Abstract
Trope theory (‘moderate nominalism’, ‘trope nominalism’) is usually introduced as the view that properties are not universal (repeatable) but particular (or ‘particularized’). The particular size, shape, weight, colour, etc. of this mug standing on my desk are examples of such particular properties.
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Notes
- 1.
It may be noted that a few philosophers seem to use the term ‘trope’ not for these properties (and relations) but for an ontological role that is neutral with regard to whether the entities playing it are states of affairs or tropes in the present sense, e.g. Persson (1997).
- 2.
There is an alternative view on which these substitute-universals are not classes of tropes formed by the relation of exact resemblance, but are ‘classes or kinds’ that have a ‘distributive unity’ (Stout 1921/1930, p. 387).
- 3.
The tenet that a trope, despite being simple, is both particular and qualitative is central to some of the tasks trope theory is allocated, chief among them solving the problem of universals (cf. Maurin 2002, Chap. 5).
- 4.
Mertz uses the letter ‘H’ because he occasionally calls the individuality of any entity its ‘haecceity’. However, what is mostly called ‘individuality’ is different from what is mostly called ‘haecceity’: the former is an individual’s being an individual, e.g. Socrates’s being an individual; the latter is an individual’s being this individual, e.g. Socrates’s being Socrates (cf. e.g. Rosenkrantz 1993).
- 5.
For our purposes, we can ignore that this truthmaking involves a pair of entities (tropes), whereas Hochberg’s Principle (as formulated by Simons) applies to one entity (trope).
- 6.
For a further attempt at explaining how a trope, despite being simple, can perform the two entirely different truthmaking jobs, see Simons (2010). Specifically, Simons appeals to similarities between tropes and ultimates in Whitehead’s metaphysics.
- 7.
For a defence of relational tropes, see e.g. Simons (2010).
- 8.
As we shall see (Sect. 7.2), this is an idea that Panayot Butchvarov attempts to use as an argument against relations per se, whether particular or universal.
- 9.
It should be noted, however, that in his (1999) Campbell does provide arguments that clearly apply to relational tropes. He thinks he succeeds in reducing all relations, except, in effect, the relation of being located at. It is at this point that he idiosyncratically turns from the ‘world of appearance’ to the ‘real world’, maintaining that trope theory concerns only the former, whilst the latter is the subject of physics, specifically, geometrodynamics, a theory in which relations allegedly play no serious role.
- 10.
For several other problems with it, see Simons (1994, pp. 558–61).
- 11.
Incidentally, many other of my modal intuitions about tropes are similarly feeble. For instance, Armstrong has an objection from ‘redundancy’ to any trope theory, whether it adheres to non-transferability or not: ‘[I]s it not possible that a particular should have lacked a certain property or relation trope that it actually has, but instead have a numerically different but exactly similar trope?’ (1997, p. 133). My own intuition inclines towards agreement with Armstrong on this too, but, again, cautiously.
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Meinertsen, B.R. (2018). A Partial Look at Trope Theory. In: Metaphysics of States of Affairs. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 136. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3068-1_3
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