? If our
universal terms stand for varying and unstable images how could the same words convey the
same meaning to different people? For example, the term ‘animal’ may arouse fifty different
images in fifty different people. Yet all understand the word in the same way – it has the same
meaning for all fifty. It is clear that if the images were the thought there could not be this
unanimity in understanding. As a matter of fact I know that when I make use of universal terms I
do not manifest my images to others; I manifest my thoughts to them. I know this because they
understand me.

“Objections of Nominalists. First objection. This objection may be stated in the words of
Berkeley: ‘I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from
the rest of the body. But, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some peculiar shape or
colour. Likewise the idea of a man I frame to myself must be either of a white, or black, or a
tawny, a straight or a crooked, a tall or a low, or a middle-aged man.20

“This objection exhibits the fundamental weakness of the nominalist position – a

confusion of image and concept. It is true that we cannot imagine an abstract object. This does
not prove, however, that we cannot think an abstract concept. We cannot form an abstract or
universal image. The correct inference from this fact is that the nominalist inventory of our
mental acts is incomplete – they have overlooked the existence of concepts. When I think ‘man’

20
G. BERKELEY, The Principles of Human Knowledge, in The Works of George Berkeley, vol. 1, edited by A. C.
Fraser, Oxford, 1901, p. 142.

10
I have a concept which, if realized in an individual, will be either a white or black or tawny man,
but the concept represents neither color nor size, but only human nature. And this is evident from
that fact that I can predicate the concept ‘man’ of a being who is of any color or size, provided he
has the essentials of man, i.e., provided he is a rational animal. Hence my concept of a man is not
in itself a concept of a black man or a white man, or of any particular kind of a man; it is
universal because it is a concept that can be applied to all men. But, as Berkeley says, we have
no universal images. Therefore we have universal concepts.

“Second objection. There is no difference between the concept and the image because the
latter can be, and often is, as universal as the former. Images of things which are frequently
sensed or imagined become blurred; they become less clear and less vivid. They lose their
definiteness and gradually become generalized and generic, and in this state they serve as a
mental equivalent for different things of the same kind.

“Granting the existence of these generic images, a little reflection shows that this
objection is another telling argument against nominalism. The image, we are told, becomes
generic or blurred the more frequently we sense or imagine the object it represents. The reverse
is true of the concept. If I had seen but one triangle my image of it would be definite and sharply
defined, while my concept of it might not be clear and adequate. The more triangles I see the less
clear and definite my image becomes, while my concept becomes more adequate and clearer.
This proves that the generic image is not the concept.

“Third objection. This objection is based on the existence of ‘type’ or composite

photographs. By superposition of negatives photographers can obtain the so-called ‘type’ picture.
In this way they give us pictures of historical personages reconstructed from likenesses on coins,
monuments, and the like, as well as pictures of various types of people. It is claimed that
something akin to this process takes place in the mental process wherein a generic image is
developed.

“A composite or generic image is not universal. A type picture is the mean or average of
the different photographs of which it is composed, and because it is an average it cannot be
universal, since averages are concrete and particular. All averages are of the same nature and
kind as the things of which they are the average. So, too, with the generic image. It is an average
and as such partakes of the singularity and concreteness of the various images which enter into
its composition. No matter how generic or hazy the image may be it lacks the essential
characteristic of universality.21

“The answer of nominalism to the question of the existence of concepts does too much
violence to the facts revealed by introspection and hence it must be rejected. For those who
maintain a sensistic theory of knowledge it is a logical position to sustain. Once the existence of
a suprasensible faculty of knowledge is denied, nominalism follows. Nominalists have been
ingenious in their attempts to reduce all knowledge to sense knowledge, but they have failed.”22

21
See STOUT, Analytic Psychology, vol. 2, p. 180.
22
J. T. BARRON, op. cit., pp. 57-62.

11
 Bittle’s Critique of Nominalism

Bittle critiques nominalism in his Reality and the Mind as follows: “Nominalism is the
reverse of ultra-realism: it denies the universal altogether. The essences or natures are not extra-
mentally universal, not are our ideas intra-mentally universal. Our ideas are as individual as the
things we perceive with our senses. Modern empiricists consider our intellectual knowledge to be
nothing more than a refined sort of sense knowledge; this being so, it is obvious that our ideas
cannot really be ‘universal,’ representing a content which is strictly ‘one-in-many,’ but must be
as individual in character as the sense-image itself. At best, we can have ‘general images’ or
‘composite images,’ a product of several singular sense-images fused together into a vague,
indefinite representation, something like the composite photograph resulting from a number of
superimposed plates. The only thing that is strictly universal is the name, or word, and that is
used merely as a ‘label’ to designate a number of objects grouped according to some arbitrary
pattern. Thus names or words, nominalists say, designate and represent individuals or a
collection of individuals, but never represent anything which is mentally applicable to a class as a
whole and to each individual belonging to that class. But in this they are wrong. A little
reflection will prove this.

“Names and words are signs and have a meaning; they are signs of ideas and they derive
their meaning from the content of the ideas for which they stand. And since the ideas stand for
things, names and words are also used to designate things. Now, if we can show that names and
words are used to designate something which is conceived by the intellect as being ‘one-
common-to-many,’ we thereby prove that we really have universal ideas. And that is precisely
what takes place.

