Is Nominalism Compatible With Truth?: A Note

IS NOMINALISM COMPATIBLE WITH TRUTH? A NOTE I F " TRUE " applies as straightforwardly to things like diamonds and friends as it does to statements, the answer to the above question is " no ". But as against the received view and for the reasons which follow, I here argue that " true " does apply to the former in an as underived a sense as it applies to the latter. How this falsifies nominalism becomes clear as soon as it is shown how the underived truth of things, " ontological truth " as it is sometimes called, implies that universals exist. Supporting the view of those medieval realists who denied that expressions of the sort "true gold " are derivative from the sense of " true " in " true statement ",1 I contend, first, tha;t the standard argument for the view that " true " applies primarily to statements alone (call this the reductionist view) is unsound. Then, in two separate arguments I argue that that same reductionist view is in fact false. Finally, I show how the underived concept of ontological truth implies that universals exist and hence that nominalism is false. To begin, then, what I take to be the standard argument for the reductionist view runs like this: Since, say " Y is a true diamond" implies but is not implied by " It is true that Y is a diamond", it follows that "true" in the latter sense of the term (i.e. in the sense of what is said) , must be the logically primary sense of "true", in which case "true" as ascribed to diamonds as well as to other things constitutes a secondary, 1 According to St. Augustine, St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas, the truthrelation would exist even if human beings were eliminated. They believed that things could be said to be straightforwardly true in the sense of conforming to eternal ideas in the divine intellect. 459 460 JOHN PETERSON derived sense of "true". But in that case there is really no such thing to begin with as an irreducible "truth of things". Alan White has succinctly put the argument as follows: When an X, e.g., a statement or a story, is characterized as true in virtue of what is said in it rather than for itself, such an X is a true X and only if what is said in it is true. When, on the other hand, an X, e.g., a Corgi or courage, is characterized as true other than because of what is said in it, an X is a true X if and only if according to some restrictive standards of X it is true to say that it is an X. The former use of " true" is primary. " This is a true Corgi" implies, but is not implied by, "It is true to say that this is a Corgi." To suppose that it were implied by it would commit one wrongly to holding that " This is a Corgi, but not a true Corgi " is contradictory, and also that when it is true that X is a thief, a professor or a pianist, then he is a true thief, a true professor or a true pianist. But the whole point of characterizing some X other than what is said as true is to suggest that" X" is here being used according to some restrictive standards by which not everything called by that word is, in the user's opinion, truly so called. What commonly passes for a Corgi may not be at Crufts a true Corgi; what is commonly called a rose or mahogany may not, botanically speaking, be a true rose or true mahogany. The higher our standards the more reluctant we are to allow that a certain degree of love, courage, or freedom should truly be called love, courage or freedom; it is not true love, true courage or true freedom.2 And yet, to reflect a moment on this argument is to realize at once that what gives White free passage to deny "It is true to say that X is a Corgi " implies " X is a true Corgi " is the rather dubious assumption that we always use "true" in expressions like " true Corgi " or " true...