Abstract
This paper examines a recent proposal for reviving so-called resemblance nominalism. It is argued that, although consistent, it naturally leads to trope theory upon examination for reasons having to do with the appeal of neutrality as regards certain non-trivial ontological theses.
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Notes
The latter is also described as based on the postulation of ‘bare particulars.’ It must be pointed out that, although they usually introduce substrata with a view to keeping universals while also satisfactorily accounting for individuality, substratum theorists can understand properties both as universals and as tropes. See, for instance, LaBossiere (1994) who endorses a substrata-plus-tropes ontology.
For Aristotle, in rebus universals constitute the formal element that qualifies matter.
The most strenuous current defender of realism about universals along Aristotelian lines is certainly Armstrong (see, for example, his 1978 and 1989). He endorses and reiterates the one-over-many argument, and he also expands the justification of realism about universals based on language by taking universals as necessary for truth-making. At the same time, Armstrong rejects the sort of transcendental realism developed along Platonic-Russellian lines and presents his position as an a posteriori immanent realism about universals: He believes that there is no automatic correlation between predicates and universals and that we need to discover what universals really exist (namely, what predicates truly correspond to real properties) through the empirical work of science. This is the basis for the distinction between a sparse and an abundant conception of properties that will be employed later.
However, it is possible to claim that commitment to the existence of one universal is different – and better – from commitment to realism about universals tout court. See Rodriguez-Pereyra (2002) and his distinction between quantitative and qualitative economy.
Of course, I am not suggesting that the act of judging two things similar makes them so, but rather that the causal features that things possess are sufficient to determine the facts of similarity or dissimilarity they are involved in as we experience them. Also, I put terms related to causality among quotes to avoid endorsing realism about it. If one is sceptical about causation, the former can be reduced to regularities in the observed world. Nothing in the thesis being put forward hinges upon a strong understanding of causality.
A Pricean position has been defended in more recent times by Cargile (2003).
This is possible because, while it is true that the joint existence of two particulars is sufficient to make them similar or dissimilar, the resemblance classes to which a particular belongs may vary across possible worlds.
If one wants to avoid talk of ‘same property’, the problem might be formulated as that of explaining why the sum of the non-empty and non-overlapping intersections of any three (or more) distinct property classes does not constitute a property class.
After having offered solutions to the traditional problems affecting resemblance nominalism, Rodriguez-Pereyra also deals with one remaining problem (2002; Chapter 11), consisting of the fact that the conditions he individuates for sets of resembling particulars are also met by what he calls ‘mere intersections.’ That is, the particulars in the intersection of two perfect communities determining properties A and B also form a perfect community, as they all possess the conjunctive property A+B and no other particular has that property. To get rid of this problem, Rodriguez-Pereyra assumes that there exist no sparse conjunctive properties.
In addition, the notion of ‘resemblance to degree n’ that Rodriguez-Pereyra employs to solve the companionship difficulty presupposes that every entity can only have a finite number of sparse properties, for it would be impossible to distinguish a property from another on the basis of the ‘resembles to degree n’ relation if the degree of similarity were equal to infinity for all the particulars in both the resemblance set determining one of these properties and in that determining the other. However, that each entity only has a finite amount of sparse properties appears plausible.
The definition ‘ostrich nominalism’ is due to Armstrong (1978; vol. I, p. 16) who coined it on the basis of the fact that the position acknowledges that there are facts of property-exemplification, but then simply refuses to accept that these need an explanation. An ostrich nominalist position is defended by Devitt (1980) and Van Cleve (1994).
In Rodriguez-Pereyra’s terms, I am in effect hypothesizing that only properties determined by resemblances of degree 1 are real properties.
The reply that physics denies that the basic constituents of reality only have one property and so the proposal above is refuted ignores that ontology should not contradict best science but can certainly go beyond what it currently says. Perhaps elementary particles are analysable.
This, incidentally, allows one to make sense of ostrich nominalism. The central idea behind ostrich nominalism is, as we have seen, that ‘a is P’ can be true and yet require no explanation other than that a exists. It seems to me that such a position becomes convincing as soon as it is assumed that property classes are composed by tropes rather than concrete particulars. If a is a trope, it follows that it is a particular property. However, this means that ‘a is P’ is to be intended as an identity claim rather than a predication. From which it follows that, given a, it is necessarily true that ‘a is P’.
Notice that conclusion (a4) above must be intended as the claim that the two or more concrete particulars involved in a resemblance relation are the sole truth-makers of the sentence expressing it, and as a consequence, the truth-makers for the statements attributing a specific property to them. In a trope ontology, (a4) would be equally true, but as the claim that the two or more particulars that are the sole truth-makers of resemblance claims are such in virtue of the fact that, each one of them by itself, they are the sole truth-makers of property attributions regarding them. This is exactly why predication is only possible with more than one individual in resemblance nominalism but not in the trope-based perspective being proposed and why, consequently, only the former is committed to the existence of possible wolrds.
True, Rodriguez-Pereyra claims that “with metaphysical theories about the basic structure of the world, like Resemblance Nominalism, Trope Theory and Realism about Universals, there is no reason to expect that our intuitions will be true. Intuitions are the product of evolution and so metaphysical intuitions, which have little if any survival value, are unlikely to lead us to metaphysical truth” (2003; p. 232). Despite the fact that this appears correct as a general claim, it looks as though – all the rest remaining fixed – intuitions can in fact lead one to prefer one metaphysical hypothesis to another. In the present case, at any rate, intuitions in favour of similarities as dependent on properties are coupled with explicit arguments for choosing an ontology other than resemblance nominalism.
See Adams (1979) for more on this concept.
Of course, the same applies mutatis mutandis for particulars which are complexes of tropes. Notice that the claim that primitive co-existence is all there is to compresence holds regardless of whether the tropes’ existing in such a way that they ‘are at the same place’ determines space-time relations (as in relationism about space-time), or is set against the background of a pre-existing space-time ‘stage’ (as in substantivalist construals), or ‘comes into existence’ together with space-time as an absolute and yet non-substantival structure (as in the structural understanding of space and time suggested, for example, by Auyang 1995 and 2000).
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Morganti, M. Resembling Particulars: What Nominalism?. Int Ontology Metaphysics 8, 165–178 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-007-0014-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-007-0014-7