  William's corpus of writings is not widely available and a great deal more textual work needs to be done before any assessment can be made about his broader philosophical significance. Nevertheless, his basic philosophical commitments and some of his characteristic views are known. The texts we do have indicate that he started his career as a realist in matters of logic and metaphysics and that his commitment to realism grew stronger with the appearance of the vocalists and early nominalists. Thanks to Abelard's criticisms, William is best known for his realist theories of universals. In response to the vocalist challenge, he seems to have held something like the Cratylus theory of language: the nature of words is intimately tied to the nature of the things they name. In logic, some vocalists claimed that the force of inference arises from words or ideas, but William argued that this is to be found instead in some thing or relation between things, which he identified as the locus or medium of argument. He interpreted Aristotle's Categories as ten general things, not ten general words as the vocalists maintained. These and other claims suggest a broadly realist philosophical outlook. It is possible that fragments and excerpts of William's work passed down to us by his near contemporaries are those in which he was debating with the vocalists, and so we do not know whether they represent William's deepest commitments or only brief forays into an important debate.