Oh my, i just can't really help myself today, most things i hear, i'm too tempted to express myself about. First the video held my interest for a good 8 minutes, then I skipped to a few points and heard a bit more. As much as I very much can't agree with Hex's tone (at it again, eh?) or that his only contribution on the ideas of this threat is to simply reject them all vehemently and not really try to add or present alternative concepts, I do agree that for the most part the video (48 minutes!) is mostly babbling. Maybe my lack of full study in the different classical philosophies is why i say this....but for me, to spend 48 minutes crusading against one philosophical formulation of the past against another is rather inane.
So...the core problem here is how we...define...nominalism, i believe. The way I read a summary of the philosophy that is nominalism is that it's core premise is that the essence of reality begins in the individual. Already there is trouble, because what kind of individual can become the beginning of how we perceive the reality around us. Each of us as a being, obviously sees ourselves first, and all other things afterward. Ok, makes sense. Using the idea of nominalism, how then do we start perceiving the reality around us? Lets go to the idea of say cats or dogs. If we are going to percieve the existence of reality individual by individual - then each cat is a single unit and their relationship to each other is by coincidence of appearance and hence unworthy of consideration.
Of course he is right to argue against this style of assigning importance to how we view our existence, because it simply is of importance that humans all have the same basic physical being...or cats....or trees...and so on. And just to note - that's not even going down to the things we can now perceive scientifically, because where do you stop. Does reality begin with molecules? Atoms? Sub-atomics? Quantum theory? We seem to not be able to break down existence to it's tiniest individual piece. Or if we have, i haven't heard of it at any rate. That why that LHC is chewing up vast energies every day. If the purpose of developing a philosophic method like this (or like realism - arrogant title too i might add) is to understand the world around us, it depends which facet of it we are trying to understand.
Intermission
Of course the problem with that the purpose of these metaphysical discussion to me is, and i highly suspect will always be so, that no matter how we modify our way of setting unit by which we claim is the universal beginning of the reality we perceive there is a missing part in the organization of it.
Onto realism, and since I read at least the basics of it, I think I might address multiple versions of it....
Platonic realism - the idea that independent of any individual we perceive, there is a ideal form it is representing and that ideal form is one of the pure expressions of reality. Well a simple way to start breaking it down is go back to the cat. Already so all cats are representing "cat" then what about a tiger? It too really is just a slightly modified version of the same form, because if not, then it already breaks down to you can't call a Siamese (cat) a Mainecoon (cat) and then we are really just using nominalism again. So in this realism system how do we determine what level of difference is between each form - is there one each individual species? all felines? all mammals? Again, the system runs away with itself really.
Naive realism then - not so bad to me, because as human beings, reality is rather exactly what we perceive it to be. So because we perceive boiling water is hot, it is. We feel the rock is hard, therefore it is. Simple, yes, given the sometimes shaky reliability of both our nervous system and brains, sometimes we perceive things incorrectly. (I hope i don't need to make examples for that basic fact)
The most developed realism i could find to read about is D.M. Armstrongs Universalis and while it very rightly makes some vague gestures at marrying both realism and nomalism, because both methods have valid references or purposes for which their used, he distills realism down to the concept that there is a real world, functioning according to "universals" that corrospond to the fundamental particles in physics. Well trouble already to my mind because the world of fundamental particles, quantum physics, from what i can tell all the fringes of science, are constantly found to be off the mark to some degree and then tweaked with some new discovery. Now while I accept both my own so far reliable senses, and science and all it's methods of identifying the reality (or realities depending on how one feels about it) again, they are extensions of how we perceive the world, and they do reliable give us more knowledge to the extent they do, there does ALWAYS seem to be some part more of reality to discover.
While again, his refinements to the way in which we define reality are quite an improvement to me, well simply said again further down the line, i cannot see that no discrepancies will arise. And now onto what all of these metaphysical schools are for, our attempt to truly "know" what reality is. As in what it's made of, how it's organized, how it interacts. And so we should, but for my own opinion, I don't think i can really feel comfortable trying to define "reality" as anything more than energy. Energy is the part of existence that takes it's myriad forms, matter, eletromagnetism, and so on, but I'm not sure I for one thing that we should expect that "energy" or "reality" will ever stop having more layers for us to discover about it.
So nominalism IS a valid philosophy - depending on the scale and qualites of the reality you want to measure. So to realism, and any other system of understand the world around us. Perhaps I think, each system should be appreciated for the validity it has in adding to the different layers or reality we are able to understand and organize within our own consiousness.
As for me, though being aware of all of this is incredibly enlightening, how i choose to use these tools and understand my own reality is that MOSTLY how I perceive things around me, is what they are....but there is always some small level of uncertainty about the layers I cannot perceive that I should always be willing to augment my techniques of perception, whether physical or mental - and personally i might even include emotional and spiritual, although those more describe the purposes of using my perception. For at the end of what turned out to be an unintentional analysis sparked by actually my dislike for Hex's tone, that then turned to skimming the clip, then to analyzing the validity of these metaphysical philosophies, my own conclusion is this:
There is some form of universal...energy i guess i called it....our attempts to find universals are ways we try to come to terms with not being able to define that universal in an objective fashion. To me that's completely natural. Existence, energy, the universal, what is true, are constantly being expressed in everything all the time. Everything down the smallest sub- and fundamental particles are real, and all of the infinite "states of affairs" created by the reactions between them are as well, that forms the reality we experience. In his case, he says the "states of affairs" are his fundamental building block for reality. But as I just reasoned, I don't really think there's one level on which reality starts, I rather think the different levels and all the ways we relate them to each other both vertically and horizontally in the "hierarchy" are all just exactly that - concepts by which we attempt to understand truths in reality. I don't see why truth has to be constrained to a set of fundamental particles, as i've said, since even those are still not beyond some speculation, i like to just see energy and the way it's expressed in the reality i perceive, using all of the different ways i can find, and without discriminating against the different scales by which i may percieve it, i.e fundamental, atoms, molecules, compounds, etc. and on it goes. I am just glad to be able to be a part of it and appreciate it.
Oh - and i'm not wholly sure what anyone else might think of whatever i just wrote, though i know my ideas, i'll be very curious to re-read them, because it wasn't intentional when i started to respond, and it was spontaneous in it's creation. Wow...infact once again, having a source for philosophical thought and expression is greatly appreciated...without the instances of reality to stimulate the evolution of my own perceptions of reality, not a word of idea of this would've ever existed...thanks