TITLE:
The Problem of Universals from the Scientific Point of View: Thomas Aquinas Should Be More Appreciated
AUTHORS:
Shiro Ishikawa
KEYWORDS:
Linguistic Copenhagen Interpretation, The Problem of Universals, Scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.12 No.1,
February
17,
2022
ABSTRACT: Recently we proposed the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
mechanics, which is called quantum language or measurement theory. This theory
is valid for both quantum and classical systems. Thus, we think that quantum
language is one of the most powerful scientific theories, like statistics, and
thus, it is the scientific completion (i.e., the destination) of dualistic
idealism. If so, we can introduce the concept “progress” in the dualistic
idealism. For example, we can assert that [Plato → Descartes → Kant →
Wittgenstein → quantum language], where [“X” → “Y”] means that “Y” is more like
quantum language than “X”. In this paper, we will study the problem of universals from the perspective of quantum language
(i.e., from the scientific perspective of ignoring any religious
perspective). And we can be confident of the
progress of both of the two time series [Plato → Anselmus → Thomas Aquinas → quantum language] and [Descartes → Thomas Aquinas → quantum language]
in dualistic idealism. The
reader may find it surprising that Scholastic
philosophy is more scientific than Cartesian-Kantian philosophy.
However, this is because Descartes gave up the pursuit of “universals” and
presented dualism as a visible “mind-matter dualism” so that it could be
familiar to the general public. This made the Cartesian-Kantian philosophy
socially successful, but unscientific. The problem of universals has not always been clear
in the long history of philosophy. The reader should be convinced that the
reason is that the problem of universals has been discussed in an incomplete
non-scientific dualism to this day.