The concept of a trope (understood as an individual property and not as a figure of speech) plays an important role in contemporary analytical metaphysics. It is, however, often far from clear what the logic of this concept really is. Indeed, there are two equally important intuitions underlying the concept of trope, two intuitions that generate two quite different conceptual frameworks. According to the first intuition, a trope is a particularised property – a property taken as an (...) individual aspect of a particular object. A trope is thus the colour of this table or the shape of this sculpture. In the light of this conception tropes are, as it were, direct abstractions from concrete individuals. According to the second intuition a trope is still such an individual (and abstract) colour or such an individual (and abstract) shape, but now it 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. We can imagine that the cognitive access to these tropes is obtained by a kind of a double abstraction. All this can sound puzzling at first blush, but in what follows I hope to make the matter a little clearer. Let us anticipate briefly. 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 will call tropes of this kind unstructured tropes, whereas tropes conceived as aspects of individual things will be called propositional tropes. This terminology is justified because tropes understood as aspects of things seem to involve something like propositional structure, a structure that tropes conceived as primitive “building blocks” of reality definitely lack. It is sometimes believed that these two concepts of trope are nearly equivalent, that the difference between them is for the most part verbal. Yet it will turn out that there is an important ontological difference here. Propositional tropes are non-trivially propositional and unstructured tropes are non-trivially deprived of such a structure (althought not necessarily deprived of any dependence-links with respect to other tropes). It will be argued that tropes are metaphysically interesting only on the second conception (i.e., as primitive, unstructured items), whereas only on the first conception (tropes as propositionally structured entities) can they function as semantically efficient truthmakers. The moral of the paper will be that our trust in tropes must be mitigated. A trope ontology could plausibly be viewed as a serious metaphysical alternative, but its semantical possibilities should not be exaggerated. (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)
The concept of population thinking was introduced by Ernst Mayr as the right way of thinking about the biological domain, but it is difficult to find an interpretation of this notion that is both unproblematic and does the theoretical work it was intended to do. I argue that, properly conceived, Mayr’s population thinking is a version of trope nominalism: the view that biological property-types do not exist or at least they play no explanatory role. Further, although population thinking has (...) been traditionally used to argue against essentialism about biological kinds, recently it has been suggested that it may be consistent with at least some forms of essentialism—ones that construe essential properties as relational. I argue that if population thinking is a version of trope nominalism, then, as Mayr originally claimed, it rules out any version of essentialism about biological kinds. (shrink)
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. (shrink)
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)
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)
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 traditional ontology within which chemistry has developed involved various versions of a general substance/attribute scheme. Recently this has been challenged by two versions of Dynamism. One version is derived from the writings of A. N. Whitehead and the other from several sources, including G. Leibniz and I. Kant. Both involve the idea of flux of actual occasions. Unlike the former scheme, the latter involves a foundation of causal powers and the energetics of field theory. The situation has been made (...) more interesting because of the revival of trope theory, based on an ontology of particularized attributes. This notion is claimed to resolve philosophical problems about the nature of universals and of substances through the introduction of spatial and temporal sequences of tropes. While trope theory seems, at first sight, to work as an attractive alternative to substance/attribute close inspection shows that it is beset with difficulties that are more problematic that the dynamist ontology based on casual powers, dispositions and affordances. (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)
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)
The most common analyses of comparatives make use of degrees, abstract objects that form a total ordering. In this paper, I will explore a novel analysis of comparatives in which the central notion is not the notion of a degree, but rather the notion of a concrete property manifestation, a particularized property, or a trope, as it is most commonly called in contemporary metaphysics. This trope-based analysis, I argue, has some major conceptual and empirical advantages over a degree-based (...) account. A degree-based analysis of (1a) looks as in (1b) (Cresswell 1976, von Stechow 1984) or (1c) (Pinkal 1989, Moltmann 1992), with the adjective being taken to express a relation between objects and degrees. (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.
