What Is It Like to Be an Ostrich?

Abstract

In this chapter, I first present a very short history of contemporary Ostrich Nominalism. This short history is divided into two parts: the friends and foes of the Ostrich, i.e. some contemporary metaphysicians who have explicitly or implicitly assumed a negative or a positive attitude toward Ostrich-style thinking. I strongly suspect that some of the main insights of Ostrich Nominalism were also defended in the more distant past, in particular in medieval philosophy. But I will avoid any attempt to trace them back into this distant past due to the complexities of the history of philosophy. After this short historical outline, based on the views of friends and rivals, I will extract what constitutes the core of this position. Some initial differences between the old Ostrich and the new Priority Nominalism will also become clear at this point.