UNIVERSALIZING TROPES - A SIMPLE WAY #

  This is a draft

UNIVERSALIZING TROPES - A SIMPLE WAY

 

 

Summary:

Donald Williams suggested that universals can be understood as sums or sets of tropes under the assumption of a trope ontology. My goal in this article is to present a less problematic and more convincing approach to the issue. It consists of returning to the root of the problem, namely, the predicative problem of how we can say the same of many. This is undoubtedly the real problem, and my view is that trope theory does not require the resources of universals as classes of tropes to address it. An example of how this kind of problem can be addressed without that resource is Berkeley’s solution to the problem of general ideas using particular ideas in a generally applicable manner. What I propose, in a nutshell, is to replace the Berkeleyan imagistic ideas with tropes. All that is needed is to develop a universalizing ability, namely, the ability to follow a rule that enables us to identify precise similarities between tropes used as models and those directly or indirectly given to experience.

Key Words: trope theory, universals, ontology, Donald Williams.

My goal with this article is to suggest a new solution to the problem of universals using trope theory. I claim this new solution is easier and more effective than Donald Williams’s troublesome solution, which I believe fosters the trope theory considerably. In the first section, I explain the basic ideas of trope ontology, as initially introduced by Williams. In section two, I present his solution to the problem of universals employing tropes and its difficulties. In section three, I present the original Socratic-Platonic problem that leads to the problem of universals, showing how it can divert us from the real problem. Section four exposes my solution to the original problem, inspired by Berkeley’s particularism. This solution bypasses the problem of universals insofar as it shows it as a pseudoproblem. Section five sketches the application of the solution to complex tropes.

 

1. What kind of things are tropes?

Donald Williams introduced the theory of tropes through a suggestion as brilliant as it is simple, in the classic article “The Alphabet of Being” (1953 I-II). His fundamental metaphysical thesis was that:

 

Any possible world, and hence, of course, this one, is entirely constituted by its tropes, and their connections of location and similarity and any others that may be. (1953 I: 8)

 

This means that for Williams, tropes are the universe-building pebbles. But what are tropes? He defined them as abstract particulars because we can abstract them from concrete particulars. His example was of lollipops: we can separate the red of a lollipop, its shape, its sweetness, its smoothness, its hardness, its weight... Although this definition is technically correct, opposing tropes as abstract particulars to concrete particulars as the lollipop, a more helpful way to say the same is to define tropes as any spatiotemporally localizable properties. This contrasts sharply with the standard use of the property concept in the philosophical tradition, in which it is understood as an abstract entity in the sense that it is not spatiotemporally localizable.

   Williams’ understanding of the extent of the trope concept is made more evident by the following list that I take from his article:

 

Color, shape, surface, odor, red, size, triangularity... pain, love, sadness, pleasure, emotion, belief, serenity, perception, discrimination, intention, disposition, power, mental processes, sequences of thoughts... a smile, a sneeze... An election, a musical performance, a love affair, a moral decision, an act of contrition, a piece of impudence... the beauty of Mary, Mary being beautiful, the figure of a woman, her complexion, her digestion...

 

This list shows us that tropes can be simple properties (as some red patch, a twinge of pain, the whistle of a train) or compound ones (a mental process, a sneeze, a love affair). They can be external (a sneeze, a smile, the figure of a woman), internal (sadness, serenity, pleasures, dispositions, thoughts), or mixed (an act of contrition, a piece of impudence). They can also be homogeneous (a violin solo) or heterogeneous (the act of contrition, Mary’s digestion).

   Considering that tropes are spatiotemporally localizable properties, it is pretty clear that even vague dependent empirical entities, such as the forces of nature, can also be regarded as tropes, since they are localizable properties, though in a more or less dispersed way. Thus, electromagnetic forces, strong and weak forces, and gravitational fields are all tropes since they are all spatiotemporally localizable Properties. Moreover, they can be separated respectively from atoms in motion (electromagnetism), from the interaction between quarks and gluons in the atomic nuclei (strong forces), from the interaction between subatomic particles in atoms (weak forces), and finally from the bending of space-time in the vicinity of massive bodies (in the case of gravity).[1]

