| 8511 | Stout first explicitly proposed that properties and relations are particulars [Stout,GF, by Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: In modern times, it was G.F. Stout who first explicitly made the proposal that properties and relations are as particular as the substances that they qualify. | |
| From: report of G.F. Stout (The Nature of Universals and Propositions [1923]) by Keith Campbell - The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars §1 | |
| A reaction: Note that relations will have to be tropes, as well as properties. Williams wants tropes to be parts of objects, but that will be tricky with relations. If you place two objects on a table, how does the 'to the left of' trope come into existence? |
| 8508 | A 'trope' is an abstract particular, the occurrence of an essence [Williams,DC] |
| Full Idea: I shall divert the word 'trope' to stand for the abstract particular which is, so to speak, the occurrence of an essence. | |
| From: Donald C. Williams (On the Elements of Being: I [1953], p.115) | |
| A reaction: Thus tropes entered philosophical discussion. Presumably the precedent for an 'abstract particular' would be a particular occurrence of the number 7. |
| 8509 | A world is completely constituted by its tropes and their connections [Williams,DC] |
| Full Idea: Any possible world, and hence, of course, this one, is completely constituted by its tropes and connections of location and similarity. | |
| From: Donald C. Williams (On the Elements of Being: I [1953], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Note that Williams regularly referred to possible worlds in 1953. This is a full-blooded trope theory, which asserts that objects are bundles of tropes, so that both particulars and universals are ontologically taken care of. |
| 8510 | 'Socrates is wise' means a concurrence sum contains a member of a similarity set [Williams,DC] |
| Full Idea: 'Socrates is wise' means that the concurrence sum (Socrates) includes a trope which is a member of the similarity set (Wisdom). | |
| From: Donald C. Williams (On the Elements of Being: I [1953], p.119) | |
| A reaction: Resemblance has to be taken as a basic (and presumably unanalysable) concept, which invites Russell's objection (Idea 4441). |
| 15483 | Properties are ways particular things are, and so they are tied to the identity of their possessor [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: The redness or sphericity of this tomato cannot migrate to another tomato. This is a consequence of the idea that properties are particular ways things are. The identity of a property is bound up with the identity of its possessor. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his declaration that he believes in tropes. At the very least, properties can be thought of separately, and have second-order properties that don't seem tied to the particulars. |
| 8537 | Tropes fall into classes, because exact similarity is symmetrical and transitive [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Exact similarity is a symmetrical and transitive relation. (Less than exact similarity is not transitive, even for tropes). So the relation of exact similarity is an equivalence relation, partitioning the field of tropes into equivalence classes. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], §2) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong goes on the explore the difficulties for trope theory of less than exact similarity, which is a very good line of discussion. Unfortunately it is a huge problem for everyone, apart from the austere nominalist. |
| 18373 | If tropes are non-transferable, then they necessarily belong to their particular substance [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: 'Non-transferable' theories of tropes hold that the mass is of this stone by necessity. It is an identity condition for the property. Every property then becomes an essential property. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Truth and Truthmakers [2004], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Martin and Heil for this view] It is hard to see in this proposal how the trope is in any way separate from its substance, and hence it seems a bit of a vacuous theory. (The other theories of properties aren't much cop either). |
| 4444 | One moderate nominalist view says that properties and relations exist, but they are particulars [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: There is a 'moderate' nominalism (found in G.F.Stout, for example) which says that properties and relations do exist, but that they are particulars rather than universals. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Universals [1995], p.504) | |
| A reaction: Both this view and the 'mereological' view seem to be ducking the problem. If you have two red particulars and a green one, how do we manage to spot the odd one out? |
| 9657 | You must accept primitive similarity to like tropes, but tropes give a good account of it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If you will not countenance primitive similarity in any form, then trope theory is not for you. But if you will, then duplication of tropes is an especially satisfactory form of primitive similarity to take. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This presents the question about tropes in a beautifully simple form. Perfect similarities seem fine, but partial similarities (red and pink things) are hard, and abstract reference (pinkness and redness) is even harder. |
| 15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are supposed to be particularized properties: nonspatiotemporal parts of their instances which cannot occur repeatedly, but can be exact duplicates. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Russell's objection is that 'duplication' appears to be a non-trope universal. The account seems wrong for very close resemblance, which is accepted by everyone as being the same (e.g. in colour, for football shirts). |
| 8513 | Two red cloths are separate instances of redness, because you can dye one of them blue [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If we have two cloths of the very same shade of redness, we can show there are two cloths by burning one and leaving the other unaffected; we show there are two cases of redness in the same way: dye one blue, leaving the other unaffected. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: This has to be one of the basic facts of the problem accepted by everyone. If you dye half of one of the pieces, was the original red therefore one instance or two? Has it become two? How many red tropes are there in a red cloth? |
| 8514 | Red could only recur in a variety of objects if it was many, which makes them particulars [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: If there are a varied group of red objects, the only element that recurs is the colour. But it must be the colour as a particular (a 'trope') that is involved in the recurrence, for only particulars can be many in the way required for recurrence. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
