Fantasy Worlds and the Problem of Universals

19 Nov, 2024

This was inspired by this post by Mothman Explodecorpse.

I have a problem with "secular wizards", which is to say the modern archetype of Wizard-as-Scientist such as the ones you see in Harry Potter, who practice a form of magic learnable at a university or from textbooks and are generally divorced from either philosophy or religion. I don't want my wizards to be engineers who levitate boulders, I want them to be mystical, like Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, or Rumi.

Mysticism and philosophy are hard work though, especially in a fantasy world where you have deities flying around and the like. So here's an evergreen philosophical problem for your wizards to consider: the fuck is up with reality?

Let me be more specific; Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?

You might recognize this from high school, it is the big divide between Plato and Aristotle, and it's where we get the vocabulary to rephrase it as "Is there such a thing as a Platonic horse?"

This is where the fantasy worldbuilder might jump from her chair and stick a finger in the air, proclaiming that yes, in her world there is a Platonic horse, and it lives in the Great Plain of Heaven and is the EQUUS MAXIMA from which all horses descend.

I ask that she holds her horses, because asking the question is more interesting than knowing the answer.

The big disagreement here is whether the form of a thing transcends our current reality and exists independently beyond the object, so instead of giving answers, let's look into some positions that people might have regarding this problem. These are mostly medieval answers because 1. I am not a Philosophy academic and 2. are answers proposed in a world where magical thinking is a lot more accepted, so it fits better in fantasy.

Also don't take them to be accurate representations of these philosophical positions in the real world, all of which are espoused to this day by real people and are a lot deeper than what I put here.

_{^{The OSR, for isntance, is made up of Idealists, and this is my proof.}}

Radical Realists / Idealists

Idealists propose that yes, universals (the colour red, the Horse, etc) all exist independently and prior to the world as we know it. To them, the Forms aren't spatial, temporal, or subjectively mental, they are literal and out there. This is what the metaphor of the cave is trying to illustrate, an ultimate reality where these things all exist.

For some, this is just self-evident. The universe is a rational place because it was created by rational minds, right? Therefore all universals are contained within the minds of the gods, or the God, since they emanate from those. And thus the world can be known through rational thinking. Easy peasy.

Thus, the form of the fireball which I just shot from my hand is simply an emanation of the Ideal Fireball which can be seen blazing in the sky from dawn to dusk, and it would be nonsensical to say otherwise.

The sun is probably an emanation of the ultimate reality too, and if you see a god, they're probably the closest our reality can get to a materialized Form. But they're the Form of themselves, so they're Perfect.

_{^{Tommy Aquinas over here is the main man of Moderate Realists, but there's a ton of others.}}

Moderate / Immanent Realists

Immanent Realists propose that universals do exist, but they reject the idea of a separate realm or plane of existence inhabited by the Forms, but rather that the Forms exist themselves as fragmented and multiplied (or particularized) within the many things of the world.

This can get very complicated very fast, here's an excerpt of an article on Thomas Aquinas' metaphysics:

Primarily, for Aquinas, a thing cannot be unless it possesses an act of being, and the thing that possesses an act of being is thereby rendered an essence/existence composite. If an essence has an act of being, the act of being is limited by that essence whose act it is. The essence in itself is the definition of a thing; and the paradigm instances of essence/existence composites are material substances (though not all substances are material for Aquinas; for example, God is not). A material substance (say, a cat or a tree) is a composite of matter and form, and it is this composite of matter and form that is primarily said to exist. In other words, the matter/form composite is predicated neither of, nor in, anything else and is the primary referent of being; all other things are said of it.

So the Fireball I shot from my hands to burn your entire family's homestead isn't an emanation of the ultimate reality, but rather that the Ideal Fireball exists within that same fireball as a particularized version of itself. The ideal fireball doesn't need the fireball I shot to exist for it to exist either, but saying that it's just a miniature sun would be stupid; the essence of the fireball doesn't need an act of being to exist. Existence predates that, this is just an instantiation (the concept of which will be explained in the following title).

What about deities, though? Are they not clearly Forms from the ultimate reality?