Field theories have been central to physics over the last 150 years, and there are several theories in contemporary physics in which physical fields play key causal and explanatory roles. This paper proposes a novel field trope-bundle (FTB) ontology on which fields are composed of bundles of particularized property instances, called tropes and goes on to describe some virtues of this ontology. It begins with a critical examination of the dominant view about the ontology of fields, that fields are (...) properties of a substantial substratum. (shrink)
In this essay Troy Richardson works to develop a conceptual framework and set of terms by which a diplomatic reception of different forms of law can be developed in multicultural education. Taking up the trope of the door in multiculturalist discourse as a site in which a welcoming of the difference of others is organized, Richardson interrogates the complex nature of receptivity to Indigenous customary law, in particular. He argues that, within this trope, a metonymic structure operates in (...) relation to the deployment of “policy” that maintains a perspective of customary law as premodern and primitive. This structure leads to an impoverished set of terms and a lack of diplomacy toward difference. Richardson proceeds by considering the notion of extraterritoriality and the metonyms that organize Emmanuel Levinas's discourse of “doors” in conceptualizing a welcoming receptivity. The term “extraterritoriality” anticipates the law of the other as it approaches the door and implies a diplomatic moment of reception of such difference. Richardson concludes by highlighting Jacques Derrida's evaluation of Levinas's discourse of receptivity and by considering the possibilities for a diplomatic engagement with the laws of others toward a mutation in the current geopolitical moment. (shrink)
This paper is the first trope-theoretical reply to E. J. Lowe’s serious dilemma against trope nominalism in print. The first horn of this dilemma is that if tropes are identity dependent on substances, a vicious circularity threatens trope theories because they must admit that substances are identity dependent on their constituent tropes. According to the second horn, if the trope theorist claims that tropes are identity independent, she faces two insurmountable difficulties. (1) It is hard to (...) understand the ontological dependence of tropes on substances. (2) The identity-conditions of tropes cannot be determinate, which threatens the determination of the identity-conditions of substances. Our reply to the first horn of Lowe’s dilemma is to deny the identity dependence of tropes. Yet we can avoid the second horn because our theory can explain the ontological dependence of tropes on substances and the fully-determined identity-conditions of both tropes and substances. (shrink)
Assuming the position that takes properties to be tropes rather than universals and takes ordinary objects as bundles of tropes, the essay first argues that the Law of the Identity of Indiscernibles survives the challenge raised by Black's "two-sphere universe". It is because the Law of Indiscernibles becomes a trivialconsequence of the assumed trope ontology. The essay then considers four construals of the thesis of Uniqueness differing in strength. The construals are developed in terms of both the possibility that (...) tropes of an object may be transferred to another object and the possibility that objects may survive cross-worldproperty changes. Finally, the essay argues that a trilemma arises from three intuitively innocent claims: (1) that same world objects do not share tropes, (2) that cross world objects may share some (but not all) tropes, and (3) that objects may survive cross-world property changes. And, unfortunately, Indiscernibles plays a role in giving rise to one horn of the trilemma. The essay suggests "ultraessentialism" as a possible way out of the trilemma. (shrink)
In this paper I will argue for the ethical and political virtue of a form of critique associated with the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault’s tryptich of essays on critique---namely ”What is Critique?’ ”What is Revolution?’ and ”What is Enlightenment?’---develop a formulation of critique understood as an attitude or disposition, a kind of relation that one bears to oneself and to the actuality of the present. I suggest that this critical attitude goes hand in hand with a mode of intellectual (...) practice realized rhetorically in the form of the interrogative and methodologically in ”problematology’. But, in addition to highlighting the habitus of critique suggested by Foucault, I also want to consider the entanglement of this critical enterprise in the conditions of the present that it attempts to diagnose. Specifically, I ask, in what way is a critical enterprise in the interrogative mood itself imbricated in the trope of interrogation that fills so much of our current political and public landscape? (shrink)
Terms such as 'wisdom' or 'happiness' 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)