“We have names which stand for singular objects: ‘Peter is a man,’ ‘Homer was a poet,’
‘Plato was a philosopher.’ Here the subjects represent a single thing. Other names stand for
collective objects: ‘The library is large,’ ‘the army marches on,’ ‘the herd is scattered,’ ‘the
nation is in revolt,’ ‘the city is celebrating.’ Here the subjects represent a number of individuals
taken together as a group, but the statements do not apply to the individual members of the
group. We have, however, many names and words which apply to a class and to each member of
the class. Take the word ‘man.’ By ‘man’ we mean a ‘rational animal.’ This word represents the
class as a class and the individual human beings belonging to the class. If we say ‘Man is
mortal,’ just what do we mean? We mean that ‘all men’ taken together as a class ‘are mortal’ and
‘each individual man’ taken separately ‘is mortal.’ So, too, when science states that ‘The living
cell has immanent action,’ it does not mean that a single cell or a mere collection of cells, but ‘all
cells’ as a class and as individuals ‘have immanent action.’ Again, zoology tells us that ‘the
horse is a mammal.’ The word ‘horse’ here does not designate a single animal like Man-o’War,
nor a collection of animals like a herd, but the whole class of equines and each member of that
class. Such statements show plainly that these subjects have a content which are conceived as
‘one-common-to-many.’ Anc since words and names stand for ideas, our ideas have a content
which is conceived as ‘one-common-to-many.’ That, however, is what is meant by a universal
idea. We have, then, ideas which are not merely singular or collective, but truly universal.

“Nominalists admit the universality of our names and words, but deny the universality of
the ideas for which they stand. N. O. Losskü refutes the contention of the nominalists that the

12
name gives rise to the class. He says: ‘The contention is that the grouping of things into classes is
not in any way determined by the properties of the things themselves, but is due to names. The
name gives rise to a class of things, and it is not the class of things that attracts a name to itself.
A rejoinder at once suggests itself, which, in spite of its seeming to be almost ironical, is
nevertheless very much to the point. If the grouping of things into classes is determined by
names – understanding by a name not a universal element but something created afresh in every
single act of utterance – how is it that a name is never associated with groups of heterogeneous
things, such as tiger, coffee pot, candle, and birch tree, but always with groups of homogeneous
objects – homogeneous not merely in the sense of being connected with one and the same word?
The only answer is that we associate with a name not anything which we choose, but only things
which resemble one another. This, however, means that the name merely assists in the final
crystallization of a general idea, and that the essential condition of things being grouped into
classes is the resemblance between them.’23

“The fact is, that the intellect recognizes this resemblance of objects among themselves,
groups the many into one idea, which is now universal, and uses a word or name to designate the
idea. Only because we have universal ideas, have we also universal names. If nominalism were
correct, we should have no universal names, since we have no universal ideas. To have universal
names without universal ideas for which they stand, is contradictory. But we have universal
names; consequently, we have universal ideas. Nominalism must be rejected, because it
maintains that names and words can have a universal significance without deriving this
significance from the only source from which it can be derived, namely, from the universal ideas
of which they are the signs. The significance of any sign depends on the significance of the thing
signified. Hence, the universal significance of the name depends on the universal significance of
the idea. Ideas are thus universal, and nominalism is false.”24

Coffey’s Critique of Sensist Nominalism

Peter Coffey critiques sensist-empiricist nominalism, “which attempts to explain all

human cognitive activities in terms of sense cognition...While differing more or less on the
constructive side of their theories of cognition,” the sensist-empiricist nominalists “all agree in
denying to the human mind any cognitive power of a higher order than that of sense, or any
apprehension of a mental object that is properly speaking universal in its capacity of
representing reality. They speak, of course, of ‘intellect,’ ‘conception,’ ‘concepts,’ ‘thought,’
‘abstraction,’ ‘generalization,’ etc., but these they hold to differ not in kind, but only in degree,
from organic sense perception, imagination imagery, percepts, etc.,—explaining the former
rather as refinements or complex functions and products of the latter. Neither do they deny the
existence of some sort or other of a mental correlate, some sort or other of a conscious, cognitive
process and mental term, corresponding to the common name or general logical term of
language. But inasmuch as they deny to this mental term or object of awareness all genuine
universality, maintaining that there is in the mind or present to the mind no object which is ‘one-
common-to-many,’ and thereby confine universality to the verbal sign or name, they are properly
described as nominalists. Since, moreover, as we shall see in dealing with sense perception, these
philosophers generally hold that knowledge does not and cannot extend beyond mental states,

23
N. O. LOSSKÜ, The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge, Macmillan, 1919, p. 287.
24
C. BITTLE, Reality and the Mind, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1936, pp. 250-253.

13
phenomena, or appearances, or reach to the extramental, they must be set down as denying the
real objective validity of knowledge.

“Hume was among the first to teach that a universal idea25 is only a singular idea
associated with a general term, i.e. a term which has been habitually associated in our experience
with other and similar singular ideas so that the mention of it easily revives these in our
imagination.26 We can dissociate any concrete sense impression into separate sense-elements by
simple variation and successive concentration of our attention on the various parts of the
complex whole. This is what they call ‘abstraction.’ Then by repetition of similar concrete
experiences in consciousness we can fuse together again the similar separated elements, thus
producing a sort of composite mental image which is made to signify or stand for the similar
concrete experiences. This composite generic image27 is what they call the ‘universal idea or
concept,’ and its formation they describe as ‘universalization’ or ‘generalization.’28 To this
composite generic image, which of itself represents only the singular, concrete, actual content
which it brings into consciousness,29 we attach a common name or general term, associated by
custom with the individual experiences fused together in the image, and thus make the image
universal in its capacity of signifying or standing for such experiences—universale in
representando. To the ‘habitual association’ emphasized by Hume, Taine ascribes the existence
of a mental tendency to attach a common name to the repeated similar perceptions;30 and this he
holds to be the sole mental correlate of the general logical term. Ribot finds the mental correlate
of the ‘significative’ or ‘meaning’ function of general names in an unconscious mental
concomitant of the verbal image in consciousness,—which unconscious element he describes as
‘stored potential knowledge,’31 or ‘a hidden fund or capital of organized, latent knowledge.’