   For Williams, tropes only contrast with concrete particulars such as, to use his examples, Mary, a church, and a nation. He analyzed concrete particulars as sets of concurrent or compresent tropes in the sense that their members are co-localized and co-temporal (1953: 8). They can be internally organized, like a specific chair or a particular human being, or quite disorganized, as in the case of a rock or an asteroid... Although concrete particulars are usually medium-sized dry objects, they can be as small as electrons and atoms, and as large as stars and galaxies. (Although Williams does not mention it, it is worth adding here that the criterion for identifying concrete particulars differs from the criterion for identifying tropes in that usually only tropes can be predicatively designated in addition to their existence in the dependence of concrete particulars – this Aristotelian insight gives a justification for the distinction.)

 

2. Williams’ solution to the problem of universals

In addition to trying to solve the question of concrete particulars by resorting to tropes, Williams wanted to do the same with the question of universals. Here is how he introduced it:

 

Speaking again approximately, the set or sum of tropes precisely similar to a trope, say, that red, can, of course, be, or at least formally correspond to, the abstract universal or ‘essence’ which can be said to exemplify a definite sample of red. (1953 I: 9)

 

This somewhat convoluted definition can be presented more clearly: a universal (essence) is a set or sum of tropes that are precisely similar (Campbell 1981; sec. 6).  The universal of the color red, for example, is nothing more than the set or sum of tropes precisely similar (i.e., qualitatively identical) to a given trope of red. When I say that red is a color, what I mean is that the set of all tropes of red (the universal essence of red) is contained in the set of tropes of color (the universal essence of color).

   There are problems with Williams’ solution. The most discussed has been that of the infinite regress of tropes of precise similarity (for discussion, see Campbell 1990: 34-37). If the world is made up of its tropes, then it seems that the precise similarity is also a trope. In this case, the precise similarities between the tropes will need to be precisely similar, requiring a new class of precise similarities. However, the tropes of this new class of precise similarities will need to be precisely similar, requiring a third class of precise similarities, and so on, so that the result seems to be an infinite regress.

   There are several ways to address this objection. Campbell, for example, suggested that identity is an internal relationship between tropes that can only count as a pseudo-addition with no real ontological basis (1990: 37). Nonetheless, I prefer not to harbor any prejudice against the thinness of any trope. I like to think that since precise similarity is a relation dependent on the existence of these tropes, it is itself a trope insofar as we tend to say it should be in some way where those tropes are, but surely not as something found on the other side of the universe or nowhere (that nothing exists nowhere is an axiom of trope theory). And the same, I would say, of a precise identity between two precise identities. If these two are somehow localizable, then the precise similarity trope between these precise similarities should also be somehow localizable. The regress, in this case, exists, but it is not vicious because nothing forces us to go forward (Cf. Maurin 2007). It is like the regress we find when we say, “If P is true, then it is true that it is true that P is true.” We can go on interspersing ‘it is true that...’, but nothing prevents us from stopping at the first “P is true” since this is all the information we want, and continuing the regression will add nothing of any value. Similarly, we can stop by saying that a class of precisely similar tropes demands the existence of tropes of precise similarity between its tropes but that this does not compels us to appeal to a subsequent class of precise similarities between those precise similarities.

   There are other difficulties with Williams’s solution. Here are some of them. We do not know whether the set of precisely similar tropes can be classified as a trope. Sets have sizes and can increase or decrease, which seems to make them different from universals. Moreover, universals do not appear to have size, especially if they are as essences, as he has thought, or concepts, as common sense suggests. The biggest problem, however, which in my judgment is decisive, is that sets of tropes that are precisely similar to each other are usually too large to fit in our heads. That is, in most cases, indeed in the vast majority of cases, the set of precisely similar tropes is cognitively inaccessible to us. Consider, for example, the set of precisely similar tropes of red: we can claim that it exists, but not that anyone has ever met it. And if it is an essence, then that essence is unknowable. Once, it was suggested to me that they should be open sets. However, open sets seem to exist in our minds, not in nature. Also, how many members does this open set have? Can it be an empty set?