| A reaction: This claim seems to depend on the presupposition that rednesses are countable things, but it is tricky trying to count the number of blue tropes in the sky. |
| 8522 | Tropes solve the Companionship Difficulty, since the resemblance is only between abstract particulars [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'companionship difficulty' cannot arise if the members of the resemblance class are tropes rather than whole concrete particulars. The instances of having a heart, as abstract particulars, are quite different from instances of having a kidney. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: The companionship difficulty seems worst if you base your account of properties just on being members of a class. Any talk of resemblance eventually has to talk about 'respects' of resemblance. Is a trope a respect? Is a mode an object? |
| 8523 | Tropes solve the Imperfect Community problem, as they can only resemble in one respect [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'problem of imperfect community' cannot arise where our resemblance sets are sets of tropes. Tropes, by their very nature and mode of differentiation can only resemble in one respect. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
| A reaction: You arrive at very different accounts of what resemblance means according to how you express the problem verbally. We can only find a solution through thinking which transcends language. Heresy! |
| 8524 | Trope theory makes space central to reality, as tropes must have a shape and size [Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysics of abstract particulars gives a central place to space, or space-time, as the frame of the world. ...Tropes are, of their essence, regional, which carries with it the essential presence of shape and size in any trope occurrence. | |
| From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §7) | |
| A reaction: Trope theory has a problem with Aristotle's example (Idea 557) of what happens when white is mixed with white. Do two tropes become one trope if you paint on a second coat of white? How can particulars merge? How can abstractions merge? |
| 11928 | Are tropes transferable? If they are, that is a version of Platonism [Molnar] |
| Full Idea: Are tropes transferable? ...If tropes are not dependent on their bearers, that is a trope-theoretic version of Platonism. | |
| From: George Molnar (Powers [1998], 1.4.6) | |
| A reaction: These are the sort of beautifully simple questions that we pay philosophers to come up with. If they are transferable, what was the loose bond which connected them? If they aren't, then what individuates them? |
| 8526 | We might treat both tropes and substances as fundamental, so we can't presume it is just tropes [Daly] |
| Full Idea: Since C.B. Martin accepts both tropes and substances as fundamental, the claim that tropes are the only fundamental constituents is a further, independent claim. | |
| From: Chris Daly (Tropes [1995], §4) | |
| A reaction: A dubious mode of argument. Martin may only make the claim because he is ignorant, of facts or of language. Why are some tropes perfectly similar? Is it the result of something more fundamental? |
| 10739 | The property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of exactly similar redness [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Using the predicate '...is exactly similar to...' we can sort tropes into equivalence sets, these sets serving as properties and relations. For example, the property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of redness. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: You have somehow to get from scarlet and vermilion, which have exact similarity within their sets, to redness, which doesn't. |
| 10738 | Tropes are not properties, since they can't be instantiated twice [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: I rule that tropes are not properties, because it is not true that one and the same trope of redness is instantiated by two books. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but has very far-reaching implications, because it means there are no properties, and no two things have the same properties, so there can be no generalisations about properties, let alone laws. ..But they have equivalence sets. |
| 10740 | The orthodox view does not allow for uninstantiated tropes [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: It is usual to hold an aristotelian conception of tropes, according to which tropes are present in their particular instances, and which does not allow for uninstantiated tropes. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: What are you discussing when you ask what colour the wall should be painted? Presumably we can imagine non-existent tropes. If I vividly imagine my wall looking yellow, have I brought anything into existence? |
| 10741 | Maybe concrete particulars are mereological wholes of abstract particulars [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Some trope theorists give accounts of particulars. Sets of tropes will not do because they are always abstract, but we might say that particulars are (concrete) mereological wholes of the tropes which they instantiate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: Looks like a non-starter to me. How can abstract entities add up to a mereological whole which is concrete? |
| 7042 | A theory of universals says similarity is identity of parts; for modes, similarity is primitive [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The friend of universals has an account of similarity relations as relations of identity and partial identity; the friend of modes must regard similarity relations as primitive and irreducible. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.5) | |
| A reaction: We always seem to be able to ask 'in what respect' a similarity occurs. If similarity is 'primitive and irreducible', we should not be able to analyse and explain a similarity, yet we seem able to. I conclude that Heil is wrong. |
| 10464 | A trope is a bit of a property or relation (not an exemplification or a quality) [Bacon,John] |
| Full Idea: A trope is an instance or bit (not an exemplification) of a property or a relation. Bill Clinton's eloquence is not his participating in the universal eloquence, or the peculiar quality of his eloquence, but his bit, and his alone, of eloquence. | |
| From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If we have identified something as a 'bit' of something, we can ask whether that bit is atomic, or divisible into something else, and we can ask what are the qualities and properties and powers of this bit, we seems to defeat the object. |
| 10465 | Trope theory is ontologically parsimonious, with possibly only one-category [Bacon,John] |
| Full Idea: A major attraction of tropism has been its promise of parsimony; some adherents (such as Campbell) go so far as to proclaim a one-category ontology. | |
| From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to go against the folk idiom which suggests that it is things which have properties, rather than properties ruling to roost. Maybe if one identified tropes with processes, the theory could be brought more into line with modern physics? |
