Trope Theories

I know next to nothing about trope theory. I bet at least a couple people here do though. If you do, do you have any thoughts on it?

Here is a link to a paper, by D.C. Williams. I’ve perused it before and found it interesting, but I haven’t read it lately.

I did just re-read the introduction by Keith Campbell, which I’ll cut & paste here:

[i]"Many philosophers have admitted the existence of abstract particulars, properties that occur as particulars, or, as Donald Williams dubed them, ‘tropes’. Anyone who accepts Peirce’s type/token distinction as holding for the colors, for example, accepts instances of properties as particulars. Anyone who, like Locke, adheres to a substance-property ontology, but also insists that all things are always only particular, affirms that properties are particulars – that is, tropes.

What marks off a trope metaphysic from others is to be found in what the ontology denies, rather than in what it affirms. A trope metaphysic gets its importance from the primacy that it accords to them. Its bite comes from the claim that these are the basic elements, the ‘alphabet of being’, as Donald Williams has it. This claim involves as an essential element the denial of the existence of genuine universals. This is a first and most significant dimension of economy. Further, in Williams’ theory, the primacy of tropes is coupled with a bundle theory of complex concrete particulars. So the theory also involves the denial of the reality of substances as substrata bearing the properties that inhere in them, or acting as an essential principle of individuation. Here is a second significant dimension of economy.

This search for ontic economy drives trope theory. Williams’s ontology admits but a single basic category, the abstract particular or trope. It is worth emphasizing that this position is not any form of Nominalism, where that term implies the denial of the existence of properties (and relations). Quite the contrary: trope theory affirms that Reality consists in nothing but (monadic or polyadic) properties. Rather than a Nominalism, this view is better described as a strict Particularism – it does not deny that there are properties, but denies that properties are Universals.

Nor does trope theory deny the existence of simple or complex individuals. It does not admit substance as a distinct category, but individual basic tropes are substances in the Humean sense – they are capable of independent existence. They do not require an underlying substratum to bear them. It is one of this ontology’s great attractions that it can in this way dispense with the Inherence relation, together with all its attendant difficulties.

In this classic paper, Donald Williams pioneers the trope metaphysic, providing us, in beguiling rhetoric, and a most admirable independence of mind, an original view of a perennial crux in metaphyics."[/i]

(PDF), which appears to be a refutation of Campell’s assertion that tropes can be “simple” (uncompounded).

I read the intro you posted and, despite the examples, i’m still confused about what “properties as particulars” means . . . maybe i’m just getting mixed up because i keep trying to work the literary definition of the term “trope” into this, and it doesn’t seem to fit. Or maybe i’m just getting mixed up because i’m dumb - either way, i’m confused.

It’s confusing to me too - I was hoping someone would come along that knows more about it. Also, I have to read the paper by Williams again.

The problem with trope theory (as with most of the analytic metaphysical trends) is that it is answering questions that no one really cares about. Only a philosopher would be troubled by the fact that properties look like they should be things but probably aren’t. And even most philosophers find it difficult to actually be bothered.

At any rate - trope theory is paticuarly silly. The reason you don’t understand it is because there is very little there to be understood. Most of the language is used is simply drivel. Look at the stanford article:

“A trope is an instance or bit (not an exemplification) of a property or a relation”

?

I used to have a handle on tropw theory (just). But now I can’t make sense of even the stanford article. Then again, one of the advantages of being outside of academic philosophy is that you don’t have to read this kind of crap.

Don’t put too much faith in the fact that your lectures and professors seem to understand this stuff. Even very intelligent people can be led astray on things like this.

I know what you mean. I used to understand Kierkegaard. Looking back, I wonder if I ever did! I still like him though - I just don’t understand him.