“If, then, as these few illustrative extracts would indicate, the ‘universal’ is held to be
merely a verbal sign attached to a mental correlate; if this latter is unconscious; or if, being
conscious, it reveals merely a series of individual, concrete experiences, or at best a concrete,
composite, individual mental product of their amalgamation,—it is clear that nominalists have
suppressed the genuine epistemological problem of the real objective validity of universal
concepts only by substituting for it the spurious psychological problem of accounting for the
universal illusion whereby men have believed that in addition to concrete sense percepts and
concrete sense images they possessed genuine universal concepts. It is to solve this problem that
they have recourse to the theories of attaching the ‘common name’ to ‘composite images,’ or
‘mental tendencies’ springing from association, or ‘unconscious,’ ‘latent,’ ‘potential’ sources of
knowledge. But the psychological problem to which they set themselves is a spurious one; for

25
The word ‘idea’ is used by all these writers in the widest possible sense to include any and every cognitive state of
consciousness.
26
Cf. HUME, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I., Part I., Sect. vii.
27
Cf. SULLY, The Human Mind, p. 346,—apud MAHER, op. cit., p. 277.
28
Cf. MAHER, op. cit., pp. 272-8 ; JEANNIÈRE, op. cit., p. 454.
29
Cf. MERCIER, op. cit., § 124, p. 290.
30
“When we explore what takes place whenever we extract a general idea from a number of perceptions, we find
merely the formation, assertion, and preponderance of a tendency which demands expression, and, among other
expressions, a name.” —TAINE, De L’Intelligence (1870), t. i., p. 41, “An abstract and general idea is a name,
nothing but a name, the name understood as signifying a series of similar facts, or a class of similar individuals.”—
Ibid., t. ii., p. 259.
31
Revue philos., no. 1891, t. xxxii., pp. 386, 376. Cf. MERCIER, op. cit., § 137, p. 357 n.

14
the mental correlate of the ‘common name’ is certainly not unconscious:32 the meaning of the
‘common name,’ that which it implies, that in virtue of which it is applicable to an indefinite
multitude of sense individuals, is something very definitely present in consciousness. Neither is
it a mental tendency induced by association of individual perceptions with the name; nor is it a
composite generic image, though this too may be and usually is present in consciousness. The
mental correlate of the ‘common name’ is none of these; it is a perfectly definite object,
conceived in the abstract not by sense or imagination, but by thought, and apprehended by
thought through a reflex act of comparison as indefinitely realizable in individual sense data, as
‘one-common-to-many’ (77) ; in other words, it is a genuinely universal concept (73).

“It is this object—apprehended by thought in the data of sense—that forms the content or
connotation of the ‘common name,’ that is meant or implied by the name, and is the ground of
the applicability of the name to all individuals in which the object is apprehended.

“The fact that the presence of these abstract and universal concepts or thought-objects in
consciousness is always accompanied by, and psychologically associated with, the simultaneous
presence of concrete and individual sense-percepts or objects of imagination in consciousness,—
combined with the superior vividness and force of sensation as compared with thought,—gives a
certain amount of plausibility to the superficial psychological analysis whereby nominalists have
sought to disprove the existence of the universal concept as a term of intellectual cognition or
thought, as a mental object that is sui generis and irreducible to any product or complex of
associated sense data. But a fuller and more searching psychological analysis of all our cognitive
activities has shown so clearly and convincingly the opposite and mutually irreducible characters
of the sense percept or imagination product on the one hand and the intellectual concept on the
other; and the profound difference between what objects or data of consciousness suggest by
psychological association and memory, and what they logically mean or imply for intellect,—
that we deem it superfluous in the present context to reproduce the arguments furnished by such
analysis.33 As a general criticism of the nominalist position the following few considerations will
suffice.

“1. Introspection reveals the presence in consciousness of a mental correlate of the

common name, a correlate of which the latter is the outward expression, and from which
therefore the latter derives its function of standing for an indefinite multitude of individuals. This
mental correlate introspection reveals to be not an individual sense datum, or a concrete portion
isolated from each of a number of similar sense data, but to be a mental object apprehended
apart from all the conditions of its actual existence in the similar sense data, but really in them
and predicable of them: and it is because the common name connotes or implies this abstract and
universal mental object that it can denote or stand for an indefinite multitude of the similar sense
data. Therefore universality is not merely or primarily in the name; it is also and primarily in the
mental term or object. And if some nominalists admit, as Sully seems to admit, that the mind can
attain to the conscious possession of an object which expresses what is indefinitely realizable in

32
“Ribot's first mistake is to see in this ‘potential’ mere sense elements, and his second is to make the universal
concept consist in this ‘potential ‘. ... As a rule we know what we say, and our ideas are not potential but actual.”—
PEIL-LAUBE, Theorie des concepts, p. 112.
33
Cf. authorities referred to above, § 73, p. 256, n. 2; also MAHER, op. cit., chap. xiv. ; JEANNIÈRE, op. cit., pp.
456-8; MERCIER, op. cit., § 124, pp. 289 90. Cf. infra, p. 320, n. 2.

15
individuals, and therefore stands for those in which it is de facto realized, – by this admission
such writers really abandon the nominalist position.

