How did William of Ockham’s view of universals differ from Aristotle’s view?

William of Ockham’s view of universals differed significantly from the Aristotelian position, which held that universals exist as real constituents within particular things (universalia in rebus).12

In contrast, William of Ockham was a nominalist who argued that reality consists entirely of individual, particular things. He rejected the idea that there are any shared essences or universal realities inherent in objects. For Ockham, things do not possess common natures; rather, they are simply more or less similar to one another.324

Ockham explained our ability to use general terms not by pointing to universal entities in the world, but by appealing to mental concepts. These concepts serve as natural signs that allow humans to think and speak about multiple individual things in general terms. While Aristotelians believed that general words refer to common constituents shared by particulars, Ockham maintained that such universals are not real entities but are instead linguistic or mental tools used to categorize individual objects based on their observed resemblances.324