Bertrand Russell famously argued that Resemblance Nominalism cannot avoid making resemblance a universal on pain of embarking on a vicious regress. After discussing the regress in general and criticizing some proposed ways of blocking it, the chapter argues that the regress is fictitious, for the truthmakers of sentences like ‘a and b resemble each other’ are just a and b. Since the resembling entities suffice to account for the truthmakers of such sentences, no regress arises and yet resemblance is not made a universal. The chapter finishes by arguing against Russell that even if resemblance were a universal, this would not make it pointless to reject other universals.
Keywords: Counterpart Theory, infinite regress, Bertrand Russell, supervenience, truthmakers