Universals as signs of ignorance
Are ideas simply signs of ignorance? Follow William's argument in this passage from Eco's The Name of the Rose (William has recently pulled a Sherlock Holmes by identifying a horse he's never seen by its prints and what he knows about abbots, he's being questioned by the narrator):
“All the same,” I said, “when you read the prints in the snow and the evidence of the branches, you did not yet know Brunellus. In a certain sense those prints spoke of all horses, or at least all horses of that breed. Mustn’t we say, then, that the book of nature speaks to us only of essences, as many distinguished theologians teach?”
“Not entirely, dear Adso,” my master replied. “True, that kind of print expressed to me, if you like, the idea of ‘horse,’ the verbum mentis, and would have expressed the same to me wherever I might have found it. But the print in that place and at that hour of the day told me that at least one of all possible horses had passed that way.
"So I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept ‘horse’ and the knowledge of an individual horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a universal idea.
"If you see something from a distance, and you do not understand what it is, you will be content with defining it as a body of some dimension. When you come closer, you will then define it as an animal, even if you do not yet know whether it is a horse or an ass. And finally, when it is still closer, you will be able to say it is a horse even if you do not yet know whether it is Brunellus or Niger. And only when you are at the proper distance will you see that it is Brunellus (or, rather, that horse and not another, however you decide to call it). And that will be full knowledge, the learning of the singular. So an hour ago I could expect all horses, but not because of the vastness of my intellect, but because of the paucity of my deduction. And my intellect’s hunger was sated only when I saw the single horse that the monks were leading by the halter. Only then did I truly know that my previous reasoning had brought me close to the truth. And so the ideas, which I was using earlier to imagine a horse I had not yet seen, were pure signs, as the hoofprints in the snow were signs of the idea of ‘horse’; and signs and the signs of signs are used only when we are lacking things.”
Does this argument work?
“All the same,” I said, “when you read the prints in the snow and the evidence of the branches, you did not yet know Brunellus. In a certain sense those prints spoke of all horses, or at least all horses of that breed. Mustn’t we say, then, that the book of nature speaks to us only of essences, as many distinguished theologians teach?”
“Not entirely, dear Adso,” my master replied. “True, that kind of print expressed to me, if you like, the idea of ‘horse,’ the verbum mentis, and would have expressed the same to me wherever I might have found it. But the print in that place and at that hour of the day told me that at least one of all possible horses had passed that way.
"So I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept ‘horse’ and the knowledge of an individual horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a universal idea.
"If you see something from a distance, and you do not understand what it is, you will be content with defining it as a body of some dimension. When you come closer, you will then define it as an animal, even if you do not yet know whether it is a horse or an ass. And finally, when it is still closer, you will be able to say it is a horse even if you do not yet know whether it is Brunellus or Niger. And only when you are at the proper distance will you see that it is Brunellus (or, rather, that horse and not another, however you decide to call it). And that will be full knowledge, the learning of the singular. So an hour ago I could expect all horses, but not because of the vastness of my intellect, but because of the paucity of my deduction. And my intellect’s hunger was sated only when I saw the single horse that the monks were leading by the halter. Only then did I truly know that my previous reasoning had brought me close to the truth. And so the ideas, which I was using earlier to imagine a horse I had not yet seen, were pure signs, as the hoofprints in the snow were signs of the idea of ‘horse’; and signs and the signs of signs are used only when we are lacking things.”
Does this argument work?
Comments (11)
I would say no. The idea of a horse is more than an outline on the horizon. The specifications can include a huge amount of detail. A specific horse is no more detailed, its specifics just vary in some way from the ideal (for it's breed)
Well, a universal is a possible consolidation of an indeterminate idea. Unless we acknowledge the idea as both possible and indeterminate (it looks like it might be some kind of horse), then the universal serves to conceal any uncertainty in our relation to it. In this sense the universal is a sign of possible ignorance.
But Eco, I think, might be saying that not just the universal but ALL signs conceal the possibility of missing information.
Objective and Subjective are small ideas that one can move beyond through understanding categories of thought, relativity, and in other ways. Finding connections within the universe is still a contained activity. To move beyond to essences is to think your ideas are special
How is a universal indeterminate? Do you mean because horses come in a range of sizes? Isn't that range a determinate property of the idea of a horse?
Quoting Possibility
Or is he saying that signs never point to universals? All signs point to particular things and a universal is a crutch to help us arrive at the particular.
I don't own universals though. The idea of a horse has no owner as far as I know.
That's interesting
A range of sizes and colours, and even variable shape - especially that cannot be determined from a hoof-print. However, it isn’t the universal sign, but the idea it points to, that’s indeterminate.
If it was completely indeterminate, we couldn't rule out horses the size of buildings.
A universal just tells you some of the properties of a particular, namely those that the particular has in common with other particulars of the same kind. So yes, it is incomplete (though maybe still useful) information about the particular. The particular also has other properties, which differentiate it from other particulars of the same kind.
Oh, did I say completely indeterminate? Let’s just say ‘fuzzy’. Nevertheless, the idea is there; the significance, not so much - still, there was one made of wood...