Exposing the Roots of Constructivism: Nominalism and the Ontology of Knowledge

by R. Scott Smith

Constructivism dominates over other theories of knowledge in much of western academia, especially the humanities and social sciences. In Exposing the Roots of Nominalism and the Ontology of Knowledge, R. Scott Smith argues that constructivism is linked to the embrace of nominalism, the theory that everything is particular and located in space and time. Indeed, nominalism is sufficient for a view to be constructivist. However, the natural sciences still enjoy great prestige from the “fact-value split.” They are often perceived as giving us knowledge of the facts of reality, and not merely our constructs. In contrast, ethics and religion, which also have been greatly influenced by nominalism, usually are perceived as giving us just our constructs and opinions. Yet, even the natural sciences have embraced nominalism, and Smith shows that this will undermine knowledge in those disciplines as well. Indeed, the author demonstrates that, at best, nominalism leaves us with only interpretations, but at worst, it undermines all knowledge whatsoever. However, there are many clear examples of knowledge we do have in the many different disciplines, and therefore those must be due to a different ontology of properties. Thus, nominalism should be rejected. In its place, the author defends a kind of Platonic realism about properties.

180 pages, Hardcover

Published October 20, 2022

About the author

R. Scott Smith is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Christian Apologetics at Biola University in California. He is the author of Virtue Ethics and Moral Knowledge. Dr. Smith has lectured and presented numerous times on his specialty, postmodernism, and he is also the secretary-treasurer of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is both very good and necessary reading for those who want to understand much of the chaotic confusion in our current culture. At the root of many harmful cultural assumptions is a certain view of reality (ontology). Historically (at least since the middle ages), the main competing theories of Abstract Objects (AOs) are various forms of Realism and Nominalism. As Smith lays out pretty comprehensively, Nominalism is the assumed view in virtually all of our academic disciplines. The real problem with Nominalism is that it renders any knowledge whatsoever impossible. One might think it odd that Nominalism would be the dominant view of reality underlying most scientific knowledge given that if Nominalism is true then we don't HAVE any scientific knowledge (or any other kind), but that is the odd paradox of our current culture. Vast swaths of our intellectual landscape assume a theory of reality that, if true, not only renders all knowledge impossible (and, in fact, renders reality itself unstable) but also conflicts with our own common-sense judgments of the world. For it does seem like we do know some things. The astounding success of the sciences in general over the past few centuries seems pretty decent confirmation that not only do we have knowledge, but that we have real knowledge of a real world. But again, if that is the case, then Nominalism is false. At any rate, it is difficult to explain to those who do not have some rudimentary grounding in basic Ontology (or Metaphysics) exactly WHY this is an important issue, but it absolutely is and this book will go a long way: (a) to help explain why that is so, (b) to demonstrate why Nominalism (in all its various forms) is false, and (c) illustrate exactly how Nominalism has impacted a wide variety of our society (e.g., education in general, ethics, science, sociology, English, and theology, including philosophical theology). Caveat: This is NOT an easy book to read. As someone moderately familiar with all of the ontological theories that are introduced, this book was still a LOT to take in. Any reader interested in delving into this topic would do well to read an introductory book in ontology first, such as J. P. Moreland's Universals (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001) - which is, itself, no easy text, but Moreland is very good at explaining difficult concepts. One gripe is that there were a number of typos (a good number probably the result of autocorrect) that, if one is not already familiar with the language of this discussion could go unnoticed and so provide additional obstacles to understanding.