I am a Nominalist, therefore, I cannot be Catholic

Join my Discord for some good Catholic / Non-Catholic Conversations, or to try to revert me:

SEP Article on Nominalism:

“Nominalism”, by Szabó, an essay from Cornell, 2001

Analytic Christian's Video with Dr Boyce about how Theism and Nominalism are compatible:

Catholic Answers article called “The Errors of Nominalism”:

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:41 Occam's Razor as a Reason to be a Nominalist
2:15 The Causality Problem as a Reason to be a Nominalist
3:15 Numbers as a Reason to Reject Nominalism (and why I don't)
6:00 Common Sense as a Reason to Reject Nominalism (and why I don't)
6:41 Platonic Realism is Vulgar
10:41 Does Nominalism conflict with Catholicism? What about Theism more broadly?
12:23 Conclusion

[aisthpaoitht]

The very existence of separate beings (you and me) proves that nominalism is false. If nominalism is true, then everything must be the same, and that is obviously false.

[infinitame]

I'm a bit confused by the way you treated the subject. The kind of realism catholics are commited to, directly from the teachings of st Thomas, is one of the aristotatilian form. To my knowledge, both of your objections simply don't apply to a realism where the essences of things are immanent to them.

1) Occam's razor is a usefull tool in selecting theories which basically account for the same amount of data but don't postulate the same number and kind of entities. When it comes to ontology, things are way more complicated than that, because underground epistemological conceptions will directly impact what we think the data to account for is. So, in short, you could use Occam's razor to criticize thomisitic ontology, but it is far from being enough.

2) The "causal problem" is not a problem for thomistic realism, because, as I said, essences of things are immanent to them. A thomist don't believe in free floating essences of a more platonic conception. Causal powers are grounded in the essence of things. There are many many other distinctions to bring about if we want a good ontological account of reality, but i'll stop there.

3) For a thomist, abstract objects are that, objects abstracted from things as they are in reality. Universal objects only exist in the intellect, and all objects in reality are individuated. I could go on an on for this subject, but all I want to say is that the thomistic conception of numbers is way more subtle than plainly saying "yeah numbers exist it is just so plainly obvious".

I recommend you the works of Jacques Maritain (Degrees of knowledge), Bernard Lonergand (Insight), and more recently David Oderberg (real essentialism), Ed Feser (his books on scholastics metaphysics and aristotle) and Rob Koons (his 2 books on aristotle) if you want a real taste of the intellectual side of catholicism.

[photon]

I lean towards nominalism as well (though probably not to the degree that you do), so here is how I would stretch doctrine to combine nominalism with transsubstantiation: When the host is consecrated that is a change to the concrete object. God is now present in the consecrated host in a way he isn't present in normal concrete objects. Categories are a matter of human conventions, but this is such a radical change that the Church says it would be misleading to place the consecrated host in the same category as the unconsecrated host. The (concrete object) consecrated host has more in common with the (concrete object) Jesus of Nazareth than with a (concrete object) bread, and the categories used should reflect commonalities in a way that helps understanding.

[catholicisminthecar]

Hey Kevin!
I certainly agree with you that Nominalism is incompatible with Catholicism.

I am surprised that you do not address Moderate Realism in this video, but also understand, as a fellow YouTuber that it is difficult to get everything into one video. haha.

I am very excited to hear more of your thoughts on this, and excited to *grill* you with questions in our interview. I am also super excited to learn from you about your best arguments for Nominalism.

Right now, I don't think that there is any way to prove the soundness of a Nominalistic or Realistic paradigm, but I DO think that one can argue for Realism over Nominalism by the effects of each worldview. I would agree with you that one can certainly be a theist and a nominalist. Nominalism doesn't really change one's view about God *per se* (although I do think it CAN change one's view on certain attributes of God -- namely, His will, intellect, etc.).

My main concern with Nominalism is how it effects our view of OURSELVES as human beings.

I will also add that it seems that Nominalism and Catholicism are mutually exclusive, but certainly Realism and any non-Catholic belief are not mutually exclusive (except, of course, Nominalism).

Just some brief thoughts, but again, I am super excited to talk with you in person soon!

[josephmoya]

I totally agree that nominalism is incompatible with Catholicism. But I would extend that not just to Catholocism, but all of non-Aryan Christianity. I don't know how you can say that Christ took on human nature while denying human nature any existence. But, there are a whole lot of theologians historically and currently who would disagree, most importantly Ockham. Of course, grace and sin could exist as concept, but not ontologically, in a nominalist Christian sense. Sin is just the arbitrary breaking of God's rules. This is exactly how most Christians see it. And grace is just God forgiving your transgression. So, sin and grace exist, but only as concepts in the mind of God. This is Ockhams exact theology, and it is picked up by Luther later. But you are correct, nominalism cannot be squared with transubstantiation, nor with the even more fundamental dogmas surrounding the Incarnation. But, Ockham was pretty smart and he thought this all did square, so maybe I'm an idiot!

