Resemblance Nominalism A Solution to the Problem of Universals [Hardcover]

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra offers a fresh philosophical account of properties. How is it that two different things (such as two red roses) can share the same property (redness)? According to resemblance nominalism, things have their properties in virtue of resembling other things. This unfashionable view is championed with clarity and rigor.

Introduction
1. The Problem of Universals: A Problem about Truthmakers
2. TheExplanandaof the Problems of Universals
3. The Many over One
4. Resemblance Nominalism
5. The Coextension Difficulty
6. Russell's Regress
7. The Resemblance Structure of Property Classes
8. Goodman's Difficulties
9. The Imperfect Community Difficulty
10. The Companionship Difficulty
11. The Mere Intersections Difficulty
12. The Superiority of Resemblance Nominalism
Appendix: On Imperfect Communities and the Non-communities they Entail
References, Index

Dan Dennett's 'Philosophical Lexicon' contains the entry: Exhume, v. to revive a position generally thought to be humed. This book is the most brilliant philosophical exhumation that it has been my pleasure to encounter. This book argues that our attributions of properties and relations can be given satisfactory truthmakers using no more than resemblances holding between ordinary particulars. Many of us had assumed that this program is bankrupt, but now we must think again...With patient and ingenious argument [Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra] has shown that the theory has more to be said for it than ever I, and I suspect many others, had imagined. The fundamental nature of properties and relations may be the central question in metaphysics. He has made an important contribution to the topic --D. M. Armstrong, Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra is Fellow and Tutor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford.