ABSTRACT
This brochure 1 consists of three papers which were read at the Aquinas Symposium sponsored by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Notre Dame on March 9 and 10, 1956. The first paper is ‘Propositions and Sentences’ by Professor Church: the second, by Professor Goodman, is ‘A World of Individuals’; and the third, by Professor Bochenski, bears the title ‘The Problem of Universals’. In an explanatory introduction these papers are described as ‘literally’ making up a symposium and as being ‘papers that converge on the Problem of Universals from three different philosophic positions’. Apparently they are a selection from the papers given at the two-day meeting and were not prepared with the intention of making contributions to a connected discussion of a specified problem relating to universals, one which normally would attempt to canvass differences of opinion between the participants. The convergence which the writer of the explanatory introduction finds in the three essays is invisible to me. It is possible, for example, both to be a nominalist in Goodman's sense of ‘nominalism’ and to reject nominalism in Church's sense, and it is possible consistently to reject nominalism in Goodman's sense while being a nominalist in Church's sense. This can hardly be taken to indicate convergence on the problem of universals. 2
