I agree. It think it is obvious that most generals do evolve in some sense. However, here, like Ockham, I don’t think that most generals are “things”. Or in other words, “generals” per se don’t evolve, because most do not independently exist at all. Like Aristotle said, they subsist in matter, and when the last instance goes away, no more general, except in conceptual terms.

So if a general appears to evolve what we are really getting is a new general, just as if a concept evolves one is really witnessing the advent of a new concept.

I agree. I think in the 19th century it was pretty clear what we meant by matter: stuff with extension. Now in the 21st century where most of the ideas are gone it’s harder to say. Still, I think one can still extend the 19th century view of matter as that which has as properties some sort of position.

Mark, by determined I don’t mean causal determinism but more the idea of properties as complete. It seems to me that one can accept causal indeterminism yet think that universals are always truly complete. So let’s say I adopt Newtonianism with the added notion of “swerve” picked up from the Epicureans. That is matter in motion has the tendency to not exactly follow its path. I don’t see how that would change universals in the least. I think the idea that generals grow or evolve is pretty profound, although it can be read back into some versions of neoPlatonism. Yet most of the movement in this direction came directly out of philosophers reacting to Darwin.

In fact, I think “materialism”/”physicalism” and “naturalism” being problematic terms is a topic that is not nearly discussed enough.

From what I understand, Aristotle didn’t believe this either. One might say that this idea is now ~2400 some odd years out of date, at least if taken to apply to all universals.

As I see it if there is any form of indeterminism in the world, new universals are being formed all of the time. I don’t see how most universals are anything more than patterns or ideas of patterns that are or can be instantiated more than once.

On the other hand, if the world is strictly deterministic (and energy conserving), Plato was essentially right – there really are no new universals, all have existed since the very beginning and will never change. What I want to know is why non-creatio ex nihilo determinists don’t regard evolution as practical evidence that the world is not strictly deterministic, either that or concede that Plato was right after all.

This isn’t to say one way of thinking about classical mechanics is more right than an other. Just that ever since then the traditional terms we tend to think about matter in terms of seemed like just one choice among other equivalences. And the other alternatives seemed to offer radically different ways about thinking through matter.

I much prefer the Peircean approach which talks about how one sign determines an other sign. This is similar to causality but has various important differences – it is far more general in its scope for instance than mere causality. I’d also note that the switch from concrete/abstract + causality as in Vallicella’s argument to a discussion in terms of signs avoids many of the problems he sees. And of course if we talk about generals (signs) then we don’t have the problem of the mind/matter divide. Since in terms of signs there’s no problem talking about how my thought of the door and the desire to be there determine my walking to the door.