By sensuous perception we obtain, according to Plato, an imperfect knowledge of individual objects; by our general concepts, or notions, we reach a higher knowledge of the idea of these objects. But what is the character of the idea itself? What is its relation to the individual object? And what is its relation to the author or originator of the individual things?[1]
NOMINALISM [...]. The philosophical theory that only individual objects have real existence, and that so-called universals (see Judgment) are nothing but names given in common to actually different and incommunicable objects.[2]
For, as has already been remarked, proper names have strictly no meaning; they are mere marks for individual objects: and when a proper name is predicated of another proper name, all the signification conveyed is, that both the names are marks for the same object.[3]
Nominalism, on the contrary, asserts the superior reality of individual objects, and turns the universal into a mere name. Now it was quite natural for Aristotle, with his tendency towards physical science and experiment, and the amassing of particular facts, to take the Nominalist view, so far as to assert the reality of individual objects.[4]
Sometimes the okkis or mauitoos acquired by dreams are not totems but fetiches, being not classes of objects but individual objects, such as a particular tree, rock, knife, pipe, &c.[5]
We use the term individual thing (or individual object) when we denote an example or exemplar that is of a kind. Individual objects in reality are for example the Eiffel tower, the M1 motorway, my car and John Doe.[6]
An individual object might also be termed as specific instance of a more general category. [...] Throughout the remainder of this article, we will use the terms 'categorization' for visual object categorization or generic OR, and 'specific OR' for the recognition of individual objects.[7]
