Platonism

Ever since Plato, the ability of words to mean something has generally been considered to be the central problem of philosophy: when we observe a common characteristic of distinct objects - say, that each of them is red - in what sense, if any, does it make sense to say that this common characteristic is a distinct thing, that exists of itself independently of the objects of which it is a characteristic? This is more a theoretical than a practical problem. For we experience on a daily basis that the words we use have communicative and predictive value, by and large.

Plato