PROJECT IN

INTRODUCTION TO
THE PHILOSOPHY
OF THE HUMAN
PERSON

Submitted by: Cherrylyn M. Navarro

11 GAS-C
Submitted to: Stephen John Sandico
Reflection
UNIVERSAL VS PARTICULAR
The problem with names is that they can always be applied to more than
one thing. But the existence of unique individuals is self-evident. It is these two facts
that create a puzzle for philosophers. Anything that can be applied in many cases is a
universal. But something that is unique is a particular. But why should we believe in
particulars at all if particular have nothing that makes them unique?
Any name at all can be applied to many things. This is not the claim that every
name actually does apply to many things, but only that all names can potentially apply
to many things. What seems to be strongest counter-example is names that we give for
individual things themselves. The strongest example of these are personal names. So
lets suppose that we know “Stephen”. He is a particular individual having a
particular history. The name” Stephen” that I use applies only to him. But what makes
this name apply to a particular individual? We know that Stephen could have had a
different history. He might have been an only child, never attended university or lived
in a different country. We might claim that it was necessary that he had the same
parents, but this is nothing unique as I have the same parents as well. We might
suppose that it is necessary that he have the particular genetic origins that he had. But
if a had identical twin brothers with his genetic code, neither of them would be
Stephen. (If one of them were, then which one is it?) So it seems that there is nothing
about Stephen that makes him unique nothing that makes him distinct from a copy of
himself.
Without his history, memories do not make him unique. Without his genetic
code or other information, neither parents nor family make him unique. But if the very
things that make him different from other human beings are not enough to make him
unique, then what could make him unique. It seems that nothing at all makes him
particularly different.
On the other hand, it is self-evident that particular things exist. The idea that no
individual humans, forks, planets or dogs exist is absurd. Without individual things,
there is no reason to believe in any universal at all. So rejecting the existence of
particulars as such is irrational.
But these conclusions form a contradiction. If there is nothing at all that makes
Stephen different from a copy of himself, then there is nothing that makes anything
different from a copy of itself. Stephen is the preeminent example of a particular. If he
is not really a particular, then nothing else is either. But it is self-evident that there are
particulars. All self-evident sentences are true. Therefore, there are particulars. But
then there both are and are not particulars.
Before continuing to examine this issue and come to a resolution, it is helpful to
determine if this is the only problem with particulars and universals. This is problem
with the existence of particulars. But there could be other kinds of problems. One of
these has to do with the existence of universals.
 EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL

The internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide

an ontology into two parts: an internal part consisting of a linguistic framework and
observations related to that framework, and an external part concerning practical
questions about the utility of that framework. This division was introduced by Rudolf
Carnap in his work Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology. It was subsequently criticized
at length by Willard Van Orman Quine in a number of works, and was considered for
some time to have been discredited. However, recently a number of authors have come
to the support of some or another version of Carnap's approach.

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