Resemblance Nominalism and counterparts

Abstract

1997). If properties are to be explained in terms of one object's resembling another, then this seems to leave the relational property of resemblance itself unexplained. The critics' objection is that this property itself must be explained by a dyadic universal of resemblance. Rodriguez-Pereyra believes he has an answer to this problem. His version of Resemblance Nominalism employs the full Lewisian panoply of modal realism with counterparts. While some might wonder whether the ontological benefits of nominalism outweigh the ontological costs of full modal realism, it seems fair to judge the combined view (nominalism plus modal realism) by its fruits in solving important philosophical problems. If indeed this view can avoid the above criticism and can explain what makes it true that a resembles b without positing a universal of resemblance, then that would be much to its credit.1 If, on the contrary, it cannot achieve this, and nominalism is saddled with at least one universal, then it would seem that the benefits of nominalism are not so great after all. In what follows I shall argue that Rodriguez-Pereyra's treatment of the problem fails to show that nominalism can eschew all universals.