| 10467 | Individuals consist of 'compresent' tropes [Bacon,John] |
| Full Idea: 'Qualitons' or 'relatons' (quality and relation tropes) are held to belong to the same individual if they are all 'compresent' with one another. | |
| From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §4) | |
| A reaction: There is a perennial problem with bundles - how to distinguish accidental compresence (like people in a lift) from united compresence (like people who make a family). |
| 8285 | I prefer 'modes' to 'tropes', because it emphasises their dependence [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers call particularised properties of objects 'tropes', but I prefer the older term 'mode' (or 'individual accident'), because this term rightly has the implication that such entities are existentially dependent ones, depending on objects. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: A nice illustration of the fact that philosophical terminology is not as metaphysically innocent as it sometimes pretends to be. I agree with Lowe. |
| 4234 | Trope theory says blueness is a real feature of objects, but not the same as an identical blue found elsewhere [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The trope theorist holds that the blueness of a blue chair really exists as much as the chair, but is not identified with the blueness of anything else, even if it resembles it exactly. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (A Survey of Metaphysics [2002], p.361) | |
| A reaction: You are left with explaining how 'resemblance' works if you cannot spot some 'thing' in common. It is an inviting idea, though, because it avoids the ontological baggage of universals. |
| 4235 | Maybe a cushion is just a bundle of tropes, such as roundness, blueness and softness [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The trope theorist says that a cushion is just a 'bundle' of tropes, such as roundness, blueness and softness. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (A Survey of Metaphysics [2002], p.362) | |
| A reaction: Certainly if you dispense with the idea of substance (which is clearly bad science even if it is good metaphysics), something like this is what remains of a cushion, though it sounds more epistemological than ontological. Only philosophers care about this |
| 4236 | Tropes seem to be abstract entities, because they can't exist alone, but must come in bundles [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Tropes seem to be abstract entities because, unlike concrete entities, they are ontologically dependent; ..there are no 'free' tropes, and they must always be bundled with other appropriate tropes to exist. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (A Survey of Metaphysics [2002], p.367) | |
| A reaction: Only a Platonist would think that a universal property could 'exist alone'. I presume Aristotle thought universals were real, though bound up with substances. |
| 4461 | Tropes are like Hume's 'impressions', conceived as real rather than as ideal [Moreland] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are (says Campbell) substances (in Hume's sense), and indeed resemble his impressions conceived realistically rather than idealistically. | |
| From: J.P. Moreland (Universals [2001], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: An interesting link. It doesn't get rid of the problem Hume has, of saying when two impressions are the same. Are they types or tokens? Trope-theory claims they are tokens. Hume's ontology includes 'resemblance'. |
| 18431 | Internal relations combine some tropes into a nucleus, which bears the non-essential tropes [Simons, by Edwards] |
| Full Idea: Simons's 'nuclear' option blends features of the substratum and bundle theories. First we have tropes collected by virtue of their internal relations, forming the essential kernel or nucleus. This nucleus then bears the non-essential tropes. | |
| From: report of Peter Simons (Particulars in Particular Clothing [1994], p.567) by Douglas Edwards - Properties 3.5 | |
| A reaction: [compression of Edwards's summary] This strikes me as being a remarkably good theory. I am not sure of the ontological status of properties, such that they can (unaided) combine to make part of an object. What binds the non-essentials? |
| 14605 | Tropes are the same as events [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Tropes can be identified with events. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], n17) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably on the view of events, associated with Kim, as instantiations of properties. This idea is a new angle on tropes and events which had never occurred to me. |
| 7934 | Tropes are abstract (two can occupy the same place), but not universals (they have locations) [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are abstract entities, at least in the sense that more than one can be in the same place at the same time (e.g. redness and roundness). But they are not universals, because they have unique and particular locations. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm uneasy about the reification involved in this kind of talk. Does a coin possess a thing called 'roundness', which then has to be individuated, identified and located? I am drawn to the two extreme views, and suspicious of compromise. |
| 7958 | Properties are sets of exactly resembling property-particulars [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope Nominalism says properties are classes or sets of exactly similar or resembling tropes, where tropes are what we might called 'property-tokens' or 'particularized properties'. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: We still seem to have the problem of 'resembling' here, and we certainly have the perennial problem of why any given particular should be placed in any particular set. See Idea 7959. |
| 7972 | Tropes are abstract particulars, not concrete particulars, so the theory is not nominalist [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope 'Nominalism' is not a version of nominalism, because tropes are abstract particulars, rather than concrete particulars. Of course, a trope account of the relations between particulars and their properties has ramifications for concrete particulars. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 7971. At this point the boundary between nominalist and realist theories seems to blur. Possibly that is bad news for tropes. Not many dilemmas can be solved by simply blurring the boundary. |
| 18864 | The wisdom of Plato and of Socrates are not the same property [Tallant] |
| Full Idea: It is not the case that Plato's wisdom = Socrates's wisdom. Platonic-wisdom and Socratic-wisdom are not the same property. | |
| From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 05.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems reasonable in the case of wisdom, but not so clear in the case of indistinguishable properties of redness or squareness or mass. Nevertheless it gives nice support for trope theory. |