In considering the nature of properties four controversial decisions must be made. (1) Are properties universals or tropes? (2) Are properties attributes of particulars, or are particulars just bundles of properties? (3) Are properties categorical (qualitative) in nature, or are they powers? (4) If a property attaches to a particular, is this predication contingent, or is it necessary? These choices seem to be in a great degree independent of each other. The author indicates his own choices.

A major division among ontologists has always been the one between those who believe that all entities are particular, and those who believe that at least some entities are universal. I find myself with the latter, and in this paper I offer part of the reasons why this is so. More precisely, I offer a reason why we ought to reject tropism, due to the failure of this view to account for the similarities we experience among entities. In the paper, (...) two tentative accounts are considered and rejected: one postulating the existence of a relation of primitive resemblance; the other denying the existence of any similarity. (shrink)

In this paper I examine whether the Humean denial of necessary connections between wholly distinct contingent existents poses problems for a theory of tropes. In section one I consider the substance-attribute theory of tropes. I distinguish first between three versions of the non-transferability of a trope from the substratum in which it inheres and then between two versions of the denial of necessary connections. I show that the most plausible combination of these views is consistent. In section two I consider (...) an objection to the bundle theory using the Humean doctrine that is advanced by Armstrong, and argue that it is unconvincing. In section three I return to the version of non-transferability that would cause obvious trouble for a substance-attribute theory, and less obvious trouble for a bundle theory. I argue that there is independent reason to reject this principle since, given a perdurantist metaphysic, it does not in fact secure what appeared to be its only benefit: namely that it allows tropes to act as truthmakers. I conclude that there is no objection to trope theory per se on the grounds that it brings commitment to necessary connections. (shrink)

In the paper it is argued that there are two intuitions underlying the concept of trope. According to the first, a trope is a particularised property - a property taken as an individual aspect of a particular object. In the light of this conception tropes are, as it were, direct abstractions from concrete individuals. On the second view, tropes are construed not so much as abstractions from concrete individuals, but rather as primitive items of which the concrete individuals are composed. (...) Tropes so construed are, as it were, metaphysically prior to concrete individuals. We can imagine that the cognitive access to these tropes is obtained by a kind of a double abstraction. The trope in question is not only abstracted from the concrete individual of which it is a trope but also taken in abstraction from the very fact that it has been abstracted this way. Only the second conception is really metaphysically interesting, while only on the first conception can tropes function as semantically efficient truthmakers. (shrink)

As a first stab, call a property recurrent if it can be possessed by more than one object, and nonrecurrent if it can be possessed by at most one object. The question whether Aristotle holds that there are nonrecurrent properties has spawned a lively and ongoing debate among commentators over the last forty-five years. One source of textual evidence in the Categories, drawn on in this debate, is Aristotle’s claim that certain properties are inseparable from what they are in. Here (...) the point of contention is whether this commits Aristotle to holding that these properties are inseparable from individuals, since it is commonly held that a property is nonrecurrent, if it is inseparable from an individual. I argue that this evidence is neutral on the question whether there are nonrecurrent properties in Aristotle. One of my aims here is to disentangle the question of recurrence from local issues of individuality and universality in the Categories. But another aim is to turn from the textual considerations, which have dominated the debate, to broader methodological considerations. It is a shared assumption among all those who look to textual evidence from the Categories, so to decide whether Aristotle believes there are nonrecurrent properties, that in this work Aristotle is engaged in a project where the question of recurrence is relevant. I argue that Aristotle’s concerns in the Categories are disjoint from the question of recurrence, and so this shared assumption is false. (shrink)

Once we assume that objects are bundles of tropes, we want to know how the latter cohere. Are they held together by a substratum, are they linked by external relations or do they cling to one another by internal relations? This paper begins by exploring the reasons for eliminating the first two suggestions. Defending that the third option can be made plausible, it advances the following thesis: Maintaining that tropes are held in a compresence by appropriately qualified internal relations avoids (...) the consequence that such properties will be essential to the object. The specific targets of the second part of the paper include, first, a more precise description of the notion of a cohesive internal relation, and second, an explanation of how alteration is possible in an object the particular properties of which hold together by qualified internal relations. (shrink)

'Natural class' trope nominalism makes a trope's being of a certain sort--its nature--a matter of its membership in a certain natural class of actual tropes. It has been objected that on this theory had even a single member of the class of red tropes not existed, for example, then the type 'being red' would not have been instantiated and nothing would have been red. I argue that natural class trope nominalism can avoid this implication by way of counterpart theory as (...) applied to properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider an objection to ``natural class''trope nominalism, the view that a trope's nature isdetermined by its membership in a natural class of tropes.The objection is that natural class trope nominalismis inconsistent with causes' being efficacious invirtue of having tropes of a certain type. I arguethat if natural class trope nominalism is combinedwith property counterpart theory, then this objectioncan be rebutted.