ABSTRACT: A popular strategylor resolving Kim 's exclusion problem is to suggest that mental and physical property tropes are identical despite the non-identity of the mental and physical properties themselves. I argue that mental and physical tropes can be identified without losing the dispositional character of mentality only if a dual-character hypothesis regarding the intrinsic characters of tropes is endorsed. But even with this assumption, the causaI efficacy of the wrong dispositions is secured.RÉSUMÉ: On résout habituellement le problème de l'exclusion (...) de Kim en suggérant que les tropes de propriété mentale et physique sont identiques en dépit de la non-identité des propriétés mentales et physiques elles-mêmes. Je soutiens que les tropes mentaux et physiques peuvent être ramenés l'un à l'autre sans perdre le caractère dispositionnel de la pensée, à la condition d'approuver une hypothèse sur la nature double des caractères intrinsèques des tropes. Même en suivant cette proposition, l'efficacité causale des dispositions fausses est maintenue. (shrink)
Despite the fact that the nature of the properties of causation is rarely discussed within the mental causation debate, the implicit assumption is that they are universals as opposed to tropes. However, in recent literature on the problem of mental causation, a new solution has emerged which aims to address the problem by appealing to tropes. It is argued that if the properties of causation are tropes rather than universals, then a psychophysical reductionism can be advanced which does not face (...) the problem of multiple realizability. However, the 'trope solution' rests upon the assumption that one can combine a trope monism with a type dualism. I argue that such a combination cannot be allowed. Given a plausible interpretation of types within a trope ontology, trope monism in fact entails type monism. Consequently, if one identifies mental tropes with physical tropes, one must also identify mental and physical types and in doing so face a modified version of the multiple realizability argument. (shrink)
In conversation, in the lecture hall, in the Dharma centre and in the public teaching, Buddhists and students of Buddhism worry about authenticity. Is the doctrine defended in a particular text or is a particular textual interpretation authentic? Is a particular teacher authentic? Is a particular practice authentic? Is a phenomenon under examination in a scholarly research project authentically Buddhist? If the doctrine, teacher, practice or phenomenon is not authentically Buddhist, we worry that it is a fraud, that our scholarship, (...) teaching or religious life is vacuous, or at least that it is not really Buddhist studies or Buddhist practice. It is hard for me to remember a conversation of any length with a Western or Tibetan colleague, or with a serious advanced student in which the term “authenticity” or a cognate did not arise, and in which that term did not function as a term of approbation. (shrink)
Much due criticism has been directed at Levinas's images of the feminine and “the Woman” in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity, but less attention has been paid to the metaphor of maternity and the maternal body that Levinas employs in Otherwise Than Being. This metaphor should be of interest, however, because here we find an instance in which Levinas uses a female image without in any way seeming to exclude women from full ethical selfhood.In the first three (...) sections of this paper I explain how maternity functions in Otherwise Than Being. I argue that maternity is used as (1) an image of the vulnerability or passive sensibility that characterizes the relation with the Other, as well as (2) a metaphor for Levinas's account of ethical responsibility as substitution. In the final section of the paper, I defend the claim that Levinas's maternal metaphors are not disparaging to real, empirical women. I also discuss a remaining worry that feminists may have about the metaphor: namely, that it characterizes pregnancy and motherhood in ways that challenge some pro-choice assumptions. (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)
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)
NPs with intensional relative clauses such as 'the impact of the book John needs to write' pose a significant challenge for trope theory (the theory of particularized properties), since they seem to refer to tropes that lack an actual bearer. This paper proposes a novel semantic analysis of such NPs on the basis of the notion of a variable object. The analysis avoids a range of difficulties that an alternative analysis based on the notion of an individual concept would (...) face. (shrink)
