Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism

"Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism" is a 1947 paper by philosophers Nelson Goodman and W.V.O. Quine that advocates for a philosophical stance known as nominalism. Nominalism, in its broader 20th-century sense, denies the existence of abstract entities such as classes, relations, and properties. Goodman and Quine declared their rejection of these abstract entities, stating that any philosophical system that includes them is unsatisfactory. This position is often contrasted with Platonism, which asserts the existence of abstract entities. Nominalists often employ Ockham's razor, the principle that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, to support their rejection of abstracta.12