Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

A Question for Trope Theorists

Trope bundle theory is regularly advertised as a one-category ontology.  What this means is that everything is either a trope or a logical construction from tropes.  Standard trope theory is a metaphysic that implies that everything can be accounted for in terms of ontologically basic simples, namely, tropes.  So what about the cat in my lap, or any individual substance? On trope theory, individual substances  (concrete particulars) are assayed as bundles of compresent tropes.  To put it crudely, sufficiently many of the right tropes tied together by relations of compresence yield an individual substance.  Concrete particulars are reductively analyzable into systems of compresent tropes.  So far, so good.

But my cat Max Black is black and furry and so is his brother Manny K. Black.  How do we account for furriness and blackness as properties had by both of these critters and innumerable actual and possible others?  How do we account for universals in our one-category ontology if all we have to work with are tropes?  How can we construct universals out of abstract particulars?

The standard answer is in terms of classes or sets of exactly resembling tropes.  Black1 and black2 are numerically distinct, as numerically distinct as Max and Manny.  But they resemble each other exactly.  The same goes for all black tropes.  Take the set of them all.  That is the universal blackness.  Thus universals are reductively analyzable in terms of sets or classes of exactly resembling tropes.

Neat, eh?

Now here is my question. Trope theory was advertised as a one-category ontology.  Don't we now have two categories, a category of tropes and a category of sets?

"There is no commitment to sets.  All the furry tropes resemble each other.  Furriness the universal is just the furry tropes."

I don't think this is a good answer.  For I could press: the furry tropes taken distributively or taken collectively?  Obviously, they must be taken collectively.  But then we are back to sets.

How then would a trope theorist answer my (non-rhetorical) question?

Cat and mouse:

IMG_0867

 

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Bill Vallicella

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9 responses to “A Question for Trope Theorists”

  1. Eric Levy Avatar
    Eric Levy

    The Mighty Metaphysician just hurled a thunderbolt!
    Here I am slipping on the first rung of the Ladder of Philosophical Enlightenment, while you soar effortlessly in the noösphere.
    To the trope theorists whom you unanswerably challenged: Speak now or forever hold your peace!

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  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    My question is so obvious and natural that the luminaria (illuminati?) of trope theory must have thought about it and answered it somewhere.

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  3. Spencer Case Avatar
    Spencer Case

    Bill, I wonder if there isn’t a more direct route to establishing universals. As I understand it universals are “repeatable entities.” Aren’t tropes like that? Don’t all the different tropes share a common trope nature? If so, then we’ve already got universals.

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  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    Hi Spencer,
    Yes, universals are repeatable entities. Tropes, as you know, are particulars, i.e., unrepeatable entities. The furriness of Max occurs only in Max; the furriness of Manny only in Manny. Now standard trope theory is supposed to be a one-category bundle theory. There are only tropes in this ontology and logical constructions from tropes. There are no irreducible universals.
    This is why the F-ness of the F-tropes is identified with the class of all exactly resembling Fs.
    So there are no irreducible universals.
    Perhaps you are suggesting that exact resemblance cannot be understood except as resemblance in respect of irreducible universals. Nominalists deny this, but it is an open question. Trope theory is a form of moderate nominalism.
    See here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tropes/#TroUni
    My point is different. Even if one can eke by without genuine universals, one will need irreducible sets, and so now we have two categories, not one.

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  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    It is worth noting that ‘the furriness of Max’ is a potentially misleading expression inasmuch as it suggests that tropes are complexes. They are not. They are simples. It is not Max who individuates his furriness. And his furriness is not essentially his.
    How should we refer to tropes? Seems we can’t use proper names. We have to sue indexicals such as the demonstrative pronoun ‘this,’ e.g., ‘this furriness.’

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  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    Eric,
    The typo in my last sentence does not impede the transmission of sense from writer to reader; ergo, et cetera.

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  7. Eric Levy Avatar
    Eric Levy

    “Max’s furriness is not essentially his.” How so? According to trope theory, the concrete particular is constituted by the trope bundle (the compresence of tropes). Two points here stand out. On the one hand, as Ujvári notes, “A trope is a quality instance which is intimately tied up in its very existence with the thing which it belongs to” (2012, 17). On other hand, as you note in PTE, “the existence of an ordinary individual is the concurrence of its constituent tropes” (2002, 86). That is, “there is nothing in reality to distinguish CT [the compresence trope] from 0” [the concrete object] (2002, 87). In this circumstance, the object is the compresence trope (the duly bundled bundle of tropes). If Max cannot be distinguished from the bundle of tropes constituting him, how is his furriness not essentially his? After all, his furriness is an essential constituent of him. And the furriness trope is existentially dependent on being a constituent of the trope bundle which is him. The being of the individual and independently existent thing is founded its constituents, whose being, in turn, is founded on their co-occurrence with each other (since tropes are not existentially independent). Regarding the latter point (re the existential dependence of tropes on their bundle), we can recall (a) Lowe: “tropes are identity-dependent upon their possessors” (1998, 206) and (b) Maurin: “the accidental tropes depend specifically on the kernel while the kernel depends generically on the accidental tropes” (2002, 153).

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  8. Spencer Case Avatar
    Spencer Case

    Bill,
    I take your point and I think it’s a good one, but maybe I didn’t make my point as clear as I might have. A particular dog isn’t a repeatable entity, but “dogness” is. Here’s a dog, there’s a dog, there’s another — they all have a common dog-ness. I wonder why we can’t say the same thing with particulars: Here’s one particular (a particular particular), there’s another particular, there’s another particular, and they all have a common particularity. It is in virtue of their common particularity that they all belong in the class of particulars. It has always seemed to me that you need to invoke universals here. But maybe the nominalist would just call this question-begging.
    Best,
    Spencer

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  9. BV Avatar
    BV

    Spencer,
    Universals, by definition, are repeatable. But you can’t just assume that there are universals — otherwise you beg the question against the trope theorist, who is a nominalist.

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