A sortal universal is a specific type of universals that satisfy some criteria:
-Provides a criterion to individuate and count the particulars
-Provides a criterion of identity to the particulars
In general, the sortal universal provides the correct answer for the question “what is it?”. Moreover, is a sortal universal that substitutes X in the sentence “There are n X’s”, where n is a number. The sortal universal is represented in the language through count nouns.
Examples of sortals are: person, dog, chair, star,…
The universals that are represented with mass nouns, in general, are not sortals. Example: water, gold, clay, etc. The sentence “there are 5 gold´s here” not make sense. But, the expression “amount of clay” represents a sortal, because it satisfies the criteria above.
The very generic terms as “thing” are not sortals. Considering a scenario with a table and 2 bottles, the question “how many things are there?” don´t have a defined answer, because a table have 4 legs, the bottles have labels, etc…Moreover, there are 1000 (or more) parts of table, four half bottles…All these things are “things”.
Ok…
My main question here is “There is a connection between the sortal universal and the things that i can perceive?”. The particulars of all the sortal universal can be perceived (visualized, for example)? Or on the converse, all objects that i can visualize must be necessarily a particular of a sortal universal?
A reference to understand the notion of sortal:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/sortals/