The Individuation of Tropes

A trope is a particular property: the redness of a rose, the roundness of the moon. It is generally supposed that tropes are individuated by primitive quantity: this redness, that roundness. I argue that the trope theorist is far better served by individuating tropes by spatiotemporal relation: here redness, there roundness. In short, tropes are not this-suches but here-suches. I generally favour an ontology, much like that of David Hume and very much like that of D. C. Williams, on which tropes are fundamental entities, and resemblance and spatiotemporal distance are fundamental relations, with properties analysed as resemblance classes of tropes, and objects analysed as compresent bundles of tropes. I do not argue for this ontology here except obliquely, by showing how the spatiotemporal individuation of tropes can overcome certain standard objections. In what follows I display the structure and rationale of trope theory, argue that the thissuch conception of the trope is ill-suited to the rationale of the theory and independently objectionable, explain how the here-such conception is preferable, and conclude by considering objections.