“2. The main contention of nominalism is that the verbal term or name alone is universal;
and that the mental correlate, being itself sensuous and individual, derives the only universality
we can ascribe to it from its uniform alliance with the name. But the verbal term or name can
have, of and in itself, no universal significance unless its mental correlate be itself a universal
mental term or object: since language derives its significance from thought, and not vice versa.
If, therefore, the human mind had no power of apprehending any mental term or object other
than a concrete, individual datum, or individual collection or fusion of such data; if it had no
power of apprehending an abstract and universal mental term or object, – then so far from the
common name conferring universality on the former sort of mental term, the common name
would be non-existent for us, it could could have no meaning for us: in a word, we should be,
like the lower animals, destitute of language, because like them we should be incapable of
thought as distinct from sensation.”34

Coffey’s Description and Critique of the Sensist and Positivist Theory of

“Abstraction” and “Generalization”

“There is no doubt that a series of partly similar sense perceptions,—e.g. of an individual

poplar, pine, ash, beech, chestnut, sycamore, oak, elm,—leaves in the imagination a vague,
blurred, fluctuating image of the successively recurring sense elements, e.g. of an ‘upright trunk
and spreading branches.’ But it is not this image that is universal: it cannot represent faithfully
any member of the class, or be made to stand for any member of the class.35 No one has brought
out more clearly than Taine the differences between the image and the concept.36 But, he
continues, we attach to the former a sign, i.e. a name,—e.g. the name ‘tree.’ This sign indicates
equally all the members of the class; it recalls them, and they recall it. Endowed with this double
capacity of recalling individuals and being recalled by them, the name is what we call the
general idea.37 The isolated extract or residue which forms the composite image, to which the
sign or name is attached, is, according to Taine, the result of abstraction; and the generalization
of it, its transformation into a ‘general idea,’ is simply the attaching of a name or sign to it,
whereby it stands for, and is recalled by, the individuals of the class. ‘Abstraction,’ then, for
Taine, means: ‘the power of isolating the elements of facts and considering them apart….This,
the most fruitful of all mental operations, proceeds by subtraction instead of addition; instead of
adding one experience to another it puts apart a portion of the former; ...it decomposes complex
data into simple data. ...It is this decomposition we seek when we inquire what is the nature of
the object; it is these components we seek when we endeavour to explore the inner being of a
thing. We call them forces, laws, causes, essences; …they are a portion, an extract, of the facts.

34
P. COFFEY, Epistemology, vol. 1, Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA, 1958, pp. 315-319.
35
Cf. MAHER, op. cit., pp. 238, 276-8.
36
Cf. De L’Intelligence, i., pp. 37-8: “Between the vague, mobile image suggested by the name and the definite,
fixed extract connoted by the name there is an abyss of difference. …It is impossible to imagine a polygon with ten
thousand sides. …After five or six, twenty or thirty sides, the image fails and dissolves: but my conception of a
myriagon is not an image of something vague, dissolving, falling to pieces, but of a perfectly complete and definite
object. What I imagine I imagine very imperfectly; what I conceive I conceive quite clearly: what I conceive,
therefore, is not what I imagine.”
37
Ibid., p. 26.

16
…This operation…instead of going from one fact to another, goes from the same to the same,
from the composite to its components. …It thus transcends observation and opens up a new task
for the sciences, defining their limits, revealing their resources and indicating their aim.’38

“Now the procedure which Taine is here describing is not geniune abstraction at all, but a
sense function which precedes and accompanies abstraction; and apart from the latter it has not,
and cannot have, the scientific value which he claims for it. What he is here describing is the
process of sense analogy and the resulting sense experience,—endowments shared in large
measure with man by the lower animals, whereas abstraction proper belongs to man alone.
Animals have the power of associating similar sense data, of attending to some portions of these
to the exclusion of others, and so of ‘remembering’ and ‘anticipating’ sense experiences. And so
has man in a higher degree. Man’s practical life is largely guided by such memories and
anticipations,—transitions from one individual sense datum to another similar individual datum.
‘Repeated sensations,’ Aristotle observed,39 ‘leave impressions in the memory, and these
engender experience.’ This experience, however, is of singulars; it goes from similar to similar
individual; nor can it possibly bring into consciousness the universal. But there accompanies it a
distinct mental activity of a totally different order, an activity ignored by Taine in common with
all sensists, but which is none the less very real and operative: the activity by which we grasp
mentally, in the singulars, but apart from individualizing conditions, something in them which
appears to our mind one and identical,—the abstract nature or essence, which we generalize by
apprehending it as common to all of them. This genuinely abstractive activity, as Aristotle
continues in the same context, ‘separates from the particular instances the one in relation with
the many, i.e. the universal. And the abstract, thus related to an indefinite multitude of
individuals, is a principle of science and of art.’

“First, then, we have the passage by analogy from similar to similar individual, a sense
process. Then we have the abstractive process proper, terminating in the apprehension of an
abstract type, applicable in its unity and identity to an indefinite multitude of particulars,—the
activity of a power distinct from, and superior to, that of sense. St. Thomas clearly distinguishes
the two activities indicated by Aristotle, for in his commentary he continues: ‘The experience
which apprehends something as common to the similar particular facts stored in memory
involves comparison of the particulars, — which already involves a certain exercise of reason.
Thus when we recollect that a certain herb has cured many people of fever we are said to gain
the experience that such an herb cures fever. But reason does not stop in the particulars: from the
many experienced particulars it abstracts a common element or object, on which it fixes, and
which it considers apart from the particulars whence it has been derived; and this common object
it sets up as a principle of science whether speculative or practical: as the physician does when
he apprehends a type or species of herb as capable of curing a type or species of disease.’40

“This process of apprehending in each and all of the manifold similar data of sense
consciousness the nature or essence which is in each and all of them, but of apprehending it apart
from all the individualizing conditions of its actual existence in them, and hence of apprehending
it as one and self-identical, and so of predicating it of each and all of them,—this is the real

38
Le Positivisme Anglais, pp. 114-18, apud MERCIER, op. cit., pp. 349-50.
39
ARISTOTLE, Anal. Post., II, c. 15. Cf. ST. THOMAS, in loc. Lect. XV.
40
ST. THOMAS, In Anal. Post., L. II, c. 15; Cf. Science of Logic, ii, § 208, pp. 33-4.

