ANT206H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Nominalism, Pragmatism
Document Summary
According to realism, the world exists and is divided up in certain ways independently of the way that we think or talk about it. There are groups or classes of things such as flowering plants, trees, dogs, and sunsets to which particular. Language gives us labels to talk about a reality that exists independently of it (and us) Seems to work really well for so-called natural kinds such as water, gold, sodium, tiger, and so on. It"s less obvious that realism provides a good account of, for instance "jokes", "poetry", "gloves" and other things which are human creations. Or consider human kinds like "prime ministers", "teachers", These human kinds do not exist independently of our language and thinking, rather they seem to be a product of it. According to nominalism, which is a bit more difficult to summarize, individuals are not grouped together in nature. Instead, language provides the classification by which we arrange the particulars into groups.