Either from concrete examples such as tomatoes on a plate, an egg carton full of eggs and so on, or simply because of the braces notation, we come to have some intuitions about the sorts of things sets might be. (See Maddy 1990.) First we tend to think of a set of particulars as itself a particular thing.. Second, even after the distinction between settheory and mereology has been carefully explained we tend to think of the members of a set (...) as in some sense parts. And third we tend to think that there is something represented by the braces. Now if there were experts who got their intuitions from elsewhere then we could discard these rather crude ideas about egg cartons and so on. But I suspect the intuitions of experts are, just like those of the rest of us, based on notation and simple examples. (shrink)

Tropes, as distinguished from other possible kinds of entities such as universals, states of affairs, events and bare particulars, are best-suited to play the role of causal relata.

In this paper I first try to clarify the essential features of tropes and then I use the resulting analysis to cope with the problem of mental causation. As to the first step, I argue that tropes, beside being essentially particular and abstract, are simple, where such a simplicity can be considered either from a phenomenal point of view or from a structural point of view. Once this feature is spelled out, the role tropes may play in solving the problem (...) of mental causation is evaluated. It is argued that no solution based on the determinable/determinate relation is viable without begging the question as regards the individuating conditions of the related properties. Next, it is shown that Robb’s solution, much in the spirit of Davidson’s anomalous monism, entails abandoning the assumption that tropes are essentially simple, a consequence that I find not acceptable. My conclusion is that these entities are of no help in solving the problem of mental causation, and that a universalist approach should be preferred. (shrink)

The article considers, in a historical setting, the links between varieties of nominalism—the extreme nominalism of the Quine-Goodman variety and the trope nominalism current today—and types of idealism. In so doing arguments of various twentieth century figures, including Husserl, Bradley, Russell, and Sartre, as well as a contemporary attack on relations by Peter Simons are critically examined. The paper seeks to link the rejection of realism about universals with the rejection of a mind-independent world —in short, linking nominalism with idealism.

This article presents a trope bundle theory of simple substances, the Strong Nuclear Theory[SNT] building on the schematic basis offered by Simons's (1994) Nuclear Theory[NT]. The SNT adopts Ellis's (2001) dispositional essentialist conception of simple substances as powerful particulars: all of their monadic properties are dispositional. Moreover, simple substances necessarily belong to some natural kind with a real essence formed by monadic properties. The SNT develops further the construction of substances the NT proposes to obtain an adequate trope bundle theory (...) of powerful particulars. The SNT allows for co-located powerful particulars. However, every powerful particular is necessarily co-located with its constituent tropes, which determine its causal powers. Every constituent trope of substance i is part of a trope aggregate (the n-bundle or c-bundle) that forms an individual figuring in the basic spatio-temporal relations. The location of these individuals determines the location of individual tropes. Since they are necessarily co-located with substance i when they exist, every trope t of i is necessarily co-located with i when it exits. Every simple substance has nuclear tropes necessary to it. It belongs to certain primary natural kind K because its nuclear tropes belong to certain distinct determinate kinds. (shrink)

The notion that there is a single type of entity in terms of which the whole world can be described has fallen out of favor in recent Ontology. There are only two serious exceptions to this. Factualists (Skyrms 1981, Armstrong 1997) hold that the world can be fully described in terms of facts. Trope theorists (Williams 1953, Campbell 1981, 1990) hold that it can be fully described in terms of tropes. Yet the relationship between facts and tropes remains obscure in (...) both camps’ writings. In this note, a distinction between (the names of) events and facts, due to Vendler and Bennett, is extended to distinguish between (the names of) tropes and facts. On its basis, a portrait of the domain of abstract particulars is sketched. The purpose is to contribute to our understanding of both forms of (if you will) metaphysical monism by offering a principled distinction between them. (shrink)

