Re: Peirce List • Tom Wyrick

Nominalism takes its name from the idea that “generals are only names” and it goes by the maxims “Do not take a general name for the name of a general” and “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity”.  That is, we should not mistake a general term, one applying to many individuals, for a term denoting a general entity, property, or universal, as those are dispensable in favor of individual entities.

It would be a mistake to think pragmatism is diametrically opposed to all such principles.  As far as the advice against confounding signs with objects, the caution against confusing different types and uses of signs with one another, and the care to economize our budgets of entities to a reasonable degree, if not to extremes of absolute austerity, pragmatism goes a long way with that.  The fork in the road comes with the degree to which general entities can be eliminated, wholly or not so wholly.

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