Nominalism and semantics in Abelard and Ockham (Q2354873)

In the Middle Ages there were two champions of nominalism who rejected the real existence of the `universals': Peter Abelard (1079--1142) and William Ockham (1285?--1349), the former at the dawn of the medieval university, the latter, after two centuries, at the beginning of its setting. The paper compares their philosophies, pointing out the change of the focus from natural to mental language as the main difference between them.