The concept of appearance has had the historical misfortune of being associated with a Kantian or idealist program in metaphysics. Within this program, appearances are treated as "internal objects" that are immaterial and exert no causal powers over the physical world. However, there is a more mundane and innocuous notion of appearance, in which to say that x appears to y is just to say that y perceives x. In this more mundane sense of the term, an appearance is a (...) perceived object ? qua perceived. In this paper, I try and develop an account of the metaphysic of appearances in this more mundane sense. The account is developed within the framework of Trope Theory. After defining the notion of a "phenomenal trope," I construe appearances as special bundles of phenomenal tropes. I then use this account to develop an approach to the thorny issue of appearance individuation. (shrink)

Several difficulties, concerning the individuation and the variation of tropes, beset the initial classic version of trope theory. K. Campbell (Abstract particulars, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990) presented a modified version that aims to avoid those difficulties. Unfortunately, the revised theory cannot make the case that one of the fundamental tropes, space-time, is a genuine particular.

This text explores the different ontological categories of things that we encounter in everyday life, including material substances, persons, abstract things ...

There are two major theories of properties that employ resemblance classes to avoid commitment to universals.1 Object-resemblance nominalism ~ORN! faces the notorious companionship and imperfect community difficulties, though some costly remedies have been proposed. Trope-resemblance nominalism ~TRN!, in contrast, is commonly supposed to avoid these difficulties altogether. My contention is that both versions of resemblance nominalism are subject to companionship and imperfect community difficulties. If I am right, ~1! trope theory loses one of its primary selling points, and ~2! resemblance (...) nominalists of either type must appeal to the troublesome remedies that I discuss below. (shrink)

We discuss Aristotle's "Categories" as an answer to Plato's One-over-Many argument. For Plato, F-ness is something "over against" particular F things; to predicate "F" of these things is to assert that they all stand in a certain relation to F-ness. Aristotle answers that predication is classification; and there being a classification of a certain sort is a fact correlative with there being things classifiable in the way the classification in question would classify them.

Trope theory is the view that the world is a world of abstract particular qualities. But if all there is are tropes, how do we account for the truth of propositions ostensibly made true by some concrete particular? A common answer is that concrete particulars are nothing but tropes in compresence. This answer seems vulnerable to an argument (first presented by F. H. Bradley) according to which any attempt to account for the nature of relations will end up either in (...) contradiction, nonsense, or will lead to a vicious infinite regress. I investigate Bradley’s argument and claim that it fails to prove what it sets out to. It fails, I argue, because it does not take all the different ways in which relation and relata may depend on one another into account. If relations are entities that are distinct from yet essentially dependent upon their relata, the Bradleyan problem is solved. We are then free to say that tropes in compresence are what make true propositions ostensibly made true by concrete particulars. (shrink)

That there could be ontologically complex concrete particulars is self-evidently true. A reductio may however be formulated which contradicts this truth. In this paper I argue that all of the reasonable ways in which we might refute this reductio will require the existence of at least some tropes.

In this paper I argue that the infinite regress of resemblance is vicious in the guise it is given by Russell but that it is virtuous if generated in a (contemporary) trope theoretical framework. To explain why this is so I investigate the infinite regress argument. I find that there is but one interesting and substantial way in which the distinction between vicious and virtuous regresses can be understood: The Dependence Understanding. I argue, furthermore, that to be able to decide (...) whether an infinite regress exhibits a dependence pattern of a vicious or a virtuous kind, facts about the theoretical context in which it is generated become essential. It is precisely because of differences in context that he Russellian resemblance regress is vicious whereas its trope theoretical counterpart is not. (shrink)

The treatise attempts to approach and deal with some of the most fundamental problems facing anyone who wishes to uphold some version of the so-called theory of tropes. Three assumptions serve as a basis for the investigation: (i) tropes (i.e. particular properties) exist, (ii) only tropes exist (that is, tropes are the only basic or fundamental kinds of entities), and (iii) a one-category trope-theory along these lines should be developed so that the tropes it postulates are able to serve as (...) truth-makers for all kinds of atomic propositions. Provided that these assumptions are accepted, it is found that the trope-theorist will have to deal with two important problems. First, some atomic propositions seem to require universal truth-makers. Second, some atomic propositions seem to require concrete truth-makers. As tropes are abstract particulars, it follows that the trope-theorist, in order to fulfil assumption (iii), must provide an account of exactly how he or she could construct universality and concreteness from his or her basic stock of tropes. In the treatise such constructions are attempted and some basic problems with such constructions are revealed (mainly problems having to do with the threat of regress). Although these problems are serious enough it is argued that it is nevertheless possible to deal with these basic issues while staying squarely within the boundaries of a one-category trope-ontology. (shrink)

