Abstract

After setting up the classic Platonic doctrine of universals, Zabeeh reviews the Aristotelian and British empiricist attacks on this doctrine, and the doctrine of general ideas. Zabeeh's own "new" look consists in a reworking of many currently familiar ideas to come up with the position that universals are the meanings of general terms and the meanings of general terms are the way in which they are used. While this may do as the start of a semantical theory of universals, it hardly touches the problem of their ontological status. The same basic semantical theory is compatible with realism, conceptualism, or nominalism, as Carnap has shown. Page 33 belongs in place of page 34, page 34 in place of page 32.—E. A. R.