There is an old philosophical conundrum called the problem of universals. Although it may seem too abstract to be relevant to any practical concerns, musing on this issue can lead to some interesting conclusions. But first, just what is the problem of universals? (In what follows, I'm indebted to Michael Huemer's remarks on this topic, and also to Scott Ryan's detailed exploration of it.)
Imagine a piece of chalk and a piece of paper. Both of them have the quality or attribute of whiteness. But what is the relationship of whiteness to the chalk or to the paper? Is there a real property called whiteness that somehow inheres in each entity? In other words, even though the chalk and the paper are different items, do they possess an identical property?
We treat them as if they do. When we say that both the chalk and the paper are white, we understand this to mean that the chalk and the paper have the attribute whiteness, which is identical in both cases. If there is no such property as whiteness per se, then our thinking is inaccurate. We are not correctly grasping the entities we perceive. We are fundamentally mistaken about them, because we think that they have certain real and identical attributes, when in fact they do not.
On the other hand, if the chalk and the paper do possess a real attribute called whiteness that is identical in each (a so-called "real universal"), then we have to ask how this attribute arises or where it comes from or how it is grounded. After all, there are no patches of whiteness just floating around.
To cut to the chase, the simplest answer to the question of where real universals come from is to say that they come from the mind of God - that real universals, including whiteness, are expressions of ideas in God's mind.
Since everything that we perceive consists of a variety of attributes that can be understood as real universals, this means that everything around us is an idea in the mind of God, or more precisely an expression of ideas in the mind of God. For instance, when we perceive a piece of chalk, we don't just perceive whiteness. We also perceive roundness or cylindricality, a certain degree of weight or heaviness, a certain solidity, a certain grainy texture, and we perceive the chalk in relation to other things - for instance, it may be lying on top of a desk. All of these attributes, qualities, and relationships are universals. There are other round or cylindrical things, other heavy things, other solid things, other grainy-textured things, and other things that are on top of things.
So not just whiteness but all of the various disparate elements that go into our perception and our mental grasp of a piece of chalk are attributes shared with a variety of other things in existence. If these attributes are real universals, then all attributes, qualities, properties, relations, etc. are real universals, which means that everything is grounded in the mind of God.
Furthermore, by perceiving and grasping these attributes, we are in effect reconstructing the mental process that gave rise to them in the first place - thus gaining an insight, however small, into the mind of God itself.
(As an aside, we might observe that our own consciousness is more readily explained if it can be said to have arisen out of a universe that is grounded in consciousness than if it emerged from a purely physical universe devoid of consciousness. It is a difficult philosophical problem to see how consciousness could emerge from an entirely unconscious environment. But if consciousness is built into the universe at its most fundamental level, then the emergence of our own consciousness is less puzzling.)
The alternative to all this is to say that there are no real universals and that the whiteness of the chalk and the whiteness of the paper are merely perceived as being the same, but really are not. One difficulty with this approach is that there are certain attributes that clearly are identical, such as number. One piece of chalk and one piece of paper both have the attribute one, and there is no doubt that one equals one, which means that the oneness of each object is real and identical. Or take the case of musical notes. The note C sharp is the same note whether it is struck by a piano or a guitar or played on a flute or some other instrument. Something like whiteness may be a little harder to nail down, but the principal is the same.
So it appears that in the clear-cut cases of numbers and musical notes, the attribute in question really is identical with corresponding attributes. Thus it will not work to say that attributes only appear to be identical, since in at least some cases they clearly are identical.
What we have found, then, is that the so-called ontological realist's position - that real universals exist as thoughts in the mind of God or proceed from such thoughts - is preferable to the alternative. Not only does it allow us to maintain our confidence in the validity of our thinking, but also it gives us a clearer explanation of how consciousness emerges in the first place.
Note finally that since everything we perceive consists of attributes that are shared with, or identical to, the attributes of other things, the whole of reality is a vast interconnected pattern with everything related to everything else. The single piece of chalk has its singleness in common with every other single thing, its whiteness in common with every other white thing, its cylindricality in common with every other cylindrical thing, its heaviness in common with every other heavy thing, its length in common with every other long thing, its graininess in common with every other grainy thing, its on-top-of-somethingness in common with every other thing that is on top of another thing, etc. Nothing exists in isolation.
This approach, then, not only brings together existence and consciousness, the human mind and God's mind, but also the disparate phenomena of the universe, which can be seen as parts of a larger whole.
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