Well, consider this: (a) There exists an eternal circular motion, namely the movement of the sphere of the fixed stars (or the movement of the sun around the disc with the elephants in it, whatever, adapt to your setting). (b) Everything that is moved is moved by something else. © Therefore, there must be either an infinite series of causes or a cause of motion that is itself unmoved. An infinite series of motions is impossible. Therefore, (e) there is an unmoved cause of motion, and this is to be called "God".

"Auuugh but the goddess of fertility!!! She has great power and yap yap yap" that is merely a great, powerful spirit. Making shit grow from the ground doesn't make you the Prime Mover, dawg, get real. You may call her a goddess but a proper wizard would just roll her eyes at this unrefined brute who's willing to call anything a god.

_{^{William of Ockham, inventor of Occam's Razor and famous Conceptualist, portrayed here as just a little guy and it's his birthday.}}

Conceptualists

These people, like the ones above, reject the existence of abstract objects outside of the mind's perception of them, but different than them, they also reject that there are facts independent from our mind about whether universals are instatiated.

By "instatiation" I mean that the Universals really do exist out there, but only if they have been instantiated into the world - that is, if something is, has been, or will be, then its Universal exists. Immanent Realists believe this, Conceptualists say that this is baloney sandwiches. To them, the Universals have no basis outside of our own mind.

So that Fireball I shot to kill your dog is an Universal in both of our heads, because we understand that magic evidently exists and that it can be used to kill dogs, but it is neither the emanation from an ultimate reality independent from ours, nor is it the instantiation of a Universal which exists in our world and has been made manifest by the fireball. Wizards aren't that powerful, after all, they just shoot fire from their fingertips, you don't have to get all deep about it.

You might also think of it like an "universal" not being a thing that exists, but rather that what exists are individuals, and there is something common like them, but these commonalities exist only in our brain. They're just mental ways of referring to sets of individuals.¹ Further, there's no need to assume an entity exists unless it's necessary for an observed phenomena to make sense; you don't have to say that the Fireball emanates from the conceptual Fireball because it doesn't need that to exist, it's just a fireball. Occam's Razor.

Gods, though? They break these rules. There's clearly some fucky business going on with them for them to have all this power, but beyond that, they don't really seem to necessitate form or matter.

Something that has both and needs it isn't a god, that's just a strong magician. So if your deity exists in the physical world and, if killed, ceases to exist... sorry to say bucko, you've been duped into a cult.

_{^{William of Ockham, inventor of Occam's Razor and famous Nominalist, here to show that maybe Conceptualism wasn't even really a thing and it was Nominalism all the way down? Scholars differ.}}

Nominalists

These are the final guys and mortal enemies of the Realists. There's two versions of the position: one says that Universals aren't real, the other says that anything that doesn't exist in space and time isn't real (thus abstract objects). Both of them are pretty close, though, in that they both say that these are all concepts we make up, but they're not actually real. They're just "nomens" - "names" we give, but they don't exist out there, in the real world.

Don't mix this up with Conceptualism though, these guys are saying that Universals don't exist even inside your head. They're not a thing. Where would this even exist, precisely? "Oh it's outside of space and time" get real bro.

And yes, alternate dimensions or planes of existence still count as "space and time", because if you can go there it's within space, and if time passes - which it must for you to be there existing otherwise you would come unstuck and blow up or something - then it's within time. Space may be magically augmented, time may be magically stopped, but saying something is unstuck from either is to say it's not real.

There is such a thing as effective existence though. Something exists insofar as it can concretely affect the world, it has causal powers, it affects causality even in the slightest way. Thus gods exist in the real world because, regardless of how they manifest or if you can or not see them, or whatever nonsense they spew about "infinite existence" or "your lifetime is but a grain of sand in the great hourglass that is my perspective", they affect reality.²

This provides an interesting corollary for magic: magic, then, must exist in the real space and time. That fireball I shot to incinerate your garden wasn't an instantiation of an Universal, nor an emanation from the ultimate reality, neither a manifestation of an Universal that only exists in psychology... then what the hell is it? Where does it come from? Is there an energy under the earth that rises through our feet and is converted to fire?

Here's a fun exercise: pretend you're a Nominalist and make up a reason why the magic in your world can be explained like that, and then imagine how an Immanent Materialist might refute that. You can pick up both of these arguments and turn them into magician NPCs, I guarantee they'll be way more interested than that cheap copy of Radagast the Brown you were planning on putting next session.