 

3. The problem of how we can say the same of many

It is essential to see that the so-called problem of universals arises from another problem: “How can we say the same of many?” or “How can we apply the same predicate to many different things? Here, we have the cognitive question of knowing how it is possible to apply the same general term to a multiplicity of things which are often very different. How is it possible, for example, to apply the general term ‘justice’ to say that Socrates was just, that N. Winton’s noble action was just, or that the Finnish political system is sufficiently just? The question is not only linguistic. It is also epistemic since it concerns the cognitive identification of unity in multiplicity.

   The first philosophers to come across this question were Socrates and Plato. Socrates wondered about the definition of concepts expressed by general terms of philosophical interest, like goodness, justice, knowledge, beauty, friendship, and courage. Plato found a possible answer in his famous doctrine of ideas. As he wrote:

 

I take it, we are in the habit of positing a single ideia or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name (Republic 596a 6-8).

 

As is well-known, the idea or form is unique and abstract in that it is non-spatiotemporal, immutable (eternal), and capable of definition; it belongs to an intelligible world that transcends the visible world by being ontologically independent. And as is well-known, he suggested that by reference to the single idea or form, we can identify the various things in the visible world that contain imperfect copies of that idea or form (by mimesis), or that in some way share their being with that idea (by methéxis).

   What is important to notice is that through his answer to the question of how we can say the same of many, which can be resumed as a question of predication,[2] Plato moved from an epistemological-linguistic problem to an ontological-metaphysical solution.[3] As a result of this move, the problem of universals arose. Since the idea or form is the universal, the problem of universals emerges as that of knowing “that which by its nature is predicated of a number of things” (Aristotle 1984: 17a 38). This means the problem of the ontological nature of something objective that, by itself, makes us capable of saying the same of many. For realist philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, under a possible interpretation of the latter, universals are abstract, immaterial entities, even if, in Aristotle’s case, they are generally dependent on the existence of the things constituting the visible world (see Metaphysics:1034a 5-8).[4]

   However, there were not only realist philosophers who moved from the epistemological-linguistic problem to an ontological-metaphysical solution. Some nominalist philosophers have followed a similar path. This is the case of Abelardo, from whom the general term has as reference the collection of things to which it applies (Abelardo 1994; 34; Wolterstorff 1970; 173). And this is also the case of class nominalists for whom a general term must refer to its extension as the class of objects to which it refers (Armstrong 1978: ch. 4; 1989: ch. 1). Thus, a class nominalist might say that the class of all red objects must answer for the applicability of a general term like ‘red.’ And a sophisticated class nominalist like D. K. Lewis (1986: 50 ff.) would solve the problem of different general terms with the same denotation but different connotations by appealing to their application to the class of objects that encompasses all possible worlds since, in that case, these classes would no longer need to coincide. Now, my point is that it seems pretty plausible that some form of collection or class nominalism inspired Williams to propose his solution to the problem of universals as classes of tropes precisely similar to each other. All he made was to replace things, concrete particulars, with tropes as members of the class, which he treated as an “ersatz-universal.”

   I call the solution to the problem of how we can say the same of many by resorting to universals, from the Platonic kind to all those considered above, the “traditional solution.” I believe this solution was a big mistake that compromised more than two thousand years of metaphysical research without substantial results, namely: the error of offering an unnecessary ontological-metaphysical solution to a linguistic-epistemic problem. And I think this move also infects class nominalism as a bet on an ersatz-universal. As Plato made this mistake in the beginning, it gave rise to a tradition of investigating universals so ingrained that its epistemic origin was almost forgotten, and it became challenging to dislodge it from the minds of philosophers.

   Not all philosophers, it is true, have fallen into this trap. William of Ockham suggested that all we need is to develop the mental capacity to recognize the right similarities in many different things (1995: 43-45), and to speak of universals is to speak of this capacity. Above all, throught their particularism, Berkeley (1710: Intr.) and Hume (1740: I, I, VII) were also honorable exceptions. According to Berkeley’s immaterialism, as is well known, the world (except for spirits) is constituted of particular ideas of purely mental (and not Platonic) nature. The things of the so-called external world are nothing more than more intense and organized ideas that impose themselves on us (Berkeley 1710: I, sec. 30). One idea can be general in the sense that it applies to many different things. But for him, they are never abstract, which means that they never have the function of Platonic universals or anything other than their purely mental nature. As he wrote:

 

