Regresy podobieństwa. Podwójny relacyjny argument przeciwko nominalizmowi tropowemu

Abstract

Trope nominalists claim that resemblance is a primitive relation. There are two well-known arguments that aim to prove that such resemblance leads to a vicious regress. On the one hand, Bertrand Russell famously argued that resemblance relations imply an infinite series of resemblances holding between them. On the other hand, less famously, Edmund Husserl claimed that resemblance must be grounded in identity, for otherwise it falls into a vicious regress. In this paper, I argue that these arguments are intimately connected and, in fact, form a single complex case against nominalism. The point is that the standard solution to the Russell regress, which takes resemblance to be an internal relation, leads to the Husserl regress, and vice versa: a solution to the Husserl regress is possible when resemblance is taken to be an external relation, which immediately leads to the Russell regress.