17
process of abstraction and generalization. It is wholly different from the process of concentrating
attention successively on the various parts of a complex sense datum, dissolving this into its
components,41 associating individual sense data in memory, forming composite images of them,
picturing in imagination this, that, or the other fancied combination of them. Such functions as
these latter, exercised by animals in common with man, can never attain to a universal mental
object, but only to an individual sense datum, or an individual portion of it, or an individual
synthesis of portions of such data, or a feeling of anticipation of the recurrence of some such
individual datum. So far from their opening up avenues to progress in science they do not yield
even the first essential mental requisite for rational knowledge, the universal mental object. Nor,
in the absence of this sort of object, can the attachment of a common name to any mental
correlate which reveals only an individual datum, make this correlate universal. For as a matter
of fact were our minds only endowed with the power of apprehending individual data we should
be incapable of using, or attaching any meaning to, the common names or terms of language.

“Taine claims for the human mind only a ‘higher degree’ of cognitive power than that
possessed by the lower animals, and contends that this higher degree of it in man consists in his
faculty of associating less obviously similar facts by attaching to them a common name. But it is
not to any isolated sense element, or to any composite, average image resulting from
composition of similar sense data, that we give the common name. The common name does not
mean or imply a collection or fusion of similar data, but the conceptually identical nature
41
Functions which have been improperly called abstraction (cf. MERCIER, op. cit., p. 352), and which would
perhaps be more properly described as extraction. The following passage from a modern French scholastic contrasts
very clearly the two procedures : “Between the abstraction of the senses and that of the intellect there is an abyss.
The two procedures are irreducible. The sense ‘abstract’ is not really an abstract but a concrete. In the complexus a,
b, c, d, e, f, which designate the qualities of a rose, you may fix your attention on a, but by doing so you merely
isolate it from the other elements; it remains really individual. It is the colour of the rose, for example; but it is still
the concrete individual colour, after as well as before the act of attention. You can paint it or photograph it. But the
abstract of the intellect cannot be depicted so; for it is stripped of its concrete, individual, material features [it is
abstract, intelligible colour: the essence or ‘quidditas’ of colour]. So, too, you may trace on the blackboard an
isosceles or a scalene triangle, but you cannot trace there the abstract triangle; which is neither this isosceles, nor this
scalene, nor any other particular triangle, but which nevertheless I clearly conceive and define as plane figure
bounded by three intersecting straight lines, abstracting from the particular way in which they intersect.
“Again, the conceptual abstract is capable of being generalized, while the perceptual, sensible abstract is not. For
this latter is essentially individual; and between individual and universal there is an irreducible antinomy. What is
individual cannot possibly be generalized without first having been freed by abstraction from all particular and
concrete features. The generic image is not a universal: it is an average. A composite portrait of Cleopatra has been
obtained by photography from a number of old coins. The beauty of the Egyptian queen was well-nigh indiscernible
in any of the worn and rusty images, but the composite portrait revealed a pleasing figure, restoring in some sort the
beauty of Cleopatra. The portrait was the optical mean or average of the medallion images. But an average has
nothing universal about it. An average is a perfectly concrete particular quantity lying somewhere among certain
other concrete particular quantities, to which it has certain concrete, particular relations: it is of the same order as
these other quantities. So, too, the generic image, if it is a mean or average among similar images, must also partake
of the singular, the individual, the concrete, in a measure or degree which will be the mean or average of the degrees
of singularity, individuality, and concreteness of the various other images. Hence neither de facto nor de jure does it
embrace all the individuals of a series. The generic image of ‘man’ reveals features which are not common to all
people: all people are not of middle age or medium size. But young and old, great and small, male and female, are
people; and it is only the mental representation which embraces all of them that has any title to be called universal.
Finally, the generic image is vague. The concept, on the contrary, is distinct. We cannot well imagine a myriagon,
we can very well conceive it. …The conceptual abstract of intellect is therefore irreducible to the perceptual abstract
of sense, and it reveals a chasm between man and beast.”— PEILLAUBE, Dict. de théol. cath., art. Ame, col. 1037
(apud JEANNIÈRE, op. cit., pp. 462-3).

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apprehended by thought in all of them. But apart from this altogether, and no matter what may be
the nature of the mental correlate of the common name, it is surely an inversion of plain facts to
contend that the significance of the common name as a universal, its function as a ‘sign,’ its
power of denoting an indefinite multitude of individuals, is communicated by the name to the
mental correlate. For as a matter of fact the name derives this power and function from the
mental correlate, of which it is the verbal expression. Our cognitive processes, and their
conscious, mental terms or objects, surely do not derive their intelligible meaning, their power of
signifying reality, from the terms or names of language, but vice versa. But then, if no form of
cognition attained to a universal mental term or object, a term or object which, as such, is ‘one-
in-many,’ implying the ‘one’ and applying to the ‘many,’—and nominalists contend that there is
none such,—then, obviously, verbal terms or names could not derive their significance from their
mental correlates; and the only alternative left to nominalists is that of maintaining the incredible
doctrine that language has its significance independently of cognition, and communicates this
significance to cognition.”42

