METAPHYSICS One of the Wrst superXuous entities to be subjected to the razor are Scotus’ haecceities, or individuating principles Scotus had argued that in addition to the human nature of Socrates there must be something to make it this nature; because if his human nature were itself this, then every human nature would be this, that is to say would be the nature of Socrates Ockham believed neither in the common nature nor in the individuating principle All that exists in reality are individuals, and they just are individual—they need no extra principle to individuate them It is not individuality, but universality, that needs explaining—indeed, explaining away But Ockham’s nominalism is only part of his programme of metaphysical deXation In addition to universals, Ockham wanted to shave oV large classes of individuals For his medieval predecessors there were individuals in every category—not only individual substances like Socrates and Brownie the donkey, but individual accidents of many kinds, such as Brownie’s whereabouts and Socrates’ relationship to Plato Ockham reduced the ten Aristotelian categories to two Only substances and qualities were real Belief in individuals of other kinds, Ockham maintained, was due to a naive assumption that to every word there corresponded an entity in the world (OTh 565) This was what led people to invent ‘when-nesses’ and ‘wherenesses’—they might as well, he says, have invented also ‘andnesses’ and ‘butnesses’ Medieval philosophers did not, in fact, have a great deal invested in some of the later categories of the Aristotelian catalogue What was serious in Ockham’s innovation was the denial of the reality of the categories of quantity and of relation Ockham was not denying the distinction between the diVerent categories: what he was denying was that the distinction was more than a conceptual one Substance, quality and quantity are distinct categories, even though they not signify an absolute reality distinct from substance and quality, because they are distinct concepts and words signifying the same things but in a diVerent manner They are not synonymous names, because ‘substance’ signiWes all the things it signiWes in one manner of signifying, namely directly; ‘quantity’ signiWes the same things but in a diVerent manner of signifying, signifying substance directly and its parts obliquely; for it signiWes a whole substance and connotes that it has parts distant from other parts (OTh 436) 208