The problem of qualitative heterogeneity is to explain how an extended simple can enjoy qualitative variation across its spatial or temporal axes, given that it lacks both spatial and temporal parts. I discuss how friends of extended simples should address the problem of qualitative heterogeneity. I present a series of arguments designed to show that rather than appealing to fundamental distributional properties one should appeal to tiny and short-lived tropes. Along the way, issues relevant to debates about material composition, persistence (...) over time and existence monism are discussed.  . (shrink)

I argue that a solution to puzzles concerning the relationship ofobjects and their properties – a version of the `bundle' theory ofparticulars according to which ordinary objects are mereologicalfusions of monadic and relational tropes – is also a solution topuzzles of material constitution involving the allegedco-location of material objects. Additionally, two argumentsthat have played a prominent role in shaping the current debate,Mark Heller's argument for Four Dimensionalism and Peter vanInwagen's argument against Mereological Universalism, are shownto be unsound given this version (...) of the bundle theory. (shrink)

In a recent article [Mertz 2001] in this journal I argued for the virtues of a realist ontology of relation instances (unit attributes). A major strength of this ontology is an assay of ontic ('material') predication that yields an account of individuation without the necessity of positing and defending 'bare particulars'. The crucial insight is that it is the unifying agency or combinatorial aspect of a relation instance as predicable that is for ontology the principium individuationis [Mertz 2002; 1996]. Or (...) in short, what is ontically predicable, precisely as such, is the cause of individuation. As a preface to this positive doctrine I offered arguments against the coherence of bare particulars as defended in an article by J. P. Moreland [1998]. In a reply contained in this issue Moreland and Timothy Pickavance (hereafter M/P) propose to answer my objections [2002]. The response that follows provides reasons why, I contend, M/P have not succeeded in parrying my objections to bare particulars. (shrink)

Abstract A common view is that natural language treats numbers as abstract objects, with expressions like the number of planets , eight , as well as the number eight acting as referential terms referring to numbers. In this paper I will argue that this view about reference to numbers in natural language is fundamentally mistaken. A more thorough look at natural language reveals a very different view of the ontological status of natural numbers. On this view, numbers are not primarily (...) treated abstract objects, but rather ‘aspects’ of pluralities of ordinary objects, namely number tropes, a view that in fact appears to have been the Aristotelian view of numbers. Natural language moreover provides support for another view of the ontological status of numbers, on which natural numbers do not act as entities, but rather have the status of plural properties, the meaning of numerals when acting like adjectives. This view matches contemporary approaches in the philosophy of mathematics of what Dummett called the Adjectival Strategy, the view on which number terms in arithmetical sentences are not terms referring to numbers, but rather make contributions to generalizations about ordinary (and possible) objects. It is only with complex expressions somewhat at the periphery of language such as the number eight that reference to pure numbers is permitted. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-38 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9779-1 Authors Friederike Moltmann, IHPST (Paris1/ENS/CNRS), Paris, France Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Philosophers who accept tropes generally agree that tropes do play a role in the semantics of natural language, namely as the objects of reference of nominalizations of adjectives, such as 'Socrates’ wisdom' or 'the beauty of the landscape'. In fact, a philosophical discussion of the ontology of tropes can hardly do without the use of such nominalizations. In this paper, I will argue that tropes play a further important role in the semantics of natural language, namely in the semantics of (...) bare demonstratives like 'this' and 'that' in what in linguistics is called identificational sentences. (shrink)

This paper gives a novel analysis of identificational sentences such as 'this is Mary','this is a beautiful woman' or 'this looks like Mary' based on the notion of a trope.

