Problem of Universals

Can two objects be the same color? Is it possible for both a t-shirt and a car to be red? If you agree that both objects can share the same redness, then this color red has an existence that is repeatable, it is what philosophers call a “universal.” But in what way can “redness” be said to exist other than in the particular objects that seem to be the same color? Isn’t the red of the t-shirt actually a different red than that of the car? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will outline the philosophical problem of universals, how it was understood in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and why the question remains open today.

The problem of universals

Michael Prescott

...Imagine a piece of chalk and a piece of paper. Both of them have the quality or attribute of whiteness. But what is the relationship of whiteness to the chalk or to the paper? Is there a real property called whiteness that somehow inheres in each entity? In other words, even though the chalk and the paper are different items, do they possess an identical property?

We treat them as if they do. When we say that both the chalk and the paper are white, we understand this to mean that the chalk and the paper have the attribute whiteness, which is identical in both cases. If there is no such property as whiteness per se, then our thinking is inaccurate. We are not correctly grasping the entities we perceive. We are fundamentally mistaken about them, because we think that they have certain real and identical attributes, when in fact they do not.

On the other hand, if the chalk and the paper do possess a real attribute called whiteness that is identical in each (a so-called "real universal"), then we have to ask how this attribute arises or where it comes from or how it is grounded. After all, there are no patches of whiteness just floating around....