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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
A phenomenalist philosophy which employs the Principle of Acquaintance (PA) plus the Principle that what exists are the referents of certain meaningful terms, defined by PA, cannot include either universals or particulars in its ontology, but is limited to instances of universals as constituting the range of ontological existents. Universals must be omitted since they are repeatable and, hence, never wholly presented or contained, whereas the objects of direct acquaintance are wholly and exhaustively presented. Furthermore, no entities beyond characters (qualities and relations) are given in direct acquaintance; hence, particulars, too, must be omitted for the phenomenalist who relies on PA.
1 E.g., G. Bergmann, The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism. Longmans, Green and Co., 1954.
2 I hardly know what notation to use here.
3 The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford, 1912; reset, 1946), p. 96.
4 I.e., with universal, not this instance of it. (This is a meaningful question for this position.)
5 In the latter case, the question is even more inappropriate. Or, if not, then it could perhaps be dealt with by the use of paradigms.