Solution to the Problem of the Universals: Moderate Realism

The Solution to the Problem of the Universals: Moderate Realism. The real solution to
the problem of the universals, that which corresponds to reality, lies in the position of moderate
realism. Describing moderate realism, Maritain writes: “The moderate realist school,
distinguishing between the thing itself and its mode of existence, the condition in which it is
presented, teaches that a thing exists in the mind as a universal, in reality as an individual.
Therefore that which we apprehend by our ideas as a universal does indeed really exist, but only
in the objects themselves and therefore individuated – not as a universal. For example, the
human nature found alike in Peter, Paul and John really exists, but it has no existence outside
the mind, except in these individual subjects and as identical with them; it has no separate
existence, does not exist in itself.”43

Sanguineti argues the case for moderate realism in two steps: “a) Firstly, we show that
common names express universal concepts. Common names do not signify concrete images or
concrete actions, but universal and intelligible essences. The signs with which animals
communicate with one another always have a material and concrete content. They may
sometimes give the impression of universality, but this is because some animals can associate
images and other sensible signs with one another (when the dog hears a certain sound, it ‘knows’
it is going to eat). On the other hand, words are signs of an act of understanding; they transmit
intelligible meaning. For example, when a man hears the term ‘relation,’ he does not understand
a concrete relation, but the essence of relation as such. When he grasps the meaning of ‘circle,’
he is not thinking of the circle on the blackboard but of the nature of the circle as such. The
concept of a circle is not material; it is not an image and it cannot be localized in a material
place; and yet, it is not something vague: it has a very precise intelligible meaning that is
applicable to every circle that we draw or imagine. Common names, therefore, express universal
concepts.

42
P. COFFEY, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 319-324.
43
J. MARITAIN, op. cit., p. 120.

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 “b) Secondly, we show that concepts signify a real nature. When we speak of a ‘parrot,’
a ‘chair,’ or an ‘oath,’ we are referring to a certain perfection or essence which is found in
several individuals. These words do not signify something only in our mind; otherwise, there
would be no such thing as extramental reality. All chairs have a common structure or form which
is materialized in every chair that exists. The mind understands this form by abstracting it from
concrete chairs. What we understand by ‘chair’ is not something added to this particular chair: it
is precisely what this object called chair is. When we point to an object and ask ‘What is it?’ our
intention is not to find out ‘what it is called,’ though the reply to the former means giving the
reply to the latter. If the names of things did not signify the being of things – what things are - ,
they would only point to what we think about things or what we do with them. Hence, concepts
signify real natures.”44

44
J. J. SANGUINETI, op. cit., pp. 43-44. Joseph Thomas Barron writes: “Moderate Realism. Distinction Between
the Senses and the Reason. Introspection clearly evidences the distinction between our higher and lower cognitional
powers. Through the senses we become aware of particular things. For example, through the sense of sight I see this
or that particular object, possessing a certain size, shape, and color, existing in this place at this time. If we touch an
object, the resistance we encounter is this resistance, and if we strike it we hear this sound. Whenever we sense a
reality, it is always endowed with individuality – it always has specific individuating notes. But reflection tells us
that we have another kind of knowledge which differs widely from sense knowledge. It is not a knowledge of the
particular and concrete, but of the general and abstract. I can, for example, think of a book which is totally different
from this book I now sense, and which has none of its individuating characteristics. This new thought is no longer
bound up with this particular book. It is applicable, as I can see by reflection, to any number of individual books. Its
object is not a particular object but a universal object. Furthermore my senses do not tell me what things are; they do
not apprehend the essence or whatness of things. But I seemingly do know what things are; I know not only the
qualities of things but I also know what things are in themselves; I know their natures. Thus my senses alone do not
tell me this is a book. They report color, size, shape, etc., but I know it is a book, proving thereby that I have a kind
of knowledge which is not sense knowledge.
“Again, I know what is meant by such notions as justice, hope, causality, knowledge, none of which I can sense.
None of these can be perceived through a sense organ, yet I can and do know them. Moreoever, the senses have not
the power of reflection. They cannot make their data the objects of their own examination. But the power of
reflection is a fact, and this points also to a difference between sense knowledge and a higher kind of knowledge.
Then there are our judicial and ratiocinative powers. These cannot be allocated in the senses. From a comparison of
the conceptual, judicial, and ratiocinative aptitudes of the intellect with the functioning of the senses we see that
there is a radical difference between the senses and the intellect.
“But while we differentiate the one from the other, and while we see they are irreducible to each other, we must
not think that though distinct they are separate. Intellect and sense do not function separately and apart from each
other. In actual concrete experience we cannot divorce the operation of the lower faculty from that of the higher. In
our adult experience the sensuous and intellectual elements are closely interwoven. A sensation is hardly, if ever,
given without an accompanying intellection. Continuity and solidarity are always present between them. So closely
are they interwoven that it is often difficult to discriminate between the purely sensory elements in our knowledge
and those which are the result of higher factors. We must not forget that the knowledge-process is complicated, and
that sensation, perception, retention and reproduction, conception, judgment, and reasoning, all intermingle with one
another, and that all have an integral part in the process of cognition.
“The existence of rational concepts has been established. The formation of concepts depends on and begins with
sense knowledge, but it is completed by the intellect. The process whereby concepts emerge from precepts demands
an exposition.
“The Origin of Concepts. Since our concepts are not a priori (or prior to sense experience) and since
introspection shows us that in our judgments we identify these concepts with the data of sense, the intellect must
apprehend them in some way in the data of sense (we are constantly making judgments in which we identify the data
of sense with our concepts, e.g., ‘This is a book’). There is no other explanation. The intellect gets all its data or
objects in and through sense perception – and self-consciousness. This does not mean that the intellect can conceive
only what the senses perceive, i.e., only the physical or material. This is the sensistic interpretation of this principle.
The principle means that while the intellect gets its data from sense perception it nevertheless has the power of

