Empiricist accounts claim abstraction builds universals from particulars, but this assumes we can identify which particulars are relevantly similar without already possessing the universal.

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Circular reasoning (or begging the question)(as used to identify the flaw in the empiricist account described): A logical mistake where you assume the conclusion you're trying to prove is already true, making your argument go in circles.
Empiricist(a philosophical position about the source of knowledge): Someone who believes that knowledge comes primarily from experience and observation rather than from ideas you're born with.
abstraction(Godfrey, Quodlibet V, q. 10): The process by which the agent intellect draws out potentially intelligible content from phantasms, making that content available to the possible intellect
particulars(Buddhist epistemology (pramāṇa theory)): The actual objects of the world that are directly accessible only through perception and are ineffable — they cannot be captured or referred to by words

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