Properties and objects are everywhere. We cannot take a step without walking into them; we cannot construct a theory in science without referring to them. Given their ubiquitous character, one might think that there would be a standard metaphysical account of properties and objects, but they remain a philosophical mystery. Douglas Ehring presents a defense of tropes--properties and relations understood as particulars--and of trope bundle theory as the best accounts of properties and objects, and advocates a specific brand of (...)trope nominalism, Natural Class Trope Nominalism. This position rejects the existence of universals, and holds that the nature of each individual trope is determined by its membership in various natural classes of tropes (in contrast with the view that a trope's nature is logically prior to those class memberships). -/- The first part of the book provides a general introduction and defense of tropes and trope bundle theory. Ehring demonstrates that there are tropes and indicates some of the things that tropes can do for us metaphysically, including helping to solve the problems of mental causation, while remaining neutral between different theories of tropes. In the second part he offers a more specific defense of Natural Class Trope Nominalism, and provides a full analysis of what a trope is. (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)
Tropes are particular features of concrete objects. Properties—the extensions of predicates—are primitive resemblance classes of tropes. Friends of tropes have been criticized for failing to answer three questions. First, are there fundamental items other than tropes? Second, what criteria determine whether some tropes are all and only the features of some one object? Third, can trope classes be formed adequately using only primitive resemblance? Trading on the spatiotemporal status of tropes, this essay offers new responses to each of these (...) questions. The novel thesis is that there is a sui generis property called ‘markedness’, whose tropes “mark” certain locations in an ontologically basic way. The spatiotemporal distribution of markedness tropes fixes the distribution of familiar characterizing tropes like mass and charge, and characterizing tropes are bundled by being co-contained in the location of a maximally connected markedness trope. This novel theory of trope bundling is defended by appeal to theoretical utility: it is ontologically parsimonious and solves outstanding problems involving co-location and resemblance class construction. (shrink)
We explain the thesis that human mental states are ontologically emergent aspects of a fundamentally biological organism. We then explore the consequences of this thesis for the identity of a human person over time. As these consequences are not obviously independent of one's general ontology of objects and their properties, we consider four such accounts: transcendent universals, kind-Aristotelianism, immanent universals, and tropes. We suggest there are reasons for emergentists to favor the latter two accounts. We then argue that within such (...) ontologies, emergentism about properties pushes one to the stronger claim that there are emergent individuals, though not individuals which are dual to person's bodies—substance emergentism, but not substance dualism. (shrink)
A well-known ``overdetermination''argument aims to show that the possibility of mental causes of physical events in a causally closed physical world and the possibility of causally relevant mental properties are both problematic. In the first part of this paper, I extend an identity reply that has been given to the first problem to a property-instance account of causal relata. In the second, I argue that mental types are composed of physical types and, as a consequence, both mental and physical types (...) may be causally relevant with respect to the same physical effect, contrary to the overdetermination argument. In further sections, I argue that mental types have causal powers, consider some objections and reject an alternative version of part-whole physicalism. Throughout I assume that causal relata are tropes and property types are classes of tropes. (shrink)
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)
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.
Philosophers who accept tropes generally agree that tropes act as the objects of reference of nominalizations of adjectives, such as 'Socrates’ wisdom' or 'the beauty of the landscape'. This paper argues 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.
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)
In this paper, I defend a distinction between what I will call ‘abstract states’ and ‘concrete states’, a distinction that has recently been proposed by Maienborn (2005, 2007) to account for the peculiar semantic behavior of stative verbs. I give an ontological account of the notion of an abstract state and relate it to the category of tropes, which has so far neglected in the semantic literature on stative verbs.
Th is paper looks at quantum theory and the Standard Model of elementary particles with a view to suggesting a detailed empirical implementation of trope ontology in harmony with our best physics.
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)
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.
