Unnameable but not Ineffable: An Eleatic Theory of Universals

John Bigelow (Monash University)

In this paper I explore the idea that talk of shareable 'properties and relations' might best be interpreted as a figure of speech, rather like the mythical 'personifications' of important universals as ancient divinities. In Plato's dialogue 'The Sophist', the Eleatic Stranger drops hints about the very different kinds of significance that are possessed
by different parts of speech. For instance, nouns don't verb. And corresponding to this difference between parts of speech, the Stranger posits a difference in ontology, a difference in categories of being. Frege echoes this with an ontological distinction between 'functions' and 'objects'. Yet we persist in 're-ifying' universals. And this is a figure of speech that must be taken with a grain of salt. To express the truth literally, without figures of speech, you would need, alas, to use a lambda-categorial grammar.