20
apprehending modes of being which transcend sense perception. For example, it can form such concepts as ‘being,’
‘quality,’ ‘change,’ ‘thought,’ none of which objects can be the objects of the senses. Again, the intellect can reflect
on its own activities and form concepts such as ‘intellect,’ ‘cognition,’ which are concepts of realities unperceivable
by the senses. Our theory of moderate realism, therefore, which holds that the thought-objects of the intellect are
somehow apprehended in the data of sense is not sensistic.
“The Theory of Abstraction. Since the thought-objects of the intellect are apprehended in sense data, the obvious
question arises: How is the concept derived from the percept – or sense data? How can we bridge the gap between
sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge? The answer is: by the process of abstraction. An extramental object
produces an impression on one or more of the senses. Through this impression the mind becomes cognizant of a
concrete object. This impression evokes the activity of the intellect. In every object there are certain qualities or
attributes which may or may not belong to the object without any substantial or essential difference being made in
the nature of the object; e.g., the height, weight, and clothing of any individual may all be different from what they
are and he would still be a man. There are other attributes, however, the absence of which would destroy the
character of the object and cause it to be other than it is. If we did away with either the rationality or the animality of
a man he would no longer be a man. The functioning of the intellect at this juncture is abstractive. Abstraction is the
concentration of the intellect on these latter elements to the exclusion of the former. It is the withdrawal of the
attention of the mind from what is accidental and the fixing of it on the essential. It is the act whereby the intellect
abstracts or selects from an object that portion which is essential and neglects the rest. The result of this abstraction
is the concept which expresses in the abstract the essence of the object. The concept is not the representation of a
single, particular object; it is universal and abstract because, as we shall see, it is capable of being realized in an
indefinite number of objects. In a word, the intellect conceives what the senses perceive but in a different way.
“The term ‘abstraction’ as descriptive of the conception process has given rise to much misunderstanding. Some
have understood it as connoting the taking away of something from the concrete object. Such a view is a travesty on
the nature of abstraction. The essence or nature which is said to be abstracted is an attribute of the object and it never
ceases to be such. Abstraction is a purely mental process. It does not take away the physical essence of the object.
Just as the eye can see an object, so does the intellect represent to itself the object without changing in any way its
physical reality. Abstraction does not change the nature of the object but rather the nature of our awareness of the
object. In brief, abstraction simply means the representation of the essence of an object in the intellect.
“The Universality of Concepts. The fact that concepts are devoid of the individuating characteristics which are
always found in sensed objects has two implications.
“(1) The thought-object considered in itself is neither universal nor particular (cf. De Ente et Essentia, c. 4). The
concept considered in this abstract condition is said to be the direct or potential universal, and as such it is
fundamentally real, i.e., its basis is in the object independently of the work of the mind. We are warranted in
claiming objectivity for the direct or potential universal since the mind finds the content of the concept in the object.
The mind does not create the content of the universal by its own activity but it discovers the content objectively
existing.
“(2) After the direct universal has been generated the intellect sees that the thought-object is not only in this
object and predicable of it, but that it is capable of indefinite repeated realizations in an indefinite number of other
similar objects. It thus formally universalizes the concept. When by reflection a concept is seen to be universally
predicable of all the objects of a class it is said to be a formal or reflex universal. Thus at first one forms the concept
of man as a rational animal. This is a direct universal. By an act of reflection the concept ‘rational animal’ is seen to
be predicable of all men, past, present, and future – it is formally universalized (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 39, a. 3
; De Anima, 2; Summa Theologiae, I, q. 85, a. 2, ad 2).
“The universalizing is the work of the intellect. Hence universals, as universal, exist in the mind alone. The
concept of the nature or essence which is universalized has its basis in the object of sense, but the universality and
abstractness which characterize the concept are the work of, and are in, the intellect. There are universal thought-
objects but no universal objects. Whatever is real, i.e., in the real or objective order, is individual. But individual
things, while they do not constitute one reality, have similar natures. Because of this the intellect can apprehend this
similarity of nature and form a concept, which it may universalize, and which is predicable of the various different
but similar individuals. This predication of the same attribute to different individuals does not imply that they are the
same reality. They are distinct and separate individuals, but because of their similarity of nature the same essence
can be predicated of them. Similarity is not a real identity – it is a mental identity.”(J. T. BARRON, op. cit., pp. 86-
92).
Regarding moderate realist abstraction Sanguineti writes: “1. Abstraction. The existence of ideas is a fact of
internal experience, and the capacity to produce ideas is called intelligence. For the critique of knowledge it is

