This analysis addresses grounding arguments against universals in Aristotelianism, suggesting implications for broader philosophical views.
Recently, there have been a spate of ingenious grounding arguments targeting the Aristotelian view of universals – see e.g. Alvarado (2019, 2020), Costa (2021), Raven (2022), and Costa & Giordani (2024). My aim here is to address these arguments. Specifically, I will show that these arguments either fail (and hence don’t undermine Aristotelianism) or highlight a problem for anyone who buys into a widely accepted idea about the priority of constituents. A knock-on consequence is that Aristotelianism is either off the hook or at least in the same boat as many other competing positions.
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Nathan Wildman (2025) studied this question.
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