AGATHANGELOS:
Damn these frogs - they are everywhere! Look! there is one cheeky long-tongued batrachian catching the flies that buzz around my lunchtime snack of black olives, capturing those irritating midges with its sticky lingual lash and wolfing them down with a satisfying blink of its yellow eyes.

    Are we suffering from a plague of these slimy creatures? These frogs can be found everywhere. The streams and rills that run about my home village in Pharsalus in Thessalia are full of them. Every Athenic pond and puddle seethes with them. A hoplite recently returned from service with the great Megas Alexandros the Macedonian told me they are to be found all over Asia - their existence is truly ubiquitous and universal.

TAURORHUPOS:
But hold! it is not their existence  that is ubiquitous and universal. Each individual frog exists in one particular spatio-temporal spot - but the *existence* of that frog does not exist - only the individual frog exists.

AGATHANGELOS :
But the fact that they are to be discovered everywhere in our world means that their presence on earth can be described as being a universal - is that not so Taurorhupos?

TAURORHUPOS:
No - it is not so. There are no such *things* as *universals.*  The fact that we are aware that other frogs exist universally in Pharsalus, and others exist all over Asia does not mean that the fact that we are aware that frogs exist in Pharsalus, and others exist all over Asia itself exists

    Facts do not exist - only that which is factually described by a statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case it is claimed to exist - exists.

    Nor does it mean that we are free to reify that fact into a semantically meaningful noun complete with a nominatum - for no such nominatum called a *universal* exists. Only the thinking, cognising humans - you and I - sitting here in the dust claiming or disclaiming the existence of *universals* exist.

    Each frog exists separately as a uniquely individual object wherever it exists. A crowd does not exist. Only individuals which are crowded together exist. The term *crowd* is merely a mental tool we have developed to avoid naming each member of the public separately crowded together in close proximity. In a like manner the term
*universal* is also a mental tool we have developed to avoid (the impossibility) naming each element scattered over a wide area of our world or the cosmos.*


AGATHANGELOS:
Do you not confuse particularity with singularity. Particularity is merely the way a universal breaks down or particularises itself into species, as in "The daffodil is a flower?"

TAURORHUPOS:
How can a *Universal itself* - which is just a mental fiction - *break down? Hahaha! Does an individuate frog *ascend upwards* as an imaginary component in an notional *accumulate* or conglomerate *whole?* This is crazy stuff which goes back to mankind's most primitive, naive and crude past, which can be traced to the belief in spirits, hobgoblins, pookars and bugbears. These *mentalisations* cannot be found in the world. They are no more than cognitive tools or mental grappling-hooks for getting a purchase on our environment and  talking about it!

    The mentating activity that goes on in the brain has absolutely nothing to do with the mode or manner in which  a frog or a lily-pad exists,  but about the way WE ideating HUMANS exist.  We are NOT addressing the abstraction *particularity,* the reference was to a *particular* frog or lily-pad. This is not some Socratic dialogic  farce where the precious hours of such noble men as Theaetetus are wasted attempting to define non-existent  and undefinable abstractions like *knowledge,* and each commonsense attempt to do so is deflected by the dexterous but unprofitable   parrying  by Socrates with his stubborn, spiteful spatha and otiose, elenchtic buckler.

     A *particular* is a small part that can be considered separately from the whole - but there exists no such whole of composite frogs such as the merological singularity which is The Ship of Theseus - what exists are millions of particular, disparate, individual, unique, specific frogs and lily-pads. Neither frogs nor lily-pads exist as one huge concentrated conglomerate ball of salientian or liliaceous plant-matter of which each animal or plant is a constituent part.

   It can clearly be seen that what is addressed is a single unique frog and a single unique lily-pad and NOT all the frogs and lily-pads in the cosmos.

    A particulate (an object composed of distinct particles) or a particular object is one that is separate and distinct from others of the same group or category.

    A singularity (being one of a kind) is simply another way of describing the same thing. Your confusion lies in reifying the human brain-processes by which we organise the way we conceive of things and mentally package those things into convenient *KINDS* AND *CLASSES.* Confusion as yours results in reifying such instrumental classificational activities of the brain into REAL THINGS.

  The term *class* has no nominatum (it does not refer to any object in particular). *Class* is just an imaginary or *let's pretend* casket into which similarly perceived objects are pretended to be thrown. *Let's Pretend - Universals* don't tidy frogs into one group. *Let's Pretend - Universals* tidy the human brain-processes for ease of recall just like we order a computer to save things in appropriate folders and files.

Look. Here - I will draw in in the dust with this stick...

(A) Singularity - (noun) That which is singular.
(B) Singularity - The quality or condition of being singular.

See the difference?

AGATHANGELOS:
Yes, now I follow you...

(A) A single frog is a living, breathing singularity.

(B) Refers to no particular object - has no denotatum and is simply a human mentalisation which does not exist. Only the mentating qualifier or conditionaliser exists.

All these abstractions: (1) categories, (2) singularity, (3) particularity, (4) universality and (5) universals are simply the way that you describe the contents of your mental toolshed. They do NOT exist in themselves, but are only lets-pretend flower-beds into which you seed and plant your pretty verbal signs.

TAURORHUPOS:
Just so! Only YOU the head gardener who uses these useful fictions to husband the blooms in your communicational rose-garden exist.

*Language* couldn't *raise* a feather with the word *fart.* The frog on the lilypad is NOT *raised to the level of universality* when observed and spoken of by a human onlooker. What goes on in the head of the human has absolutely nothing to do with the frog or the universe.


  AGATHANGELOS:
    So no such metaphysical transcendence takes place for the frog where the unfortunate animal ascends into some humanly conceived *universal realm.* No state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience is undergone by the frog, nor is the frog transmogrified into a state of excelling or surpassing, or going beyond usual material limits and becoming a member of some great dimension of frog-hood in some rainbow coloured many-roomed universal store or commissary in the sky.

The metaphysicalisation takes place in the brain of the human universaliser, whose brain seeks to identify the frog, and classify it with the useful fiction we call a
*category,* ( like we do with all the other elements of our environment.)


*This is a frog,* identifies the object and awards it the name or recognisable characteristics which correspond or implicitly refer to identifying qualities which members of the English-speaking language group have antecedally agreed upon to be communicated by the word *frog*.

TAURORHUPOS:
Exactly! Now consider the following carefully.

The word *universal* is simply a *word-icon* or shortcut method of compacting the sentence:

*Identifying characteristics which correspond or implicitly refer to recognisable qualities which members of our language group have antecedally agreed upon to be communicated by the word X.*

Therefore to claim that a universal exists, is to at the same time say that the longer version of the concept - and this can be just about ANY periphrastic - round the houses - way of uttering it - ALSO EXISTS.