It seems that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of a general abstract idea, but of several particular ideas, any one of them indifferently suggested to the mind (Berkeley 1710: Intr. Sec. 11)

 

That is: a general term is associated with mental ideas; for example, the general term triangle is related to images of several particular triangles, equiangles, rectangles, obtuse... On this basis, we are able, whenever we have access to a given triangle in the external world (that is, to an “external” idea of a triangle), to compare it with an idea of the ideas that we have associated with the general term, applying this term to the given triangle in the so-called external world. To explain this operation – nothing more than identifying it in many – Berkeley does not need to resort to universals at any time. He only compares the idea given in the experience with ideas he has in mind that he associated with some name. Then, when he perceives their similarity, he provides the same name to the idea given in the experience. David Hume hailed this proposal by Berkeley as a major discovery made in the Republic of Letters (1740: 17). I can anticipate that my strategy will be structurally analogous to Berkeley’s, for what I will do is essentially replace “idea” with “trope”. However, I will be free from the main criticism of Berkeley's solution to the problem of predication, which is that it is an imagistic solution and that many concepts do not require the formation of images or only secondarily require them. Since tropes need not be essentially imagistic, even if they must be somehow derived from sensory experience, my approach will not be open to this accusation.

   In what follows, I want to propose my solution to the problem of how we can say the same of many, inspired by Berkeley’s strategy. Although based on the theory of tropes, this solution does not need to answer the epistemological problem through an ontological solution. It will be an alternative move that dispenses with the appeal to universals in the sense considered. In other words, my proposal will be purely epistemic: universals are an unnecessary ballast that has only served to confuse philosophers in the last two millennia. So, it is time to get rid of them!

 

4. Universalizing Skills

In conformity with the suggested line of thought, I propose we learn to say the same of many by gaining a skill. It is the ability to (i) associate certain tropes with the corresponding general terms and (ii) use those same tropes (or any others that are precisely similar to them) as models to compare with any trope that we are given to consider, to be able to tell whether or not it has a precise similarity with the model.

   Once this skill is acquired, we can say the same of many without resorting to universals or classes of tropes as universals. Out of reverence for the immense efforts that philosophers have made to solve the so-called problem of universals, I will call it the universalizing ability.[5]

   I want to start with a straightforward example. Suppose Mary has taken a painting course and learned to identify the color ‘land of Sienna’. To this end, she had eye contact with many examples of this color, having learned to associate these examples with the color’s name and remember precisely this model or trope of color. Later she takes a trip to Italy. There, she identified many buildings painted with the land of Siena’s color. All she needed to do to determine the color of these buildings correctly is to have the memory of a particular trope and be able to identify new tropes precisely similar to it. She developed the ability to recognize the land of Siena trope. She learned to say the same of many regarding this concept word. Obviously (to her luck), she does not need to resort to any immense set of land of Siena tropes that are precisely similar to each other to be able to use this general term predicatively. Maria’s universalizing ability concerning the land of Siena trope can be specified as that, having associated with models of tropes of the same color that she holds in her memory, she has become able to identify any land of Siena trope that is given to her experience as being precisely similar to those model tropes. We also say that Mary has learned to use the word ‘land of Siena,’ and knows its meaning. And by doing this, as we will see, we intend to say that she knew the rule for the word’s application, that she mastered some concept or a conceptual rule for its referential use.

   Two points are worth mentioning. The first is that memory is something secondary to the universalizing ability. Not that memory is a problem. It has nothing mysterious about it. It is like a copy of something we learn to trust because it works well enough to be considered trustworthy, its trustworthiness being conferred by interpersonal comparison between what has been identified and what has been reidentified. However, it is essential to highlight that memory is an intermediary that is not a necessary part of the procedure. The second point is that this ability is always, at least in principle, capable of generating an extensional class of tropes—but a class that has no relevance whatsoever in solving the problem of predication.