The co-instantiation thesis is pivotal to a significant solution to the problem of causal exclusion. But this thesis has been subject to some powerful objections. In this paper, I argue that these difficulties arise because the thesis lacks the necessary metaphysical framework in which its claims should be interpreted and understood. Once this framework is in place, we see that the co-instantiation thesis can answer its critics. The result is a rehabilitated co-instantiation solution to the troubling problem of causal exclusion. (...) But questions remain concerning the viability of certain of its applications. (shrink)
Abstract. This article addresses a difficult case at the intersection of philosophical theology and truthmaker theory. I show that three views, together, lead to difficulties in providing truthmakers for truths of contingent predication, such as that the bread is white. These three views are: the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, a standard truthmaker theory, and a trope (or accident) view of properties. I present and explain each of these three views, at each step noting their connections to the thought of (...) St. Thomas Aquinas. After presenting the three views, I show why they entail a difficulty for providing truthmakers for truths of contingent predication, drawing on two cases that are not impossible, for all we know. I then present four ways that one can respond to this difficulty, afterward noting some shortcomings of those responses. (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)
Das Buch bietet die erste systematische esamtdarstellung der Ontologie Brentanos. Es zeigt, daß es in Brentanos ontologischem Denken drei Perioden gibt: die frühe "konzeptualistische" (1862-1874), die mittlere "deskriptiv-psychologische" (1874-1904) und die späte "reistische" (1904-1917). Diese drei Perioden werden in ihrer Kontinuität und komplizierten Dialektik unter Rückgriff auf unveröffentlichte Manuskripte Brentanos dargestellt. Dabei wird von dem logischen Handwerkszeug der zeitgenössischen analytischen Ontologie Gebrauch gemacht. Das Buch wendet sich nicht nur an Brentano-Forscher, sondern an alle an ontologischen Fragen Interessierten. Die Analysen zur (...) Ontologie der Intentionalität sind insbesondere für Phänomenologen und für Forscher im Bereich der cognitive science von Interesse. (shrink)
Table of Contents; Introduction by Francesco Orilia and Simone Gozzano; Modes and Mind by John Heil; Does Ontology Matter? by Anna-Sofia Maurin; Basic Ontology, Multiple Realizability and Mental Causation by Francesco Orilia; The “Supervenience Argument”:Kim’s Challenge to Nonreductive Physicalism by Ausonio Marras and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri; Tropes’ Simplicity and Mental Causation by Simone Gozzano; Zombies from Below by David Robb; Tropes and Perception by E. Jonathan Lowe; About the authors.
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.
Based on the notion of a trope, this paper gives a novel analysis of identificational sentences such as 'this is Mary','this is a beautiful woman', 'this looks like Mary', or 'this is the same lump of clay, but not the same statue as that'.
Theories of singular causation have a genuine problem with properties. In virtue of what property do events (or facts) cause other events? One possible answer to this question, Davidson’s, is that causal relations hold between particulars and properties play no role in the way a particular causes another. According to another, recently fashionable answer, in contrast, events cause other events in virtue of having a trope (as opposed to a property-type). Both views face serious objections. My aim in this (...) paper is to combine these two very different solutions to the problem of the properties of singular causation and to argue that this combined view can avoid objections against both of them. (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)
David Robb (2008). Zombies From Below. In Simone Gozzano Francesco Orilia (ed.), Tropes, Universals, and the Philosophy of Mind: Essays at the Boundary of Ontology and Philosophical Psychology. Ontos Verlag.score: 4.0
A zombie is a creature just like a conscious being in certain respects, but wholly lacking in consciousness. In this paper, I look at zombies from the perspective of basic ontology (“from below”), taking as my starting point a trope ontology I have defended elsewhere. The consequences of this ontology for zombies are mixed. Viewed from below, one sort of zombie—the exact dispositional zombie—is impossible. A similar argument can be wielded against another sort—the exact physical zombie—but here supplementary principles (...) are needed to get to the impossibility result. Finally, at least two sorts of zombie—the behavioural and functional zombies—escape these arguments from below. (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.
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)
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)
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)
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)
ABSTRACT: A popular strategylor resolving Kim 's exclusion problem is to suggest that mental and physical property tropes are identical despite the non-identity of the mental and physical properties themselves. I argue that mental and physical tropes can be identified without losing the dispositional character of mentality only if a dual-character hypothesis regarding the intrinsic characters of tropes is endorsed. But even with this assumption, the causaI efficacy of the wrong dispositions is secured.RÉSUMÉ: On résout habituellement le problème de l'exclusion (...) de Kim en suggérant que les tropes de propriété mentale et physique sont identiques en dépit de la non-identité des propriétés mentales et physiques elles-mêmes. Je soutiens que les tropes mentaux et physiques peuvent être ramenés l'un à l'autre sans perdre le caractère dispositionnel de la pensée, à la condition d'approuver une hypothèse sur la nature double des caractères intrinsèques des tropes. Même en suivant cette proposition, l'efficacité causale des dispositions fausses est maintenue. (shrink)
This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52 companies, namely metaphor and synecdoche. The results reveal a number of complex and contradictory things. Primarily, the master metaphor of 'altruism' projected by the corporate disclosures is ideologically at (...) odds with the more business case-oriented discourse that shapes the disclosures. This contradiction is put into starker contrast by the existence of a root metaphor, whereby the recipients of corporate philanthropy are presented as the 'deserving poor'. Synecdochal devices are present within the corporate disclosures, whereby employee initiatives that are independent of corporate strategies are used to confer attributes onto the disclosures that bolster the master metaphor of 'altruism'. As such, corporate philanthropy is presented by the paper as a structurally incoherent discourse and yet one that has implications for both extracting greater value from various societal groups and in defining, on behalf of civil society, what is a worthy cause. (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.
