Ignacy Kłaput
University of Warsaw
Abstract/concrete distinction and universal/particular distinction both traditionally play a vital role in metaphysics. Nonetheless, both are also notoriously hard to properly explicate. A strategy, dubbed by David Lewis (1986) a Way of Conflation, promises to identify both distinctions and, in doing so, explain one (abstract/concrete) through accounts of another (universal/particular). I maintain that such a project is misguided. Firstly, it seems to be clear that the concept of universal allows for accounts that classify universals as abstract entities and those that claim that universals are concrete (see Armstrong 1988). Secondly, the realm of abstract objects is conceptually broader than the category of universals. Nonetheless, I believe that there are important conceptual analogies between those distinctions. The scepticism about universal/particular distinctions (see, for example, Ramsey 1925) could be seen as a model for scepticism about sharp abstract/concrete distinction. I shall focus, however, on a different analogy. I believe that disentangling the ambiguity of the concept of abstractness would result in at least two different – although related – concepts. This constitutes an analogy with the concept of universal, which is broadly understood either in a transcendentist (Platonist) or immanentist (Aristotelian) manner. However, in the case of universals, the situation is in fact even more complex, as between transcendentist and immanentist conceptions of universals there is a conceptual space for mixed theories (Franklin 2015; Peacock 2016; Carmichael 2024). A similar continuum could be seen between the concept of the immanent universal and that of the particular. I will argue that these features of universal/particular distinction can be observed in abstract/concrete distinction as well. Thus, the standard view of abstract/concrete distinction (Cowling 2017) is incorrect.
Chair: Zhengguan Chen
Time: 03 September, 16:50 – 17:20
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 