Now, I do not find Ockham's razor convincing at all. Mostly becuase what exists does so independently of my reason. A simpler solution does not have to be true. It may be, but its truth is independent of its simplicity. Most modern physics is a great example of why Ockham's razor fails as a loigical argument. Modern physics continuously multiplies entities, not without reason, of course, but it would always have been simpler to say that atoms just are. If atoms just behave as they do, if they are the smallest thing, then there is no reason for these silly protons and electrons and nuetrons. By Ockhams razor, it is simpler to assume atoms just are!

And worst yet, I find nominalism entirely untenable in a world which has been shown to be a-material. That is to say that matter is a phenomemon and not a concrete. It is a phenomenon arising from the behaviour of energy, which is also not concrete. Energy is the most fundamental thing we have found, and the only reason the material exists is becuase energy in certain forms interact to create mass. This energy is all just travelling through a field. So, I ask, which are we, the matter, or the form the matter takes. I mean, if we have a wave travelling thorugh a medium, say water, is the wave the individual particles which are currently excited, or is it the energy giving arise to a form as it travels throught these particles. Clearly the latter. For all of physical matter, you and me, this is even more true. As we fly through the infinite cosmos, we are not little balls flying through space. We are just energy giving arise to a phenomenon which travels through fields. You are not a concrete individual, as nomimalism would posit, but just the combination of the energetic interactions which combine to make you. You are quite literally more form than you are matter. Nominalism also runs aground of personhood, why you would be the same person after all your atoms are changed, but that is another matter, haha.

Now, I definitely think that the causality problem poses a much more serious issue to a Platonic realist view point. I would posit two things in response to this. First, if you find a hole in a rational explantion of the world, it does not mean that your whole theory is incorrect. It may mean this, but it does not necessarily so. You may be missing information. You may have a wrong assumption someplace in your edifice giving rise to skewed opinions later. Just because something is missing doesn't mean everything you think is wrong. Second, the casuality problem only addressses strict realism, and does not address a moderate realism, like that of Aristotle, which holds, contrary to Platonism, that the universal is immanent in the material, rather than existing entirely seperately in the world of the forms.

Now, on mathematics, nominalist math faces serious, profound issues. This is why the vast majority of mathemeticians are Platonists. As Godel showed, mathematics is inherentely incomplete. There is no possible complete math system that is purely rational with no reference to the external. Without rewriting the entirety of modern mathematical Platonism, this essentially means that if math were to be a rational creation of the human mind, a concept and nothing more, it would be meaningless, which flies directly in the face of the fictionalist view you suggested. Math is incoherrent if it is made up in our minds. Math can only have meaning when grounded in something other than itself. So our nominalist professor here is correct in denying 1+1=2. He must, because under his framework, math is impossible. But here we run adrift of common sense, experience, empirical result, all for the sake of maintaining a proposition. Here we run headlong into the reverse version of Ockham's razor. We are accepting the absurd because we dislike the result of rejecting it. And any attempt to ground modern mathematical theory in a non-Platonic view largley fails. This is because modern math is based on Set Theory. Set Theory requires infinities of infinities of infinites, ad naseum, all actualized simultaneously. This is impossible in a materialist sense, where math is just the realtion of materialist entities, as infinities cannot be realized, and infinities cannot exist even in potency, since potency isn't a concrete.

I spent a good amount of time listening to a math professor from Australia discuss this. He was very against Platonic realism, and spent signifiacant time and research work into attempting to provide an alternate. But even he would have rejected a nominalist position, because it just doesn't work with math. It just cannot be. Now, he is biased. He is a mathemetician. But to reject meaning to math flies in the face of the continual empirical evidence showing its veracity. If math isn't real, why is it better at predicting physical phenomenon than the empirical. Why is it that math gets more right about physics than experimental physics does, at least predicting results with accuaracy years and years ahead of empirical verificaiton? Math being real is certainly empircally evidenced, but this only makes sense with a realist understanding of math. To be a nominalist is to deny this, and to deny physics meaning as well.

I also think that it is hyper ironic that nominalism, invented by a Christian to deny casuality (Ockham famously said that Greek determinism had polluted the Church and had limited God to causes) became the basic philosophy of experimental science, which is purely causality. Without universals, why do all Higgs Boson behave the same. If there isn't something fundamentally tying these two things together, in a non-theistic nominalist world, the only reason is random chance. But the chance that every Higgs Boson would behave the same is beyond astronomical. So in this nominalist, non-theistic world, how could they. This is, of course, physics golden goose. The elusive theory of everything. But until we can come across something which is uncasued, unchangeable, and gives rise spontaneously to all things, or essentially God, we will just find at best, an infinite regress of new things, all of which explain one teir above them, but ultimately never have an explanation as to why two indiviual entities of a type behave the same. Accept a form, haha, of Realism, and you do not need an explanation as to why things which are the same behave the same. They behave the same because they participate in the universal. Underyling relations are just a part of this.

