The following is a comment by Eric Levy in a recent trope thread. My responses are in blue.
………………………
Might I revert to the problem of compresent tropes constituting a concrete particular? Heil well formulates it: “One difficulty is in understanding properties as parts that add up to objects” (2015, 120). The whole business seems to me riddled with equivocation, epitomized by Maurin’s formulation: “. . . tropes are by their nature such that they can be adequately categorized both as a kind of property and as a kind of substance.”
BV: We agree, I think, that standard trope theory is trope bundle theory, a one-category ontology. This version of the theory alone is presently under discussion. John Heil puts his finger on a very serious difficulty. I would add that it is a difficulty not only for trope bundle theory but for every bundle theory including the theory that ordinary particular are bundles or clusters of universals, as well as for Hector Castaneda's bundle-bundle theory. On Castaneda's theory, an ordinary particular at a time is a synchronic bundle of "consubstantiated" "guises" with a particular over time being a "transubstantiated" diachronic bundle of these synchronic bundles.
Intellectual honesty requires me to say that the theory I advance in PTE also faces Heil's difficulty. For on the view developed in PTE, ordinary concrete particulars are facts or states of affairs along Bergmannian-Armstrongian lines. On this theory Socrates is not a bundle but a concrete truth-making fact which has among its ontological constituents or parts his properties.
Generalizing, we can say that the difficulty Heil mentions is one for any constituent ontology that assays properties as ontological parts of the things that, as we say in the vernacular, 'have them.'
Anna-Sofia Maurin is entirely right in her explanation of trope theory but as far as I know she would not admit that Heil's difficulty really is one.
For example, on the one hand, properties are immaterial and interpenetrable abstracta. On the other hand, these immaterial and interpenetrable abstracta somehow constitute, through compresence, an enmattered, impenetrable object. Let us consider a red rubber ball and then a bronze statue. There is the rubber ball – the triumphant consequence of compresent tropes. One trope is to be construed, as we earlier agreed, as an appropriately extended red or redness. Another trope is to be construed as an appropriately diametered spherical contour. Another trope – the hardness trope – is to be construed as an appropriately calibrated resistance to deformation. But then we reach the rubber trope; for we are talking about a red rubber ball. What are we to posit here: an amorphous chunk of rubber appropriately qualified by its compresent fellows? How does trope theory account for the rubber in the red rubber ball?
BV: Excellent question(s), Eric. Well, the chunk or hunk of rubber cannot be amorphous — formless — for then it would be materia prima rather than what it is, materia signata. It is after all a hunk of rubber, not of clay, and indeed a particular hunk of rubber, not rubber in general. The parcel of rubber is formed matter, hence not prime matter. It is this matter, not matter in general. Your question, I take it, is whether this rubber could be construed as a trope in the way that this redness and this hardness can be construed as tropes. The latter are simple property particulars. But this rubber is not simple, but a hylomorphic compound. So it would appear that this rubber cannot be construed as a trope.
Even if the property of being rubbery could be construed as a trope, it is hard to see how the stuff, rubber, could be construed as a trope. For tropes are simple while stuffs are hylomorphic compounds — prime stuff aside. Tropes are formal or akin to forms while stuffs are matter-form compounds. Mud is muddy. But the muddiness of a glob of mud would seem to be quite different from the stuff, mud.
My desk is wooden. The property of being wooden is different from the designated matter (materia signata) that has the form of a desk. Harry is hairy. He has hair on his back, in his nose, and everywhere else. He is one hairy dude. His hair is literally a part of him, a physical part. His being hairy, however, is a property of him. If this property is a trope, then it is (i) a property particular that is (ii) an ontological part of Harry. But then what is the relation between the ontological part and the physical part? Can a clear sense be attached to 'ontological part'? As has often been noted, ontological parts are not parts in the sense of mereology.
Here then is one question for the trope theorist: How do you account for the designated matter of a material thing? Is it a trope or not? How could a trope theorist deal with matter? A trope theorist might say this. "There is no matter ultimately speaking. It is form 'all the way down.' A hunk of rubber is not formed matter. For this matter is either prime matter, which cannot exist, or just a lower level of form."
A second question: if tropes are immaterial, how can bundling them 'add up' to a material thing? A trope theorist might respond as follows.
You are assuming that there are in ultimate reality irreducibly material things. On trope theory, however, material things reduce to systems of compresent tropes. So, while individual tropes are immaterial, a system of compresent tropes is material in the only sense that stands up to scrutiny. We trope theorists are not denying that there are material things, we are telling you what they are, namely, bundles of compresent tropes. Material things are just bundles of immaterial tropes. The distinction between the immaterial and the material is accommodated by the distinction between unbundled and bundled tropes. And while it is true that individual tropes interpenetrate, that is consistent with the impenetrability of trope bundles. Impenetrability is perhaps an emergent feature of trope bundles.
Now let’s move to the bronze statue. What does trope theory do with the bronze? This is, after all, a bronze statue. Is bronze, then, a trope or “property particular” of the statue? And if so, how are we to construe this trope? Is it material or immaterial?
BV: A trope theorist might be able to say that there are two trope bundles here, the lump of bronze and the statue. Lump and Statue are arguably two, not one, in that they have different persistence conditions. Lump exists at times when Statue doesn't. So they are temporally discernible. They are also modally discernible. Even if in the actual world Lump and Statue exist at all the same times, there are possible worlds in which Lump exists but Statue does not. (Of course there are no possible worlds in which Statue exists and Lump does not.)
And to what do we assign the trope of shape: the bronze or the statue? As Lowe point out, “the bronze and the statue, while the former composes the latter, are exactly the same shape. Do they, then, have numerically distinct but exactly coinciding shapes . . .” (1998, 198)? Or does the shape as form pertain to just one candidate? Lowe suggests that the shape, as form, belongs or pertains to the statue, not the bronze, and that the property concerned is “the property of being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” not the property of the statue’s particular shape. The reason for this distinction is that the form (being a statue of such-and-such a shape) is identified with the statue itself.
In this example, in the context of trope theory, how can there be a property, “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” when the statue itself is constituted? Trope theory cannot account for this property, because trope theory cannot distinguish between the shape of the bronze and the shape of the statue. It cannot make this distinction because, as you point out in PTE, in trope theory there is no distinction between compresence and the existence of the object (Vallicella 2002, 87). One of the tropes in that compresence can be a shape trope, of course. But it cannot be the trope of “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” because, in the wacky world of trope theory, the statue itself must be constituted before it can be a statue of such-and-such a shape. In other words, no trope in the compresent bundle can be the trope of “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” because, until the tropes compresent, there cannot be a statue. This is what happens in a one-category ontology that recognizes only property particulars. If there were a trope of “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” it would have to qualify the statue after the statue had been constituted.
BV: The last stretch of argumentation is not clear to me. Please clarify in the ComBox.
Leave a Reply to Eric Levy Cancel reply