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Critical Essay on Tropes

By Nathaniel J. Kan

In "Tropes," Chris Daly makes a case that contrary to the philosophies of D. C.

Williams' and Keith Campbell, the philosophy of tropes as the sole fundamental entities

in the world is a false one, and in fact tropes are no more a less complex model or

convenient to accept than the idea of universals. While Williams' trope theory has some

merits, I would argue that there are fundamental difficulties that need to be worked out in

order for us to accept a philosophy of tropes, and even then many of the problems Daly

discusses continue to apply.

It is true that Williams' argument is confused. Williams writes about the tropes of

a lollipop "the color-cum-shape is less abstract … than the color alone but it is more

abstract … than color-plus-shape-plus-flavor, and so on till we get to the total complex

which is wholly concrete." (115) As Daly claims (142), the measure on which Williams

evaluates whether something is or is not a trope, concreteness vs. abstractness, is not

Boolean but a sliding scale. This seems a critical flaw in Williams' argument, unless

something can be more of a trope than another thing, which brings into play many more

questions as to the nature of constitution of an individual.

Williams' individual is a mereological sum of the tropes that are in a compresent

class, or bundled, together. But Williams' trope "is a particular entity either abstract or

consisting of one or more concreta in combination with an abstractum." (115) It does not

seem to make sense that the stick of a lollipop is not a trope, and yet the stick-plus-color

of the lollipop is; then the only way in which the physical parts of the lollipop constitute
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the individual as a whole are through previous combination with its abstract parts. But

this leads to further questions. The total number of tropes that constitute one individual

then seems to be the number of possible recombinations involving sums of concreta and

abstractum (assuming of course every combination involving concreta has at least one

abstractum). This seems completely arbitrary, and also allows for an arbitrary amount of

overlap: the lollipop would be composed of the trope that is 'the stick plus the color' and

the trope that is 'the stick plus the taste', and so on.

Furthermore, if, as Williams claims, the cat's smile plus her ears plus the aridity of

the moon is a trope, then what is this trope compresent with? Is this trope in multiple

compresence classes? But compresence must be an equivalence relation, and thus, under

this definition of tropes there would be only one compresence class of tropes, and this

would contain all tropes. But then it would follow that there was only one individual,

which I believe is not what Williams is arguing.

It appears we might be better to offer and analyze a modified version of trope

theory. A theory of tropes that perhaps only discussed tropes on a particle level might

better fit Williams' requirements. For the properties of an electron or quark might be all

individually called as tropes, and then unlike with the problem of macroscopic objects,

there are not really any concreta left for us to assign. A particle seems to be just the

compresence class of its determinate properties (x mass, y charge, etc.), and trope theory

allows us to label them as such.

Macroscopic tropes then, if they exist, are really simply language we adopt to

discuss mereological sums of particle tropes, such that the sum of the determinate mass

tropes of some large number of particles is the trope called the '5 kg of the cat'.
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Now we can account for what the universal theorist would claim is the

instantiation of a universal, and perhaps in a much less complex fashion. The '-1.60x10-19

C charge on electron A' perfectly resembles the '-1.60x10-19 C charge on electron B'. The

benefit of adopting trope theory comes from the fact that no two tropes are numerically

the same: for example the two tropes above exactly resemble, but are inherently different,

as one applies to A and one to B. So tropes then distinguish between two properties that

we might at first be inclined to say are instances of a universal property, by virtue of the

other tropes the tropes are bundled with. This seems to Williams and other trope theorists

much clearer than discussing instantiated universals.

Daly's argument, that tropes do not really provide a simpler model for the world

than universals instantiated in substances, still largely applies to our new theory,

however. This is for several reasons. Daly makes the claim that the resemblance relation

in trope theory causes a regress, and the only solution to this is to posit at least one

universal, the resemblance universal.

This argument can be applied to causal theory as well. Causal relations are

another part of trope theory that Williams does not account for. For Williams,

compresence and resemblance tropes are both necessary and exhaustive in providing all

possible relations. But Williams forgets causal relations, which might be accounted for in

terms of natural laws. In our theory of tropes we would either need to have natural laws

as universals instantiated in every case of causation, or as a very large number of tropes

which would all be specific instances of a natural law relation. But this would not seem to

be causation, as here there does not seem to be any difference between a natural law with

a genuine causal relationship between two tropes, and an accidental generalization. It

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could be counter-argued that because a natural-law-instance-trope exists there is a causal

effect. For example, if there are two electrons which are each a class of compresent

tropes, call them A and B, then there would be the trope that is 'Coulomb's law between

A and B' which would be a relationship between the location trope of A and the location

trope of B and the tropes '-1.60x10-19 C charge on electron A' and '-1.60x10-19 C charge on

electron B'. This Coulomb's law trope would be a relationship trope that would in turn

require a relationship trope between it and the mass and acceleration tropes of A and B.

Likewise there might be a 'gravity law between A and B' relationship trope.

The trope theorist can argue then that to the outside observer analyzing a single

natural law trope, it seems that there would be a necessary causal relation.

Also it might be asked, in what sense can a trope change? For this model of trope

theory incorporating natural laws and causation we would need, for example, either many

acceleration tropes of a particle, or one acceleration trope with the ability to change. But

if a trope is allowed to change with time, what inherent to the trope determines its value?

This case is very similar to Daly's argument (157-8) for the necessity of

instantiation tropes. What determines which acceleration trope is bound to certain space-

time coordinates? If we have a trope F that is 'acceleration of x m/s2 for particle A' which

is concurrent with a space-time trope x1y1z1t1, then we need a concurrence trope C1 to

relate F and x1y1z1t1. But we might imagine a world where F and x1y1z1t1 do not stand in

C1. Thus F and x1y1z1t1 do alone do not establish the space-time location of F, and we are

required to admit an instantiation trope.

Furthermore, we might imagine a case where a particle would have "the same"

acceleration at two space-time coordinates (I say "the same" because I do not necessarily
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want to imply that they are numerically identical tropes, but that if there are multiple

tropes then they have the same determinate magnitudes). Then we can ask in this case are

there two acceleration tropes that more than exactly resemble each other, or is there one

trope bundled with two space-time tropes? In the former case, these two tropes, call them

X and Y, would seem to be numerically identical, and thus the same trope. That is, X is

'acceleration of x m/s2 for particle A' and Y is 'acceleration of x m/s2 for particle A'. This

cannot seem to be the case, as two numerically identical tropes, by trope theory, are one

trope.

But consider the latter case. There is only X, and it is bundled with two space-time

tropes x1y1z1t1 and x2y2z2t2. This, as well, causes problems for the trope theorist. There

now is a need for two bundling relations, R1 and R2, to bundle X and x1y1z1t1, and X and

x2y2z2t2. While this might be able to be worked out, it seems that here there is the choice

between admitting the fact that R1, X and x1y1z1t1 stand in a certain relationship as a

primitive fact, or admitting further and further levels of bundling relations to explain how

R1, X and x1y1z1t1 can stand in one relation, and R2, X and x2y2z2t2 can stand in another.

In our ontology of tropes there is always a conflict between explaining facts by

claiming they are primitive and by showing a regression. But this is true in any ontology,

including the bundle theory of universals. To some extent, accepting an ontology of

universals over one of tropes or the reverse has no practical effect. Both models produce

exactly the same results. But it seems that there still remain serious questions about trope

theory that need to be answered before it can be accepted.

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Works Cited

Williams, D. C., 1953. “On The Elements of Being: I,” from Properties: 113-124.

Daly, Chris, 1994. "Tropes," from Properties: 140-159.