Like dreaming, hallucination has been a formative trope for modern philosophy. The vivid, often tragic, breakdown in the mind’s apparent capacity to disclose reality has long served to support a paradoxical philosophical picture of sensory experience. This picture, which of late has shaped the paradigmatic empirical understanding the senses, displays sensory acts as already complete without the external world; complete in that the direct objects even of veridical sensory acts do not transcend what we could anyway hallucinate. Hallucination is (...) thus the mother of Representationalism, which insists that it is mental intermediaries that make other.. (shrink)
In this paper we advocate the thesis that qualia are tropes (or qualitons), and not (universal) properties. The main advantage of the thesis is that we can accept both the Wittgensteinian and Sellarsian assault on the given and the claim that only subjective and private states can do justice to the qualitative character of experience. We hint that if we take qualia to be tropes, we dissolve the problem of inverted qualia. We develop an account of sensory concept acquisition that (...) takes the presence of qualia as an enabling condition for learning. We argue that qualia taken to be qualitons are part of our mechanism of sensory concept acquisition. (shrink)
This is about a proposed solution to the exclusion problem, one I've defended elsewhere (for example, in "The Properties of Mental Causation"). Details aside, it's just the identity theory: mental properties face no threat of exclusion from, or preemption by, physical properties, because every mental property is a physical property. Here I elaborate on this solution and defend it from some objections. One of my goals is to place it in the context of a more general ontology of properties, in (...) particular, a trope ontology. (shrink)
The properties colored and red stand in a special relation. Namely, red is a determinate of colored, and colored is determinable relative to red. Many other properties are similarly related. The determination relation is an interesting topic of logical investigation in its own right, and the prominent philosophical inquiries into this relation have, accordingly, operated at a high level of abstraction.1 It is time to return to these investigations, not just as a logical amusement, but for the payoffs such investigation (...) can yield in solving some basic metaphysical problems. The goal in what follows is twofold. First, I argue for a novel understanding of the determination relation. Second, this understanding is applied to yield insights into property instance (e.g., trope) individuation, how different property types can share an instance, the relation between property types and property instances, as well as applications to causation (mental causation, in particular). (shrink)
In this paper, I argue that anti-reductionist moral realism still has trouble explaining supervenience. My main target here will be Russ Shafer-Landau's attempt to explain the supervenience of the moral on the natural in terms of the constitution of moral property instantiations by natural property instantiations. First, though, I discuss a recent challenge to the very idea of using supervenience as a dialectical weapon posed by Nicholas Sturgeon. With a suitably formulated supervenience thesis in hand, I try to show how (...) Shafer-Landau's proffered strategy to explain supervenience not only fails to explain supervenience, but that it also has a number of implausible consequences. The more general lesson is that strategies which may work well for explaining supervenience in the philosophy of mind and other areas cannot be assumed to carry over successfully to the metaethical context. We should therefore treat so-called `companions in guilt' arguments in this area of philosophy with considerable skepticism. Key Words: expressivism • moral realism • non-naturalism • reductionism • supervenience • trope. (shrink)
This paper summarizes and extends the transmodal argument for the existence of universals (developed in full detail in "Universals"). This argument establishes not only the existence of universals, but also that they exist necessarily, thereby confirming the ante rem view against the post rem and in re views (and also anti-existentialism against existentialism). Once summarized, the argument is extended to refute the trope theory of properties and is also shown to succeed even if possibilism is assumed. A nonreductionist theory (...) of universals and properties is then outlined, and it is sketched how to reap the benefits of possibilism and Meinongianism in an actualist setting. (shrink)
Recent discussions of mental causation have focused on three principles: (1) Mental properties are (sometimes) causally relevant to physical effects; (2) mental properties are not physical properties; (3) every physical event has in its causal history only physical events and physical properties. Since these principles seem to be inconsistent, solutions have focused on rejecting one or more of them. But I argue that, in spite of appearances, (1)–(3) are not inconsistent. The reason is that 'properties' is used in different senses (...) in the principles. In (1) and (3), 'properties' should be read as 'tropes' (properties here are particulars), while in (2) 'properties' should read as 'types' (properties here are universals or classes). Although mental types are distinct from physical types, every mental trope is a physical trope. This allows mental properties to be causally relevant to physical effects without violating the closed character of the physical world. (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)