   We can highlight these points by resorting to a language game that shows the essence of the universalizing procedure. Imagine that a group of people with a particular mnemonic deficiency are in an exhibition of paintings, and are given a task: to identify the paintings in which the color land of Sienna appears. There are 12 numbered paintings. Each person receives a tablet where the name ‘Land of Sienna’ is found next to a circle painted in the same color and twelve squares corresponding to each of the 12 paintings. All they need is to mark the spaces corresponding to the paintings in which they find the color land of Sienna. By taking the tables with their painted circles close to each painting, they can mark the spaces corresponding to the paintings in which a color precisely similar to the model is found. By doing this, people carry out a universalizing practice without resorting to memorized patterns. Finally, let’s say that the only frames with these color tropes are 2, 3, 8, and 12, and that this shows up as a result in the correctly marked tables. With this, they found, within a very narrow domain, a set of land of Sienna tropes that are precisely similar: the extensional set {2, 3, 8, 12}. However, this set has no interest to us. It has no explanatory force concerning the ability to say the same of many.

   One characteristic of what the people in the example do is that they follow a rule that tells them to compare the color model trope of the tablet with the color tropes found in the paintings in their search for precise similarities. The model trope that they see and that we can actualize in our memory serves as a criterion for applying the rule. The rule applies when people mark the square on the tablet corresponding to the trope where the land of Sienna trope is found. Since we say this person now has the concept of the land of Sienna, there is nothing more natural than considering this universalizing ability a conceptual rule or concept, which is nothing but the trope of a repeatable spatio-temporal procedure.

   Returning to our problem, we can now define the universalizing ability (the “universal”) as follows:

 

Universalizing ability concerning a general term G by the epistemic agent S (Df.) = S’s ability to, having associated G with a model trope Tm, be able to use it as a criterial rule capable of allowing the identification of any given trope T as being or not being precisely similar to Tm.

 

The universalizing ability is a conceptual rule corresponding to what we ordinarily call a concept. Like everything else, this rule is nothing but a replicable trope that will be found in every application of G, not something metaphysically abstract in any realist sense. Also tropes are the memorized mental model trope Tm, which serves as a criterial condition to be satisfied by some trope T as a given criterion.

 

5. Universalization of complex tropes

 So far, we have explained our universalizing ability relative to a trope that can be classified as perceptually simple: the color called ‘land of Sienna’. But what about more complex cases, such as the other tropes cited by Williams, tropes such as those of triangularities, sneezing, smiles, sadness, a thought, an act of contrition?

   I believe that, as the constructive particularist procedures of John Locke have shown as possible (1979: book II), this would not be a real problem, since we can start with imagistic ideas and combine them to form more and more complex and diversified ones. The difference is that here, we do not start with ideas and qualities, as Locke did. We begin with simple tropes (that include his ideas and qualities). Then we combine them to form more complex and diverse tropes that may appear to recur to abstract universals independent of empirical foundation, since they cannot be imagined. Anyway, we use our memory of these tropes as a criterion for identifying precisely similar tropes that are in some way presented to us, and in doing so we are applying the same universalizing skill exemplified above.

   In what follows, I aim to analyze a few more complex tropes to demonstrate that they can be viewed as spatiotemporally localizable particulars and possess no abstract qualities in the realistic (Platonic-Aristotelian) sense. To do so, it is necessary to define or decompose these tropes analytically as far as we can, showing that although they are not as directly and immediately identifiable as in the case of the trope of the land of Sienna, they are composed from tropes that can be found in sense-experience. The goal is to make it plausible that the universalizing ability acquired in the cases of more complex tropes does not differ essentially from the intuitive case of simple tropes like ‘land of Sienna’.

   Let’s start with the most straightforward case of the complex external trope of sneezing. It can be assumed that our ability to use general terms is acquired interpersonally, through both positive and negative examples (Tugendhat 1976, lecture 11). Thus, we usually learn the concept of sneezing by observing that adults give this name to the act of sneezing, whether it is ours or someone else's, and being praised when we get it right, and being corrected when we make a mistake. In this way, we acquire the universalizing ability to identify sneezes, which is itself a trope. This is also about learning the concept (the rule of conceptual application) based on our memories of sneeze tropes. As this rule is tacitly understood, we do not generally know how to verbalize it. But dictionaries help us, defining sneezing as “an involuntary movement of the airways to expel any foreign substance from the body.” This definition makes explicit what we mean by naming the irrelevant sneeze trope; it works as a criterial rule, as Much as the land of Sienna. To have the concept of sneezing is to have a dispositional rule that enables us to identify tropes that satisfy the definition. Of course, this disposition is a trope, though it should not be confused with the tropes it is made to identify.

