Abstract
According to the cluster of theories in the metaphysics of properties known as ‘trope’ theories, properties are collections of particular qualitative instances. Though increasingly influential, the cluster is sufficiently diverse for there to be little agreement as to the prospects of its members. The present essay articulates and defends a conception of tropes as primitively qualitatively complex, somewhat in the vein of Quinean nominalist objects. After clarifying the relationships among tropes, properties, property exemplification, and property conferral, the essay discusses the benefits of this new ‘ostrich’ trope theory. Specifically, the theory explains better than prior trope theories both the spatiotemporal status of tropes and the capacity tropes have to confer properties onto objects. Moreover, the theory is immune to many of the concerns that threaten more orthodox trope ontologies.
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Notes
The idea that tropes are in some sense qualitatively complex is not unprecedented. See Campbell (1981, 1990, p. 81) on pluralities of resemblances; Robb (2005) on identifying basic objects with tropes; and Giberman (2014) on identifying arbitrary tropes with instances of size and shape. I interpret Campbell (1990, p. 81) as holding that geometric resemblances among tropes are ultimately relational: they’re determined by distance relations among the spatial regions with which the tropes are compresent. However, Campbell does not deny that the resemblances obtain. In that sense, he allows resemblances across more than one qualitative ‘dimension’. What he rejects is intrinsic/monadic resemblance across more than one such dimension. This is a significant difference from ostrich trope theory, which treats sizes and shapes of tropes as intrinsic/monadic. I point to other important differences between these precursors and ostrich trope theory below. While the label ‘ostrich’ was coined by David Armstrong as a pejorative (1978), my use of ‘ostrich’ is not intended to disparage.
Canonical primary literature includes Husserl (1970), Stout (1921), Campbell (1981, 1990), Simons (1994), Williams (1953, 1986), though not all use ‘trope’. See also Martin (1980), Daly (1994), Bacon (1995), Denkel (1996), Ehring (1997, 2011), Macdonald (1998), Schaffer (2001), McDaniel (2001), Maurin (2002), Chrudzimski (2002), Heil (2003), Schnieder (2004), Robb (2005), Lowe (2006), Keinänen (2011), Hakkarainen (2012), Giberman (2014), Garcia (2015, 2016), and Fisher (2018).
Thank you to an anonymous referee for suggesting ‘Nothing!’ as the most natural Quinean answer, in the vein of Devitt (1980). I include the alternative Quinean answer because there is room in logical space for a view that denies that resemblance-sensitive machinery is needed to explain that the object has resemblance capacities, and yet holds that those capacities count as having been explained sufficiently by the existence of the object itself. I see the second sort of Quinean outlook as more attractive when multiple true predications of resemblance capacity are made of a given object. For the more such predications there are, the less satisfying it is to be told that their being true has no explanation. Here I am broadly sympathetic with Parsons (1999).
For a recent defense of this version of the distinction, see Giberman (2021a). I assume that universals do not have proper spatiotemporal parts. Thus, if there are structural universals, the relevant structures are not mereological.
Could one reject the whole multiple location version of the universal/particular distinction and yet still embrace ostrich tropes? No: doing so would be prohibitively costly. Consider an ostrich mass trope t of some determinate mass value F. t, qua ostrich trope, is not just a mass trope but also a size trope and a shape trope. But if t is wholly multiply locatable, then it is possible for t to be arbitrarily many different sizes and shapes, since wholly multiply located entities, by definition, have many distinct exact locations, which often require them to possess various sizes and shapes, assuming that entities take on the size and shape of the region(s) at which they are exactly located. (Think here of multi-locator extended simples, which are exactly located both at certain regions r and at proper sub-regions of r. For example, a multi-locator extended simple tennis racquet is exactly located at a certain racquet-shaped region, but also at a certain handle-shaped region, a certain head-shaped region, certain string-shaped regions, and so forth. For the racquet, qua multi-locator (as opposed to ‘spanner’) extended simple, has a part located at the head-shaped region, the handle-shaped region, etc. And yet, qua simple, it has no parts other than itself. Immanent universals behave this way, as well, assuming they are mereologically simple. If redness is an immanent universal, then it has a part exactly located at the surface of the stop sign and it has a part exactly located at the left half of the surface of the stop sign; for it is exactly located where its instances are. Yet, assuming simplicity, it has no proper parts. Since stop signs are octagonal but their left halves are not, redness has more than one shape (/size), given the link between exact location and shape (/size).) The prohibitive cost, then, is requiring a single trope to confer myriad size and shape resemblance capacities. For this reason, ostrich trope theory fits best with the stipulated whole multiple location version of the universal/particular distinction. Thank you to an anonymous referee for raising this question.
Notice that this family is a subset of all the TROPE theories.
One potential disadvantage of spatiotemporal individuation is that it faces a prima facie challenge about how to allow for the putative possibility of exactly co-located, qualitatively similar material objects. I address this challenge in Sect. 5 below.
There is room in logical space for a version of ostrich trope theory that bundles via existential dependence, as well, although it would lie outside the family previously delineated, since it would have to drop free-floating. Thank you to an anonymous referee for this point. I will not discuss the pros and cons of this version here.
Here is Williams (1953): “…the concurrence sum (Socrates) includes a trope which is a member of the similarity set (Wisdom).” Interestingly, Williams’s view evolves considerably by the time of his (1963/2018) and posthumous (1986 [first completed in 1960]). His mature view leans in interesting ways on an understanding of universals in terms of the identity of indiscernibles, as well as on a certain appeal to (mere) ideology and pretense. See his (1963/2018, p. 116), as well as the very helpful discussion of his view in Fisher (2018). For critiques of the identity of indiscernibles treatment of universality, see Rodriguez-Pereyra (2017) and Giberman (2016).