During the final decade of his life, Jacques Derrida came to use the trope of autoimmunity with greater and greater frequency. Indeed it today appears that autoimmunity was to have been the last iteration of what for more than forty years Derrida called deconstruction. This essay looks at the consequences of this terminological shift for our understanding not only of Derrida's final works (such as Rogues) but of his entire corpus. By taking up a term from the biological sciences (...) that describes the process by which an organism turns in quasi-suicidal fashion against its own self-protection, Derrida was able to rethink the very notion of life otherwise and demonstrate the way in which every sovereign identity, from the self to the nation-state to, most provocatively, God, is open to a process that both threatens to destroy it and gives it its only chance of living on. (shrink)
Many think that love would be a casualty of free will skepticism. I disagree. I argue that love would be largely unaffected if we came to deny free will, not simply because we cannot shake the reactive attitude, but because love is not chosen, nor do we want it to be. Here, I am not alone; others have reached similar conclusions. But a few important distinctions have been overlooked. Even if hard incompatibilism is true, not all love is equal. Although (...) we have only minimal control over love, it can be more or less authentic. I develop my position by considering the fictional trope of love potions and the implications of a futuristic psychotropic, Lovezac--Viagra for the heart. I am not as optimistic as some. Even though free will skepticism would not jeopardize love the feeling, there are reasons to think that loving relationships might not be immune. (shrink)
Can Bradley's Regress be solved by positing relational tropes as truth-makers? No, no more than Russell's paradox can be solved by positing Fregean extensions. To call a trope relational is to pack into its essence the relating function it is supposed to perform but without explaining what Bradley's Regress calls into question, viz. the capacity of relations to relate. This problem has been masked from view by the (questionable) assumption that the only genuine ontological problems that can be intelligibly (...) raised are those that can be answered by providing a schedule of truthmakers. (shrink)
To what extent do true predications correspond to truthmakers in virtue of which those predications are true? One sort of predicate which is often thought to not be susceptible to an ontological treatment is a predicate for instantiation, or some corresponding predication (trope-similarity or set-membership, for example). This paper discusses this question, and argues that an "ontological" approach is possible here too: where this ontological approach goes beyond merely finding a truthmaker for claims about instantiation. Along the way a (...) version of the problem of the regress of instantiation is posed and solved. (shrink)
In this study, I examine the significance of the trace and its legibility in the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, showing that this trope plays a more significant role in Merleau-Ponty's thinking than has been recognized heretofore and that it constitutes a crucial point of contact between Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. But this point of contact is also, in both their philosophies, a site where their thinking is compelled to confront its limits and the enigmas involved in the description of (...) the topography of a hermeneutical flesh. It is argued that the significance of the trace consists in its alterity, its registering and inscribing in the very matter of the flesh an imperative spiritual assignment: the morally binding hold of the other person on my capacity to be responsive to the other's needs and bear responsibility for the other's welfare. The retrieval or recuperation of the trace, which, I argue, is inscribed as a certain predisposition in what, borrowing from Merleau-Ponty, we might call the prepersonal topology of the flesh, would thus constitute a task of the utmost importance for the formation of the moral self. However, given the paradoxical temporality of the trace and the hermeneutical nature of its legibility, the retrieval of the trace is not actually possible. Nevertheless, the attempt to retrieve it - one's commitment to retrieving it - is an absolutely imperative existential task, determining the character of the moral self. In both Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, however, the problematic nature of this recuperative project is manifested in the ambiguous, equivocal modality of their rhetoric, supposedly engaged in the phenomenological description of the primordial 'inscription', but oscillating, in fact, undecidably between descriptive and prescriptive, constative and performative, literal and metaphorical modes of discourse. It is argued that this, far from being a fault, is necessitated by the hermeneutic nature of the trace, which requires that the description be invocative and evocative, provoking a deep transformation in experience that would make the description true. It accordingly becomes clear that and why the moral phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, depending as they must on a metaphorical interaction between language and experience, cannot function within the framework of the traditional correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)
