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The difficulty of doing without abstract reference provides a second, oft-cited reason to posit a plenitude of universals. Many predicative expressions—e.g., “… is hungry”—are paired with words that look like names for an abstract object—e.g., “hunger.” Moreover, for every predicate there is some nominalization by which abstract reference can be achieved: “… is a father” corresponds to “fatherhood”; “… is dark” corresponds to “darkness”; and, more generally, “… is such-and-such” corresponds to “(the property of) being such-and-such,” as in “being entirely without fear is a dangerous property to have.” When a sentence contains a name or other expression that looks ...(100 of 4952 words)