John C and Edwina, JC
Nominalism is a weaker hypothesis than Realism, so if something is consistent with realism, then it is consistent with nominalism. Locke, for example, distinguished between the nominal essence and the real essence. The former tells us what we think something is like, while the latter is what the thing is really like.
ET
I see your point, but I consider the shift to nominalism far more important than is suggested by its being a 'weaker hypothesis than Realism'.
I agree with both of you. JC's observation is a clear, succinct way to distinguish nominalism and realism. ET's observations are important sociological issues about the implications of that distinction. JC
There are no unmediated signs of reality and, for Locke, there is no way to get out of this mediated representation. Peirce thought we could get out of this by abduction, but empiricists don't allow this as part of logic.
Actually, the question of how to use abduction is orthogonal to the nominalist-realist debates. Mathematicians and logicians have always started their proofs with a hypothesis, but they ignored the question of where that hypothesis came from. Peirce's contribution was to recognize that Kant's synthetic a priori could be replaced by abduction. Then he called it a method of reasoning at the same level as induction and deduction. The problem of justifying a particular abduction is a matter for the philosophy of science. John F.S.
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