   Let us now look at the relatively simple trope of triangularity, also recalled by Williams. Here, learning is also tacitly done through interpersonal examples. We are presented with equiangular triangles, acute, obtuse, rectangles... until we learn not an abstract triangle common to all of them (as Berkeley famously accused Locke to have suggested), but to vary the internal angles of a model triangle trope, so that we can form the corresponding images of triangles given in the experience. By doing this, we have already learned a tacit definition of a triangle, which can be explicitly formulated as “A triangle = a three-sided polygon.” Such a definition decomposes the internal tropes of the triangle into that of a three-sided polygon.

   Now consider the internal trope of sadness: all we need to universalize is to be able to identify instances of sorrow that are precisely similar to tropes of sadness that we have already learned to identify in other people and ourselves. Moreover, we use these memorized tropes as models for identifying further cases of sorrow. Dictionaries characterize this trope as “a feeling of despondency, melancholy, unhappiness, and hopelessness.”

   Let us now examine the mixed and complex trope of the act of contrition. I have been informed that it is a Christian prayer that asks for repentance for sins and mercy from God. All we need to know to universalize is to have some example of an act of contrition in memory or, in my case, to be explicitly informed about this trope so that I can imagine it and even identify cases precisely similar to it.

   I now want to consider two examples of countable names of complex tropes that Williams did not mention. They differ from the previous ones since they are concerned with the essence of concrete particulars. A first example is that of an artifact name: the trope of chair (from ‘to be a chair’). This is a complex external trope. We all know what a chair is, but we have difficulties defining it since we have learned the conceptual rule for the tacit identification of chairs. However, I can give the following reasonable definition of a chair:

 

Chair trope (Df.): a non-vehicular seat with a backrest made for one person to sit at a time.

 

It would not be a chair but a simple bench if it had no backrest. It cannot be found in vehicles such as cars, planes, or trains because, in that case, they will be called seats. They must be made so that only one person should sit on them each time; otherwise, they would be sofas. Even if a chair were teleported to a planet where people were extremely thin and several of them could sit in the same chair, it would not turn into a sofa, as it is an artifact made for one person to sit on at a time. A chair that has not been made as an artifact, say, a chair carved into the rock, is only a metaphorical chair, no less than a toy chair. And armchairs are specimens of chairs. All this we learn through perceptual experiences.

   Furthermore, we cannot directly perceive a chair trope. It is not written on a chair that it is made for one person to sit at a time, that it should be a bench with a backrest, or that it may have been the work of a carpenter. But we can build all this conjoining more simple perceptible tropes.

   That is why it took a good number of experiences of positive and negative examples so that we could gradually tacitly learn the complex trope, linguistically expressed in the definition of a chair. Afterward, keeping in mind the external, complex, and articulated trope that we associate with the word chair, we can identify precisely similar tropes of “chair”, such as those that exist when we encounter table chairs, wheelchairs, beach chairs, electric chairs, thrones... Of course, the dispositional conceptual rule used to identify chair tropes cannot be reduced to something we can have a mental image of. Neither tropes nor the tropical procedures of universalization force us to a purely imagistic conception of reality once the relations among images established by the conceptual rule expressed above cannot be reduced to images alone.

   Someone may now ask a challenging question: How can I distinguish the trope of “chairness” from the concrete particular that is a specific chair? After all, this trope is a combination of spatiotemporally locatable tropes present, and where a chair is found, one will also find a complex trope of this chair. The answer lies in the spatio-temporal location of the object, which will always be distinctive. However, insofar as we can identify a particular chair apart from its spatiotemporal location, the answer is that a concrete particular is constituted by many other tropes besides those that definitionally constitute it. These accidental tropes do not define it but help us identify the concrete particular. For example, the chair I’m sitting on now has soft upholstery. It is made of plastic and wood, faded yellow and old, and was bought in a second-hand furniture store. These are not elements of the trope of the chair I sit in but of this concrete particular. Hence, the concrete particular must be a conjunction of present tropes that extrapolate the definitory trope. This answer can also be applied to other countable names of “essences” like the one in the following example.

