Fennie pray a cost in the news

and there's to all of physical

and bless you all of physical.

He bless you, Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at

Kings College London and the LMU in Munich online at www. History of Philosophy

dot net today's episode 1 in a million, Scotas on universals and individuals.

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you.

This charming traditional poem may be suitable for a declaration of love between seven-year-olds,

yet upon closer inspection it proves to be rather perplexing.

For one thing, surely violets are violet, not blue.

For another thing, what exactly does it mean to say that all roses are red? The poem doesn't say that this or that

roses red, but that all roses are red. Actually, of course, it's also not true that

all roses are red. The author of this poem clearly wasn't much of a gardener, but let's leave that aside and focus on making philosophical rather than botanical sense of the remark.

It takes us back to a set of puzzles we met in the 12th century when Peter

Avalon and his rivals disputed the question of universals.

Avalon was a nominalist. In other words, he held that there is no real universal nature that belongs to all

roses and is responsible for their being roses. Nor is there any universal nature of

redness that belongs to all red things.

For Abilard, all real things are individuals, and when we call a given individual red or rose, we are simply

applying general names that apply in virtue of the similarity between things.

It's because this individual flower is like that one that we do not call this rose by any other name regardless of whether it would smell as sweet.

Opponents of Abilard, like William of Champot, were realists, meaning that they took the universal nature of roses to be something real that is present

...