I also think nominalism leads to incoherrent concepts of free will. For the Realist, where you are the form, and the form is caused, free will is caused. All Christian theologians before the advent of nominalism were essentially compatibalists. But, again, nominalism was created specically to deny casuality. If two Higgs Boson share no intrinsic relation, then there is no reason they act the same, other than God made them as individuals that do so. This is how Ockham viewed human free will. Since we share no relation, there is no reason for us to be rational, or to desire sex, or to desire heroin as an addict. We only do so out of pure will. We perfectly freely act in an uncaused manner. This again, is how most moderns view free will, because no matter what they say, most people are nominalist. And it runs headlong into a physics with predictive power. We then begin to special plead for free will. Well, humans somehow have this magic uncaused choice. And you again reduce God to a magic man in the sky, as atheists accuse us of, instead of the principal force in the world by which all else exists.

Anyway. Good video.

[aisthpaoitht]

I watched again and you really skimped on the "incompatible with Catholicism" part. Transubstantiation cannot be fully explained. It comes down to definitions, which are always limited by our language. Catholic morality, as currently taught, relies on a non-nominalist view, but one can dissent from that.

[jimnewl]

Divine revelation tells us, in Genesis, that God created things "according to their kind." Thus, a thing's "kind" is not something imposed by the mind, but grasped by it. It is an abstraction as regards the mind, but a real thing as regards God, the creator.

To understand dogness, then, is to understand something real, but not as it actually exists, in many individual dogs. We understand it in the only way we humans can manage, in a singular abstraction that we can put a name to: dogness.

All of this turns on the difference between understanding the world from the outside looking in (so to speak), as God does, and from the inside looking out, as we do. We are not, strictly speaking, able to understand things as they are in themselves. If we could, our abstractions would be unnecessary. We must reason to the truth about them from the things which we can grasp directly with our senses, using the powers and operations God has equipped us with.

So, to repeat: we understand, and understand truly, what is real by way of universal abstractions in our mind, which are not real in the same way the things understood are, but nevertheless are real, accurate representations drawn from them. What we possess in our minds IS the real truth God has created, as proportioned to our finite, corporeal nature.

[mixkd]

What do you do with things like calculus being discovered independently or just any case of independent discovery of mathematical truths? What about universal archetypes like the ouroboros, the rod of Hermes and the world tree? And what about the physical constants like the speed of light or avogrado’s constant?

[christsservant]

Your arguments against realism seem to target _Platonic_ Realism, but I'm not so sure why that should prove Nominalism. The reason I say this because one could hold a Divine Conceptualist view about abstract objects.

[garrettsmith]

Also, contrary to what the thomists might say, neither thomism nor aristotelianism is dogma.

[garrettsmith]

Should be rephrased to 'contemporary nominalism' perhaps, given that there was a large medieval catholic nominalist tradition, comprising such thinkers as Ockham, Buridan, and many early modern jesuits, otherwise it is de facto false

[emeraldedge]

Nominalism, fancy that.
Firstly, on Occams razor. I do not think that one can dispense with mathematical objects with concreta, but since you say that you will be making a video about it, better to leave it for the time being.
Secondly, it is not at all clear to me that abstracta is causally inert at all, one can appeal to intuition, but as you say intuition can be deceiving.
Thirdly, if there are no abstracta, how can the fiction in my head correspond to the fiction in yours, having huge swaths of knowledge and understanding be "fiction" seems to imply big problems for our access to reality.
And lastly, can one be a catholic and nominalist? Seemingly no, but I wouldn't say I'm 100% on that, it would require some contemplation.

[markwrede]

You swim the murks of nebulous vocabulary without direction.

[annakimborahpa]

1. I agree with your thesis that nominalism is incompatible with Catholicism.
2. For greater clarification, might you consider having as an alternate name Kevin nomnontradicath?

[RealAtheology]

But don't you know that (as the Thomists tell us) Nominalism is responsible for the total fall of Western Civilization and only through reading Feser's _Scholastic Metaphysics_ and David Oderberg's _Real Essentialism_ can we regain a correct understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful?

Seriously though, as a fellow Nominalist, I really enjoyed your video. You may be interested in the book _Priority Nominalism_ by Guido Imaguire, which is a good defense of a rather extreme and robust account of Nominalism.