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What is the Problem of Universals? From Explanation to Description

In this article I will examine a metaontological problem, which has lately been thematized for example in [19]: what is the problem of universals? I will argue for a different solution from the one that has recently been popular, a solution that represents a return to an older view. What is the problem to which the postulation of universals or alternatively of tropes (or of both in barocque ontologies like that of Barry Smith) is a solution, and what kind of method could be used to defend an answer to it? A very popular position, recently defended by for example Rodriguez-Pereyra in [19] and in [20] and by Chris Swoyer in [26, page 247] is that the problem could only be the problem of how something is possible and the method must hence be inference to the best explanation, i. e. abduction in the sense in which Peirce used the word. Abduction is often explicitly contrasted with conceptual analysis, which is held to be a wrong way to solve the problem. In this article I will give an argument against this popular supposition, arguing that the problem is instead just a problem of what exists, and that in order to solve its main part demonstrative reasoning is enough, though abductive reasoning may also play a part in solving other parts of it. I will concentrate mostly on Rodriguez-Pereyra’s version of this supposition, since he makes the most use of it and presents it rather clearly. It is vital for his argument for his theory of universals, a version of resemblance nominalism. Thus if he can be shown to be wrong in this claim, then most of his arguments for resemblance nominalism will collapse. However, I will also examine briefly what use other philosophers have made of this claim and how they argue for it, since my ultimate aim is to show that the assumptions common to all of them are false. Some philosophers (such as van Fraassen in [27]) have attacked the very existence of valid inference to the best explanation, claiming that a theory can never be justified just by showing that it would explain something. Of course if