21
important to ensure how the ideas are formed and what their meaning is. Classical rationalism considers them innate
and tends to connect them with a world of possible essences, while the existent reality would be the exclusive object
of sensible knowledge. Empiricism reduces the importance of ideas, which at best would be constructions of a very
vague, schematic imaginative knowledge, although they would be useful for orienting ourselves in the world. The
dissatisfaction awakened by these extreme solutions leads to other gnoseological theories: Kantian idealism
recognizes the value of necessity and of universality of the ideas, but believes them to be a human production which
serves to unify contingent and particular experience; absolute idealism reduces reality to idea, while sensible
knowledge becomes a mere phenomenal apparition; pragmatism, vitalism and existentialism place the ideas in
function of the activities of man, depriving them of cognitive value.
“For realistic philosophy, the idea or concept is derived from experience and corresponds to the being of things.
However, there does not exist a total conformity between the idea and the thing (as is conceived by the exaggerated
realism of Plato, or by idealism in another context), because the idea represents the thing in an abstract way, adding
to it some logical elements that belong no longer to that which is comprehended, but rather to the human mode of
comprehension. This relative unconformity can be known as such, and in some way is overcome thanks to the
connection of ideas with experience, or to the use of some conceptual techniques such as analogy.
“Let us briefly confront the problem of the formation of the initial concepts, leaving out some technical details
that are studied in psychology or that we have seen in formal logic. We refer for the moment to knowledge of
material reality, the point of departure of human thought.
“The intelligibility of things is not given to us in an immediate way: for the fact of seeing a thing, we do not
comprehend its essence. The things of the world are for us sensible in act, but intelligible in potency. For example,
we think of a group of persons that move, run, shake their hands, without knowing in a precise way what they are
doing. We must observe more attentively, comparing and keeping in cosideration the various movements in order to
understand their reason; only after this experimental knowledge, in which both the external and the internal senses
concur, one arrives at the point of understanding that which holds the interplay of relations together: we have
understood that this a game (or even a specific game) – that is, we have arrived at a new concept. In other words,
this intelligible reality (because only the intelligence can register it) that first potentially existed in our experience,
has now passed to an intelligibility in act.
“This passage has not taken place in base of an a priori idea of game. The concept has been stripped from
experience, and is born precisely when the experience has become sufficiently mature. However, pure experience by
itself does not suffice to make seen the essence contained in this, because experience is always a particular fact,
while the idea, such as that of game, absolutely transcends this particular game that I can observe ‘here and now.’
Therefore, it is necessary for man to have an intellectual potency which is capable of illuminating the experience in
order that the essence may shine in it, which at first is hidden from our eyes. On the other hand, this illumination
also implies a separation of the intelligible element with respect to the sensible content, a procedure called
abstraction. For Thomism, the illuminating and abstracting potency is the agent intellect, called by this name
because it acts by performing the passage from the intelligible in potency to the state of intelligibility in act. In the
Kantian theory of knowledge, the human mind introduces the forms in matter, which is furnished by sensation. In
the Aristotelian doctrine of forms are in the things themselves: the intelligence uses its light in order to that these
forms become intelligible for man.
“Once the essence has been separated from the experience, it immediately impresses itself on the human
intelligence, which in this new function is called passive intellect; thus is produced the identification in act between
the intentional essence present to the intellect and the faculty that receives this content. Now the intelligence is
informed by the intellectual species and can pass to the act of knowing the object to which the intentional species
refers.
“However, this (abstract) object does not exist as such in the external world, and not even in the initial
experience. The sensible species of the external sensation refers directly to the present external object; the
imagination, not finding a present object, must forge a representation, which is the image; on its part, the human
intelligence is not only independent from the physical presence of the object, but comprehends the essence in a
different state from the one in which it is found in the individual being. Therefore, the intellect must conceive
a…concept or mental word (expressed species). On the one hand, the production of the expressed species is an index
of the imperfection of knowledge, insofar as it implies a certain distance from the object; nevertheless, in another
sense it implies perfection, if we consider it as an internal spiritual production that belongs to the proper immanence
of life. The concept is the immanent terminus of intellectual knowledge, be it a simple notion or rather a judgment
(which for Saint Thomas is also a conceptio intellectus, in the sense just explained). The concept is an intellectual
representation in which is contemplated the essence of the thing, as an object is contemplated in a mirror.

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 “However, the intellectual operation does not finish with the formation of the concept, because the abstract nature
of the latter does not perfectly express the thing that is intended to be understood, which is individual and material
(when considering knowledge of the physical world). After the separation of the essence performed by the agent
intellect there must follow an operation in the inverse sense, which will connect the essence, already comprehended,
with the reality it belongs to. ‘The nature of the rock or of any other material thing cannot be completely and truly
known until one knows it as existent in particulars, which are understood by means of the senses and the
imagination. Therefore, it is necessary, in order that the intellect may comprehend in act its proper object, that it
convert itself to experience (ad phantasmata), in such a way as to contemplate the universal nature as existent in the
particular’(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 84, a. 7, c.).
“This operation is called conversio ad phantasmata, conversion of the mind to experience, where are to be found
the existent objects that are intended to be known. After the formation of the general concept of game, to continue
our example, we may return to the intuitive knowledge of these particular games, known now according to the new
essential content, and thus we do not limit ourselves to seeing colours, movements, etc., but rather we comprehend
the unity of these experiences as a game – that is, as a sensible reality in which there exists an essence known in act.
‘Our intellect abstracts the intelligible species from experiences, insofar as it considers the nature of things in a
universal way; and yet, it comprehends them in experiences, since it cannot understand the things from where it
abstracts the species, without turning to experience’(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 5).
“The intelligence knows in a direct line only the universals, because the material individuals are the object of
empirical experience. However, in an immediate, albeit indirect way, the intelligence comprehends the individual or
physical nature precisely in virtue of the intimate union between the intellective potency and human sensibility.
Therefore, there exists an intellectual comprehension of individuals, which for Saint Thomas is the work of the
cogitative, the superior faculty of sensibility, strictly united to the intelligence, in whose force it participates.
Without this bridge between the abstract intelligence and concrete sensibility, our intellectual comprehension would
be purely ideal, and our sensitive knowledge would regard only facts: an enormous gap would be opened between
these two spheres, which is precisely the abyss opened up by the currents such as Platonism, rationalism, and
empiricism, which have not suceeded in explaining the unity of human knowledge, even if it is so very clear on the
level of ordinary experience. For realism, the thesis of intellective knowledge of the concrete is very important,
because otherwise one risks blocking thought within the universals, which are not existent, while the existential
reality would remain entrusted to an impoverished experience”(J. J. SANGUINETI, Logic and Gnoseology,
Urbaniana University Press, Rome, 1987, pp. 221-225).

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