Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-25T18:13:20.940Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Ways to Particularize a Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2015

ROBERT K. GARCIA
ROBERT K. GARCIA*
Affiliation:
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITYrobertkgarcia@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Trope theory is an increasingly prominent contender in contemporary debates about the existence and nature of properties. But it suffers from ambiguity concerning the nature of a trope. Disambiguation reveals two fundamentally different concepts of a trope: modifier tropes and module tropes. These types of tropes are unequally suited for metaphysical work. Modifier tropes have advantages concerning powers, relations, and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes have advantages concerning perception, causation, character-grounding, and the ontology of substance. Thus, the choice between modifier tropes and module tropes is significant and divides the advantages of trope theory simpliciter. In addition, each resulting trope theory is unstable: modifier trope theory threatens to collapse into realism, and module trope theory threatens to collapse into austere nominalism. This invites reflection on the stability of trope theory in general.

Keywords

tropesuniversalsnominalismontologysubstance
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , Winter 2015 , pp. 635 - 652
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, D. (1980a) Nominalism and Realism: Universals and Scientific Realism. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. (1980b) Universals and Scientific Realism: A Theory of Universals. Vol 2. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. (1989) Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. (1997) A World of States of Affairs. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, K. (1976) Metaphysics: An Introduction. Encino, CA: Dickenson.Google Scholar
Campbell, K. (1990) Abstract Particulars. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Campbell, K. (1981) ‘The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars’. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 6, 477–88.Google Scholar
Carroll, J., and Markosian, N.. (2010) An Introduction to Metaphysics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, D. (2014) Properties. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Ehring, D. (1996) ‘Mental Causation, Determinables and Property Instances’. Nous, 30, 461–80.Google Scholar
Ehring, D. (1997) Causation and Persistence: A Theory of Causation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ehring, D. (2011) Tropes: Properties, Objects, and Mental Causation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Forrest, P. (1993) ‘Just like Quarks’. In Bacon, J., Campbell, K., and Reinhardt, L. (eds.), Ontology, Causality, and Mind: Essays in Honor of D. M. Armstrong (New York: Cambridge University Press), 45–65.Google Scholar
Garcia, R. K. (2014) ‘Bare Particulars and Constituent Ontology’. Acta Analytica, 29, 149–59.Google Scholar
Garcia, R. K. (2015a) ‘Is Trope Theory a Divided House?’ In Galluzzo, G. and Loux, M. (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press), 133–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia, R. K. (2015b) ‘Tropes as Divine Acts: The Nature of Creaturely Properties in a World Sustained by God’. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 7, 105–130.Google Scholar
Garcia, R. K. (Forthcoming) ‘Tropes as Character-Grounders’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy.Google Scholar
Goodman, N. (1966) The Structure of Appearance. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Gracia, J. J. E. (1988) Individuality: An Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Grossmann, R. (1992) The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Heil, J. (2012) The Universe as We Find It. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johansson, I. (2014) ‘All Relations are Internal: The New Version’. In Reboul, A. (ed.), Mind, Values, and Metaphysics: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan (New York: Springer), 225–40Google Scholar
Koons, R. C., and Pickavance, T. H.. (2015) Metaphysics: The Fundamentals. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
LaBossiere, M. (1994) ‘Substances and Substrata’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72, 360–70.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1983) ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61, 343–77.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (2001) On the Plurality of Worlds. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Loux, M. J. (2006) Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Loux, M. J. (2015) ‘An Exercise in Constituent Ontology’. In Galluzzo, G. and Loux, M. (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press), 9–45.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (1998) The Possibility of Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2006) The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2010) ‘On the Individuation of Powers’. In Marmodoro, A. (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and their Manifestations (New York: Routledge), 8–26.Google Scholar
Manley, D. (2002) ‘Properties and Resemblance Classes’. Noûs, 36, 75–96.Google Scholar
Marmodoro, A. (2010) The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and their Manifestations. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Martin, C. (1980) ‘Substance Substantiated’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 58, 3–10.Google Scholar
Martin, C., and Heil, J.. (1999) ‘The Ontological Turn’. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23, 34–60.Google Scholar
Maurin, A.-S. (2002) If Tropes. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Maurin, A.-S. (2014) ‘Tropes’. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 ed.). Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/tropes/.Google Scholar
Molnar, G. (2003) Powers: A Study in Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moreland, J. P. (1989) ‘Keith Campbell and the Trope View of Predication’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 67, 379–93.Google Scholar
Moreland, J. P. (1997) ‘A Critique of Campbell's Refurbished Nominalism’. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 35, 225–46.Google Scholar
Moreland, J. P. (2001) Universals. Montreal: McGill Queens University Press.Google Scholar
Moreland, J. P. (2013) ‘Exemplification and Constituent Realism: A Clarification and Modest Defense’. Axiomathes, 23, 247–59.Google Scholar
O’Leary-Hawthorne, J., and Cover, J. A.. (1998) ‘A World of Universals’. Philosophical Studies, 91, 205–19.Google Scholar
Oliver, A. (1996) ‘The Metaphysics of Properties’. Mind, 105, 1–80.Google Scholar
Pickavance, T. (2014) ‘Bare Particulars and Exemplification’. American Philosophical Quarterly, 51, 95–108.Google Scholar
Robb, D. (2005) ‘Qualitative Unity and the Bundle Theory’. The Monist, 88, 466–92.Google Scholar
Rosenkrantz, G. S. (1993) Haecceity: An Ontological Essay. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2001) ‘The Individuation of Tropes’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 79, 247–57.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2003) ‘The Problem of Free Mass: Must Properties Cluster?’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66, 125–38.Google Scholar
Swoyer, C. (1999) ‘How Ontology Might be Possible: Explanation and Inference in Metaphysics’. In French, P. A. and Wettstein, H. K. (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 23 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press), 100–31.Google Scholar
van Cleve, J. (1985).‘Three Versions of the Bundle Theory’. Philosophical Studies, 47, 95–107.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, P. (2004) ‘A Theory of Properties’. In Zimmerman, D. (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press), 107–38.Google Scholar
Williams, D. C. (1953) ‘On the Elements of Being: I’. The Review of Metaphysics, 7, 3–18.Google Scholar
Wilson, J. M. (2012) ‘Fundamental Determinables’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 12, 1–17.Google Scholar