This paper explores a novel analysis of adjectives in the comparative and the positive based on the notion of a trope, rather than the notion of a degree. Tropes are particularized properties, concrete manifestations of properties in individuals. The point of departure is that a sentence like ‘John is happier than Mary’ is intuitively equivalent to ‘John’s happiness exceeds Mary’s happiness’, a sentence that expresses a simple comparison between two tropes, John’s happiness and Mary’s happiness. The analysis received particular support (...) from various parallels between adjectival constructions and corresponding adjective nominalizations which make reference to tropes. (shrink)

Nominalizations are expressions that are particularly challenging philosophically in that they help form singular terms that seem to refer to abstract or derived objects often considered controversial. The three standard views about the semantics of nominalizations are [1] that they map mere meanings onto objects, [2] that they refer to implicit arguments, and [3] that they introduce new objects, in virtue of their compositional semantics. In the second case, nominalizations do not add anything new but pick up objects that would (...) be present anyway in the semantic structure of a corresponding sentence without a nominalization. In the first and third case, nominalizations in a sense ‘create’ new objects’, enriching the ontology on the basis of the meaning of expressions. I will argue that there is a fourth kind of nominalization which requires a quite different treatment. These are nominalizations that introduce ‘new’ objects, but only partially characterize them. Such nominalizations generally refer to events or tropes. I will explore an account according on which such nominalizations refer to truth makers. (shrink)

are commonly held to refer to abstract objects that are properties. On the basis of a greater range of linguistic data and with the support of some ancient and medieval philosophical views, I argue that such terms do not stand for objects, but rather for kinds of tropes, entities that do not have the status of objects, but only play a role as semantic values of terms and as arguments of predicates. Such ‘non-objects’ crucially differ from objects in that they (...) are not potential bearers of properties. (shrink)

There are two very different ways of thinking about perception. According to the first one, perception is representational: it represents the world as being a certain way. According to the second, perception is a genuine relation between the perceiver and a token object. These two views are thought to be incompatible. My aim is to work out the least problematic version of the representational view of perception that preserves the most important considerations in favor of the relational view. According to (...) this version of representationalism, the properties represented in perception are tropes—abstract particulars that are logically incapable of being present in two distinct individuals at the same time. I call this view ‘trope representationalism’. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to further our understanding of mechanisms conceived of as ontologically separable from laws. What opportunities are there for a mechanistic perspective to be independent of, or even more fundamental than, a law perspective? Advocates of the mechanistic view often play with the possibility of internal and external reliability, or with the paralleling possibilities of enforcing, counteracting, redirecting, etc., the mechanisms’ power to produce To further this discussion I adopt a trope ontology. It is independent of (...) the notion of law, and can easily be adapted to account for such characteristics of mechanisms. The idea of tropes as mechanisms is worked out in some detail. According to the resulting picture, there is still an opportunity to link mechanisms and laws. But while the predominant law view conceives of mechanistic approaches as special kinds of law accounts, this study indicates that the converse may be true. Law accounts are special cases of mechanistic accounts, and they work only in those worlds where the mechanisms are of the right kind. (shrink)

This paper is an articulation and defense of a trope-bundle theory of material objects. After some background remarks about objects and tropes, I start the main defense in Section III by answering a charge frequently made against the bundle theory, namely that it commits a conceptual error by saying that properties are parts of objects. I argue that there’s a general and intuitive sense of “part” in which properties are in fact parts of objects. This leads to the question of (...) qualitative unity: in virtue of what are certain properties unified as parts of an object? In Section IV I defend an account of unity for complex material objects. It turns on the thesis that the properties of such objects are structural properties. After addressing some objections, I turn in Section V to the question of unity for simple material objects. Here a different and more radical account is needed, for simples, since they do not have structural properties, are not subsumed by the account of Section IV. I defend the view that a simple object just is a simple property, so that identity delivers the desired unity. (shrink)

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra offers a fresh philosophical account of properties. How is it that two different things (such as two red roses) can share the same property (redness)? According to resemblance nominalism, things have their properties in virtue of resembling other things. This unfashionable view is championed with clarity and rigor.

