Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

by Philip Stokes

Occam held that universals only exist as part of human understanding. In reality everything is singular. In other words, concepts like ‘species’, ‘redness’, or even ‘man’, which name a range of objects that are united by some common form or feature, are purely inventions of the human understanding: ways of collecting together many individual objects for psychological simplicity. In reality there are only individuals. Universals do not exist. In modern terminology, this makes Occam a ‘nominalist’, and opposed to Plato’s idea of abstract, universal forms that are the archetypes of individual, material objects. Along with nominalism, the principle of ‘Occam’s Razor’ can also be seen as a reflection of an atomistic world-view. In some sense a precursor of the logical atomism of Bertrand Russell and the early thought of Wittgenstein, Occam held that reality is ultimately composed of simple, singular objects that exist independently and absolutely. No single thing depends on any other for its existence and change is merely the re-ordering and rearranging of singulars. These singulars, according to Occam, gained their existence by being posited by God but remain independent of any divine machinations in their causal and operative powers. In this way, Occam upholds both the possibility of free will and moral responsibility in human affairs.