Part of my following Giberman (2014) consists in suspecting that there is variation in bundling mechanisms across certain kinds of entities (e.g. tropes and material objects, or fundamental and derivative objects). Thus I deny that the bundling mechanism in place for material objects need be the ‘trivial’ bundling mechanism in place for single ostrich tropes. Notice also that there is a tradeoff here, in that by going pluralist about bundling, we can treat exemplification uniformly. By contrast, if tropes were not trivial trope bundles, then their exemplifying properties would be a case of exemplification for which trope bundling does not account.
If there can be pairs of ostrich tropes that are both intrinsically and extrinsically indiscernible, for example certain ostrich tropes of Max Black’s spheres (Black, 1952), then such tropes plausibly are not themselves properties. Thank you to Chad Carmichael for pointing this out to me. The main text hereafter assumes that the ostrich tropes being discussed are properties.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for prompting this discussion.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to consider this objection.
Recall also from footnote 12 that all ostrich tropes being discussed in the main text are properties. In a symmetrical world a la (Black, 1952), by contrast, there may exist ostrich tropes that are not resemblance classes and thus not properties; since they are not properties, they are not conferred or exemplified at all and a fortiori do not confer themselves onto other entities.
I owe this suggestion to a referee.
Here is Ehring’s precise wording of the premise, which he uses in his ‘(Argument 1**)’: “If a and b are related by arbitrarily different internal relations then a and b are not simple” (2011, p. 179). One might charge ostrich trope theory with begging the question against this premise. (Thanks to a referee here.) However, it is not as though the ostrich trope theorist has nothing to say in defense of his view. I have argued that identifying the grounds of size relationships and (e.g.) color relationships accounts for the spatiotemporal nature of tropes more clearly and economically than do competing views. (For additional support, see Giberman (2021b), which argues that collapsing spatiotemporal features primitively into other kinds of tropes furnishes a uniquely advantageous version of supersubstantivalism.) To be sure, the Ehring-style objector could respond that these moves are not so economical or advantageous after all, since they violate his premise. But Ehring (2011) does not defend the premise beyond claiming that “clearly” there are “some” relations that need distinct “aspects” as their grounds (177). I agree that there are some such relations. But the question is whether size or shape relationships work this way, and Ehring gives no independent reason to think that they do.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for encouraging this discussion.
It may be that some prior TROPE theories can also benefit from the response I have offered to Garcia’s dilemma, but they would have to be significantly ostrich-like theories. For example, they would have to hold that mass tropes all by themselves—even independently of compresence with distance relations or any other tropes—can cause indentations in carpets, and it’s not clear to me that very many TROPE theorists accept that commitment. Of course, as noted in the main text, the dilemma only arises if something close to ostrich trope theory is implicitly presupposed anyway.
A related worry: it is prohibitively counterintuitive to hold that many distinct size tropes of exactly the same size perfectly overlap in location; yet ostrich trope theory allows this to occur frequently. I agree that it is somewhat counterintuitive sounding if 'many distinct size tropes' is interpreted, in accord with standard trope ontologies, as picking out tropes that are only size tropes. But on ostrich trope theory, the many distinct size tropes in question will be (respectively) a mass trope, a charge trope, a redness trope, etc. And it does not sound counterintuitive to hold that a mass trope, a redness trope, etc. can all be exactly the same size and exactly co-located.
A referee suggests that there might be some minimal size for color tropes and that the yellow square trope might be of that minimal size, thus prohibiting it from having yellow triangular proper parts. However, even if there were some minimal size n for color tropes, it is hard to see how things of size n could be the shape of extended geometric figures like squares or triangles. For a square cannot be yellow in the relevant (uniform) sense unless, say, its right half is also yellow. But then if the square is size n, that would mean that n could not be the minimal size for yellow tropes, since some yellow trope would have to be responsible for making the square’s right half, which is less than n in size, be yellow. Notice that the trope responsible for the yellowness of the right half of the square trope cannot be the square, n-sized yellow trope itself, understood as an extended simple, since that would make the trope a universal, given the whole multiple location version of the universal/particular distinction stipulated earlier in the paper.
A referee suggests that reddishness comes in degrees and that pink is less reddish than vermillion. But I don’t think this take on reddishness is available to the proponent of Manley’s argument. That argument is predicated on the assumption that reddish is a determinable of which pink and purple are determinates. And in an unrestricted color world, vermillion would be one of the determinates of reddish, as well. But determinates of a given determinable all fall under it equally, not to varying degrees (Wilson [2017]/2021, Sect. 2.1, feature 5). Neon green may be more colorful than drab tan; but it is not somehow more a color. The same is true of vermillion, pink, and reddish, if reddish is indeed a determinable: vermillion is more like paradigmatic red than pink is, but it is no more reddish than pink is. Some ‘-ish’ predicates are felicitously interpretable as gradient, of course. Chimps are more human-ish than sculptures. But in such cases, the ‘-ish’ predicate does not plausibly pick out a determinable of the other properties. For example, being a sculpture is not a determinate of human-ish, since some sculptures are not human-ish at all.
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Acknowledgements
For very helpful thoughts on at least one version of this material, I am grateful to Chad Carmichael, Sam Cowling, Anthony Fisher, Robert Garcia, Jani Hakkarainen, Markku Keinänen, David Kovacs, Anna-Sofia Maurin, and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra. Thank you also to participants at the 2017 Nordic Network in Metaphysics conference in Tampere and David Kovacs’s spring 2020 graduate seminar on properties at Tel Aviv University.
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Giberman, D. Ostrich tropes. Synthese 200, 18 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03494-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03494-4