Universals are usually considered to be universal properties. Since tropes are particular properties, if there are only tropes, there are no universals. However, universals might be thought of not only as common properties, but also as common aspects (“determinable universals”) and common wholes (“concrete universals”). The existence of these two latter concepts of universals is fully compatible with the assumption that all properties are particular. This observation makes possible three different trope theories, which accept tropes and no universals, tropes and (...) determinable universals and tropes and concrete universals. (shrink)

The paper is a contribution to the object ontology. The general approach assumed in the investigation is that of Roman Ingarden's The Controversy Over the Existence of the World where an object is the subject-of-properties. The analysis of the form and the mode of existence of properties leads to the rejection of both negative and general properties. Each property is an individual qualitative moment of a particular object. Its form reveals existential heteronomy: the quality of the property is not immanent (...) but refers to the object. The subject of properties has not its own qualitative content: its form is just the internal causality establishing the unity of an object. An object is not causally isolated from other objects, but external causation differs from internal either by being ramified in case of the composition and destruction of an object or reciprocal in case of interaction between coexisting objects. (shrink)

Properties come in clusters. It seems impossible, for instance, that a mass could float free, unattached to any other property. David Armstrong takes this as a reductio of the bundle theory and an argument for substrata, while Peter Simons and Arda Denkel reply by supplementing the bundle theory with accounts of property interdependencies. I argue against both views. Virtually all plausible ontologies turn out to be committed to the existence of free masses.

A tropel is a particular property: the redness of a rose, the roundness of the moon. It is generally supposed that tropes are individuated by primitive quantity: this redness, that roundness. I argme that the trope theorist is far better served by individuating tropes by spatiotemporal relation: here redness, there roundness. In short, tropes are not this-suches but here-suches.

This paper brings together two theories that I have propounded separately elsewhere. The first is the view that concrete individuals are constituted completely by tropes, that they are trope bundles. The second and more recently developed theory is that of the two major categories of concrete individuals, continuants and occurrents, the latter are ontologically more basic than the former and that continuants are to be viewed as invariants among occurrents under equivalence relations. The latter theory embodies on its own an (...) account of the nature of identity through time of things that are in time but not extended in time. The question is whether this view is compatible with the trope bundle account of concrete particulars, and, assuming it is (both theories being separately attractive) whether bringing them together entails any modifications (other than complexity) to either theory. After examining likely metaphysical difficulties the tentative conclusion is that the attractiveness of the trope bundle theory persists despite the marriage, but that the mental picture of what tropes and trope bundles are must be overhauled. (shrink)

A straightforward ontological account would be one which acknowledges relations as real beings, and that means, according to the scholastic tradition, as universals. The realist move in this sense which has been re-established within contemporary analytical ontology at least since Russell's early theory, is, however, not the only possible way to take relations seriously. In my paper I shall argue that there is much room for the ontological reconstruction of relations, even if one does not accept universals. The background for (...) this argument is a particularist and realist theory, based on tropes ("trope" being the short name for "property instance" or "individual quality"). One way of reconstruction is that relations themselves are particulars. They are supposed to be relational or polyadic tropes (J. Bacon, D. Mertz). The other way is to hold that relations are internal or formal, and therefore do not require a category sai generis (K. Mulligan, P. Simons). I shall discuss these alternatives and finally opt for the second, i.e., the reconstruction of relations as internal to their relata. Moreover, I offer an argument for why basic relations such as existential dependence should be granted a transcategorial status within trope ontology. Hence, the gist of my paper is to take relations seriously without falling prey either to stubborn nominalism or to strict realism. What I intend to explore is a middle avenue thereby choosing the best of both sides in order to explicate a moderate view on the realism of relations. (shrink)

Trope ontology is exposed and confronted with the question where one trope ends and another begins. It is argued that tropes do not have determinate boundaries, it is arbitrary how tropes are carved up. An ontology, which I call field ontology, is proposed which takes this into account. The material world consists of a certain number of fields, each of which is extended over all of space. It is shown how field ontology can also tackle the problem of determinable properties (...) and the problem of completeness of things. (shrink)

I consider a grand, yet neglected proposal put forward by Shoemaker—a functionalist theory of all properties. I argue that two possible ways of developing this proposal meet with substantial objections. However, if we are prepared to endorse an ontology of tropes, one of these functionalist analyses can be developed into an original and informative theory of properties.

According to Vallicella's 'Relations, Monism, and the Vindication of Bradley's Regress' (2002), if relations are to relate their relata, some special operator must do the relating. No other options will do. In this paper we reject Vallicella's conclusion by considering an important option that becomes visible only if we hold onto a precise distinction between the following three feature-pairs of relations: internality/externality, universality/particularity, relata-specificity/relata-unspecificity. The conclusion we reach is that if external relations are to relate their relata, they must be (...) relata-specific (and no special operator is needed). As it eschews unmereological complexes, this outcome is of relevance to defenders of the extensionality of composition. (shrink)