Philosophy 1020 Lecture 4: Lecture 14/01/2016 (Winter)
16 Feb 2016
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We navigate the world with the use of universals: ideas that go beyond particulars, in terms of which particulars are described, identified, and related. Particulars include colours, shapes (hume); equality, uprightness, justness, health (plato) But, though we encounter particulars through experience, experience cannot be the source of our knowledge of universals. This is because: the sense cannot be trusted (plato) 1: our sensations are only of concrete particulars (hume) So our knowledge of universals must come from something other than sense perception. From non-sensory access to forms abstract entities that exist outside of time and space. From an operation of reason through which we distinguish and sort the qualities of particular all we have are particular things. Hume can perhaps account for some universals but not others: qualities (such as whiteness), but not relations, such as resembles and is north of . If x is north of y, it would be so even if there were no minds.
