The one exception to Abelard's nominalism is the category of "human beings, whose forms are their immaterial (and immortal) souls. Strictly speaking, since human souls are capable of existence in separation form the body, they are not forms after all, though they act as substantial forms as long as they are joined to the body" (King 2004). Through this idea, Abelard strove to reconcile Christianity with nominalism and to elevate the human being.
The other great medieval nominalist of note is William Ockham. Ockham also subscribed to the Aristotelian ontology of realist empiricism, believing that universal essences "are nothing more than concepts in the mind" and no innate ideas exist apart from the mind (Kaye 2007). "The defense of nominalism undertaken by the 14th-century English Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham prepared the way for various modern nominalistic theories such as those of instrumentalism, pragmatism, semantics, and logical positivism" (Rausch 2010). Ockham, like Abelard, defended the reality of "individual substances and qualities" not abstractions (Rausch 2010).
In his epistemology, Ockham defended direct realist empiricism, according to which human beings perceive objects through "intuitive cognition," without the help of any innate ideas pre-existing within the structure of the mind, as asserted in Platonism. Ockham's writings suggest the blank slate of the human mind gives rise to all of our abstract concepts and provides us with knowledge of the world, not something that exists in our minds innately (Kaye 2007). Four steps existed in cognition, according to Ockham. The first, sensory cognition: receiving data through the five senses, is shared between humans and animals. The second, is an awareness and a perception of individual qualities in the world called intuitive cognition. "The third step is recordative cognition, by which we remember past perceptions. The fourth step is abstractive cognition, by which we place individuals in groups of similar individuals" (Kaye 2007). Such a creation of abstractions, however, is the product of the human mind alone, not an awareness of preexisting categories.
Realists had always maintained that "you perceive an...
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Philosophical Legal Theory: Analyzing the Rhetoric in Civil Rights Speeches by King and Wallace While Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) is remembered as a hero in the Civil Rights struggle, it is important to keep in mind that, during his time period, he was vilified by many who claimed that his efforts to secure equality for African-Americans were somehow unnatural. One of his most vocal opponents was George Wallace (Wallace), the
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Philosophical Approaches The question of ethics, what the right thing to do vs. The wrong thing, can be a difficult one. There are occasions where right and wrong are black and white distinctions. The right thing to do is easy discernable, though it may not be the easiest things to do. However, this is the rare occasion. More often than not trying to determine right and wrong in a given situation
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