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)
Rousseau initially attempts to secure freedom by grounding political rule in persuasion, rather than coercion. When the spectre of rhetoric undermines this strategy, he is led to ground the volonté générale in the silent and introspective disclosure of the solitary citizen’s inner conscience, which through a sentimentalist transformation of Descartes’s category of bon sens, is recast as an eminently public sentiment. But when rhetorical eloquence turns out to be indispensable to politics, Rousseau turns to republican virtue and the trope (...) of grounding the polity’s freedom in the patrie’s territory and, subsequently, in the citizen’s heart. (shrink)
thing produced and understood by speakers of natural language. So understood, metaphors are naturally viewed as linguistic expressions oi a particular type, or as Iittguistic expressions used in a particular type of way. W'e adopt this linguistic conception of metaphor in what follows. In doing so, we do not intend to rule out the possibility of non-linguistic forms of metaphor. Many theorists think that nonlinguistic objects (such as paintings or dance performances) or conceptual structures (like love cts a journey or (...) argttment as tvar)' should also be treated as metaphors. Indeed, the idea that metaphors are in the first instance conceptual phenomena, and hvguistic devices only derivatively, is the dominant view in what is now the dominant area of metaphor research: cognitive science.' In construing metaphor as linguistic, we merely intend to impose appropriate constraints on a discussion whose focus is the understanding and analysis of metaphor within contemporary philosophy of language. Given this starting point, what can be said about metaphor that is not controversiaP. Very little, as it turns out. Metaphor is a trope or figure of speech, where a 'figure.. (shrink)
I argue against a Disjunctive approach to visual experience. I then critique three 'common-factor' views: Qualia Theory, Intentionalism and Sense-Date Theory. The latter two are combined to form Intentional Trope Theory; and that view is defended.
Abstract In this article, a critical assessment is carried out of the two available forms of nominalism with respect to the ontological constitution of material objects: resemblance nominalism and trope theory. It is argued that these two nominalistic ontologies naturally converge towards each other when the problems they have to face are identified and plausible solutions to these problems are sought. This suggests a synthesis between the two perspectives along lines first proposed by Sellars, whereby, at least at the (...) level of the simplest, truly fundamental constituents of reality, every particular is literally both an object and a particularized property (or, alternatively put, the distinction between objects and properties dissolves). Some potential problems and open issues for such an approach to nominalism in ontology are identified and discussed, with particular emphasis on the sort of fundamentalism that seems to crucially underlie the proposed ontology. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s12136-011-0145-x Authors Matteo Morganti, Department of Philosophy, University of Rome ‘RomaTRE’, Via Ostiense, 234, 00144 Rome, Italy Journal Acta Analytica Online ISSN 1874-6349 Print ISSN 0353-5150. (shrink)
Consider a certain red rose. The proposition that the rose is red is true because the rose is red. One might say as well that the proposition that the rose is red is made true by the rose’s being red. This, it has been thought, does not commit one to a truthmaker of the proposition that the rose is red. For there is no entity that makes the proposition true. What makes it true is how the rose is, and how (...) the rose is is not an entity over and above the rose. It is against this view that I shall argue in this paper. I shall argue that a significant class of true propositions, including inessential predications like the proposition that the rose is red, are made true by entities. "No truthmaking without truthmakers" is my slogan. Although I have my view about what kinds of entities are truthmakers, I shall not argue for or presuppose that view here. All I shall argue for here is that if a proposition is made true by something, it is made true by some thing, but my argument will leave it open what kind of thing that thing is: it could be a fact or state of affairs, a trope, or any other sort of entity. (shrink)