   Let us consider, finally, a much-talked-about trope of the countable concept of natural species: that of the human being, traditionally defined by the Greeks as that of a rational animal but characterized today in dictionaries as “a bipedal primate endowed with reason, culture, and advanced language.” Of course, this characterization of the complex trope cannot be directly read in our immediate sensible perception of other human beings, as with a color trope. However, it is also learned tacitly through positive and negative examples, even if we cannot articulate the explicit dictionary definition. I have seen many of these bipedal primates and learned to recognize myself in the mirror as one of them. I know they can have a certain degree of reason, culture, and advanced language. It was through this public learning arising from extraordinarily complex articulations of simple imagistic perceptual tropes that I gradually learned what human beings are and that I became able to use the complex trope associated with the general term ‘human being’ as a rule in recognizing precisely similar trope articulations in the cases of the most diverse beings recognizable as humans. I do not need to form images of this trope, since, as a whole, it is unimaginable. However, with the conceptual rule, I can produce associated images, such as those of Oriental or African men. Influenced by Locke’s ways of analysis, we would say that the conceptual rule expressed by the word ‘man’ results from an extraordinarily complex articulation of tropes whose ultimate elements are perceptually experiential and imagistic in a broad sense.[6]

 

4. Conclusion

By the given arguments added to the Analyse of some few examples, I hope to have shown that constructing our predicative capacity as an hability of linguistically identify complex tropes in the world through their implicity known definitions or characterizations abstracted as model-tropes is in principle feasible and, from the viewpoint of trope theory, a more promissing endeavor than Williams resource of classes or sums of tropes as “ersatz-universals”.

 

 

References:

ABELARDO, Pedro. From the “glosses on Porphyry” in his logica ‘ingredientbus’. In: SPADE, P. V. (ed.). Five Texts on the mediaeval problem of universals: Porphyry, Booethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham. Translated by Paul Vincent Spade. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.

Aristotle (1984): De Interpretatione. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Book I, Ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Armstrong, D. M. (1989): Universals. Boulder: Westview Press.

Armstrong, D. M. (1978): Universals and Scientific Realism. vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Berkeley, George (1973 (1710)): The Principles of Human Knowledge. In Philosophical Works Including the Works on Vision ed. by M. R, Ayers, London: Everyman.

Campbell, Keith (1990): Abstract Particulars. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Campbell, Keith (1981): “The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars,” in P French, T. E. Uehling and H. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6 (1): 477-488.

Hume, David (1978 (1740)): A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kung, Guido (1967): Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Language Dordrecht: Reidel.

Lewis, D. K. (1986): On the Plurality of the Words. Oxford: Blackwell.

Locke, John (1979): An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Maurin, Anna-Sofia (2007): Infinite Regress: Virtue or Vice? In Hommage a Vlodek (Lund University).

Ockham, Wilhelm. Philosophical Writings: A Selection (Hacket Publishing 1990),

Plato (1961): The Republic. In The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tugendhat, Ernst (1976). Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.

Williams, D. C. (1953a) “On the Elements of Being I.” Review of Metaphysics, 7(1) 3-18,

Williams, D. C. (1953b) “On the Elements of Being II.” Review of Metaphysics 7(1) 171-92.

 

---

[1] Keith Campbell (1990: 151-155) has called them quasi-tropes, but conceding the given account it does not seem that these forces need be less than tropes.

[2] Note that the formulation I propose of “how can we say the same of many?” is not precisely the same as Plato’s question of “how can we say the same over many?”, which already hints at the existence of universals and is loaded with interpretative problems.

[3] It is true that Plato’s problem was also that of finding a stable object of knowledge, which cannot be found in the changeable sensible world. But this problem can be set apart of our present discussion.

[4] See Metaphysics 1034a 5-9. However, Aristotle also argues, inconsistently, that forms cannot be universal. Metaphysics, sec. 13 of book Z.

[5] Although I believe that by confronting Plato, I have picked out the most fundamental concept of universality, the word ‘universal’ is polysemic. In na extended, though somewhat equivocal sense, ‘universalizing ability’ can be considered a kind of universal.

[6] In this broad sense, ‘imagistic’ means not only what can be seen, but also what can be heard or tasted, with what the English empiricists would surely agree.