Ockham's Philosophy of Language

Ochkam's philosophy of language seeks to come to grips with the problem of universals and the ontological status of common predicates. It attempts to clarify what it is that we talk about when we say that two objects belong to the same class or share a common attribute, and whether the alleged commonality is a thing in itself or merely a psychological/linguistic event. Ockham's nominalist response to the problem is set against a tradition of Platonic, Augustinian, and Thomistic texts. This work provides historical background on the reception and critique of these texts and the debates they generated.