Abstract
Tropes are particular features of concrete objects. Properties—the extensions of predicates—are primitive resemblance classes of tropes. Friends of tropes have been criticized for failing to answer three questions. First, are there fundamental items other than tropes? Second, what criteria determine whether some tropes are all and only the features of some one object? Third, can trope classes be formed adequately using only primitive resemblance? Trading on the spatiotemporal status of tropes, this essay offers new responses to each of these questions. The novel thesis is that there is a sui generis property called ‘markedness’, whose tropes “mark” certain locations in an ontologically basic way. The spatiotemporal distribution of markedness tropes fixes the distribution of familiar characterizing tropes like mass and charge, and characterizing tropes are bundled by being co-contained in the location of a maximally connected markedness trope. This novel theory of trope bundling is defended by appeal to theoretical utility: it is ontologically parsimonious and solves outstanding problems involving co-location and resemblance class construction.
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Notes
Substantivalism is the thesis that spacetime is itself a substance.
An internal relation is one whose exemplification is secured by the intrinsic nature of its relata. For an exception to (ii), see Ehring (2011).
I sometimes will use ‘exemplifies’ as shorthand for bundle membership.
Hereafter I will speak simply of ‘size’, ‘shape’, and ‘duration’. Sizes and durations may be arbitrarily small and shapes may be arbitrarily simple.
Recall that thesis (iv) leaves open whether concrete objects are numerically identical to bundles or merely derivative upon them. When the concrete objects in question are (sparse) tropes, however, they cannot be derivative on anything, given thesis (iii). Accordingly, I will assume the numerical identification reading of (iv) in the second order cases discussed in the text.
It is worth preempting the worry that reflexive exemplification is threatened by Russellian paradox. The key is to disallow that the predicates that give rise to paradox (e.g. ‘not being self-exemplifying’) express genuine properties. There is also a prima facie worry from sortal properties like being an oak tree, for intuitively no tropes are oak trees. Again the best response is to reject such properties.
If this is correct then inter-exemplification and reflexive exemplification are extensionally equivalent.
It is assumed that bundles cannot be individuated intensionally.
One might worry that M1 cannot be identical to SM1 since M1 is intrinsic and yet, following (Skow 2007), there is reason to doubt that shapes are intrinsic. However, if Skow’s line works against shape then it also works against mass, which may be understood as a quantity whose bearer’s parts are related to numbers.
Notice that to numerically identify mass tropes with their shape tropes is not to numerically identify the two properties, mass and shape, for not all shaped tropes are massive. Only the former identification is endorsed here.
This is similar to the position taken in Campbell (1981), criticized in Moreland (1989), and consequently abandoned in Campbell (1990). The crucial difference is that, unlike Campbell’s (1981) view, the present suggestion identifies characterizing tropes not with locations, but with tropes. The objections in Moreland (1989) thus do not apply.
One useful consequence of the spatiotemporal mereology for tropes is that it blocks potential co-extension or imperfect community worries that might be raised for the above decision to identify characterizing and spatiotemporal tropes while keeping the relevant properties distinct. Such worries will be difficult to get off the ground if tropes have arbitrary undetached proper parts of various sizes, shapes, and durations.
The working explication of these topological notions is that of Cartwright (1975).
There are some modifications to the standard versions of these theories that the present view of tropes suggests. Substantival regions would be identified with bundles of merely spatiotemporal tropes; and fundamental distance relations would obtain not among material objects but among tropes.
Assume that the No Bundler is a trope theorist who rejects bare particulars.
Other Derived Restricted Bundling approaches include the ‘nuclear’ approach of Simons (1994), the ‘saturation’ approach of Denkel (1997), and the mereological approach of Paul (2002, 2013), though Paul is not a trope proponent. Simons’s approach, though ingenious in several respects, is unattractive insofar as it is committed to determinable tropes and necessary connections among distinct characterizing properties. Denkel’s theory is also committed to determinable tropes in an ontologically robust way, and is modally restricted. Finally, Paul’s (2002) approach is difficult to square with the independently spatiotemporal reading of thesis (vi), and her (MS) approach presupposes relationalism.
Ehring (2011) claims that compresence is a class of tropes, but he is unclear about whether compresence tropes are concrete. If they are not then Ehring’s view runs afoul of thesis (vi) and Armstrongian naturalism. If they are then Ehring’s view faces the objection to concrete compresence about to be raised in the text.
Some philosophers maintain that metaphysically basic properties must be posited by our best physical theories. However, even these philosophers would agree that if, say, bare particular theory has the correct ontology of properties then our best physical theories, if true, must tacitly be committed to bare particulars, even though physics does not posit bare particulars. The same reasoning applies to markedness.
‘Supersubstantivalists’ hold that regions exemplify characterizing properties directly, merging material objects and regions in their ontology. So tropes differ from supersubstantival regions in just the same way that they differ from material objects, namely, by exemplifying at most one characterizing property.
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Acknowledgement
This essay has benefitted greatly from commentary on its ancestors. In this regard, I would like to thank Ralf Bader, Alexis Burgess, Mark Crimmins, Sarah Giberman, Tal Glezer, David Hills, Alistair Isaac, Mary Krizan, Krista Lawlor, Dustin Locke, Trenton Merricks, John Perry, Alexander Paseau, Rob Rupert, Tom Ryckman, Jonathan Schaffer, Wolfgang Schwarz, Quayshawn Spencer, Johanna Wolff, and Ben Wolfson.
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Giberman, D. Tropes in space. Philos Stud 167, 453–472 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0108-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0108-8