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New Reasons to Motivate Trope Theory: Endurantism and Perdurantism

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Abstract

In this paper, I argue that (non-presentist) endurantism is incompatible with the view that properties are universals. I do so by putting forward a very simple objection that forces the endurantist to embrace tropes, rather than universals. I do not claim that this is bad news for the endurantist—trope theory seems to me by all means more appealing than universals—rather, I would like to see this result as a further motivation to embrace tropes. I then also put forward a (more controversial) reason to believe that at least some versions of perdurantism also require tropes rather than universals.

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Notes

  1. Endurantist Relationism is the view according to which whenever an object has a property F, it actually stands in a relation—a relation between the object and a time t. This has the significant disadvantage to explicitly make all properties that we thought to be monadic and intrinsic, like having a big nose, relations to times (which also seems to carry a stronger ontological commitment to times, as entities, than the other endurantist views). These relations may well be universals, and my argument in this article thus does not apply to this particular endurantist view.

  2. I have here the ‘worm view’ in mind, but what I say can be easily applied to the ‘stage view’ as well.

  3. I would like to thank Achille Varzi and Coralie Dorsaz for motivating and important discussions about the ideas that I explore in this paper, and an anonymous referee of this journal for very useful comments that helped me to improve parts of it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Fribourg, Av. de l’Europe 20, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Jiri Benovsky

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  1. Jiri Benovsky
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Correspondence to Jiri Benovsky.

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Benovsky, J. New Reasons to Motivate Trope Theory: Endurantism and Perdurantism. Acta Anal 28, 223–227 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-012-0166-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-012-0166-0

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