Universals

Consider all chairs. They seem to all have some property in common, that of being a chair. How do we explain this property? A universalist might say, there exists a concept, form, idea, of chairness, which exists independently of any individual chair, which all the individual chairs participate in. A nominalist, by contrast, would claim that "chairness" has no real existence; "chair" is nothing more than a label, which we choose to apply to certain things; ultimately, all they have in common is the fact that we choose the same label to refer to them.

Let us suppose we agree with the nominalist. But then let us turn to an individual chair. Much as chairs are individuals, which are claimed to participate in a universal, so we might observe that each individual chair is in fact a compound object - it is compounded temporally of temporal parts; it is compounded spatially of different physical subcomponents; as an experience, it is compounded of different qualia. And it is claimed that these various subcomponents, these various qualia, participate in the individual. How is this relationship of participation of the subcomponents or qualia in the individual different from the participation of the individual in the universal? So, if we agree with the nominalist that the later participation is merely nominal, should we not also hold that the former participation is equally nominal? So it seems, that when we believe in the existence of a chair, we are as deluded as when we believe in the existence of a universal of chairness.

An argument that a Q-space account is more fundamental than a P-space account: Consider a chair. Does the chair have a clear boundary with the air? Experientally it seems it does. And, in terms of a Q-space account, it certainly does, since Q-space is no finer than the limits of our perception. And yet, P-space is far finer than the limits of our perception; thus, we can ask, what is the boundary of the chair, in terms of molecules, or atoms, subatomic particles, etc? And it seems, that later question is impossible to answer with exact certainty at the boundary. Which suggests, that a Q-space description of a chair is more natural, and hence more fundamental, than a P-space description, which suggests that Q-space is more fundamental than P-space.