Tropes

Abstract

To say anything about what it is to be a trope is difficult in several ways. First, it is difficult because we are now only at the beginning of our dealings with tropes and many terminological and other distinctions that will be explained in what follows are at this point unfamiliar. Second, and this a more persistent difficulty, spelling out what it is to be a trope brings out the fact that neither the way we think of the world nor the language we use to talk of it fit very well with tropes. Because of these difficulties, much of the present section will be devoted to trying to identify and discard the many misunderstandings that linguistic prejudices and preconceived philosophical views can introduce.