Agnes Katona
Central European University
The Aristotelian conception of universals is often presented as a naturalistic alternative to Platonism, on the grounds that it places universals in space-time. However, a standard objection to the Aristotelian view is that it requires universals to be multi-located, which either leads to contradiction or leaves it unclear what multi-location amounts to. In this paper, I argue that the issue is not multi-location, but the way in which spatiotemporality is understood.
I distinguish two ways of understanding what it means to say that universals are in space-time. On the first, which I call the particularized conception, universals are in space-time in the same sense as particulars: they have exact locations. I argue that this leads to serious problems. In particular, it forces us to treat universals as if they had geometric properties such as shape and size, and to attribute incompatible properties to them across different instances, which threatens to undermine their unity.
On the second view, the burying strategy, universals are in space-time only in a derivative sense, in virtue of being instantiated by particulars. I argue that this makes the claim that universals are in space-time too weak. It amounts to a claim about instantiation, which a Platonist can also accept.
The conclusion is that there is no satisfactory account of spatiotemporal universals. The Aristotelian must either accept the costs of the first view or adopt a weakened notion of location that threatens to collapse into Platonism. But neither option looks promising. This suggests that universals should not be understood as being in space-time.
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SOPhiA 2026 