What is a Trope? (Philosophical Definition)

An explanation of what a metaphysical trope is. In this video we will look at abstract particulars, known as tropes, how trope theory contrasts with nominalism and realism, and whether tropes can replace abstract universals, or even concrete particulars.

Sponsors: João Costa Neto, Dakota Jones, Joe Felix, Prince Otchere, Mike Samuel, Daniel Helland, Dennis Sexton, Will Roberts and √2. Thanks for your support!

Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!

Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!

[metaphysicswithariyana]

I don't know if I can answer the question yet of 'is everything tropes?'. But I'll continue to learn more things so that I can eventually answer that. Thanks, Carneades, for the question 😊 It gets me thinking more!

[ginevrasaradipalma]

You're really helping me a lot! And your explanation is so clear even if I'm not a native English! Good job :) Subscribed.

[marylenableile]

There's also a definition of "Trope" as it pertains to Medeival music (essentially, a variation on plainchant).

[metaphysicswithariyana]

thanks, Carneades, for this new word for my vocabulary, and its definition 😄 This is quite a word!

[spectralv]

I'm no expert on this topic but I feel approaching it from the perspective of linguistics and cognitive psychology would be helpful. It seems like the concept of nominalization (either applied to universals or particulars) has an ironic way of normalizing itself as a self-inherent problem that our minds can't square away in the face of the categorizational nature of our language systems...and, of course, philosophy primarily mediates itself through language. I guess my point is tropes and such don't "exist" beyond our mind's tendency to chunk perceptual and conceptual data and name those things and then we start to envision them as self-inherent properties of reality and not just our minds.

[hunkarun]

Trope just seem like semantics, by essentially trying to have another distinct perspective or rather a series of perspectives to concrete particulars. This wouldn't be needed if realist just accepted that "abstract universals" don't really have an independent REAL existence to the subject or person perceiving them.

[miera]

0:30 Synecdoche is pronounced - si neck duh kee. Good video.

[cliffordhodge]

It's not clear why someone would say that talking in terms of this redness trope and that redness trope sharing something (but definitely not a universal) - namely the redness - which is presumably itself nothing but a particular. It would seem to lead naturally to a third man type of objection to this notion of tropes.

[LostArchivist]

Seems like it is the objective version of qualia. It might even be compatible with Saint Thomas Aquinas' version of universals.

[FrankGrauStudio]

It seems the concept of a trope only kicks the can down the road, i.e., in what way is the concept of "redness" recognized within and assigned to a trope if not for a universal that is instantiated within any particular trope? It doesn't seem like tropes help resolve the debate between universals and particulars at all. Moreover, the belief that there is nothing but tropes sounds a lot like mereological nihilism.

[tetrapharmakos]

Don't we interact with the "redness" of the flag every time the light reflected off of the flag both hits our retinas and corresponds with that spectrum of light which we conventionally refer to as "red"?

[hunkarun]

So the rejection of abstract objects existing as universals is only doubtful just because nominalist can't explain "being full of holes"? Depends on the definition and perception of holes right?

[ahmedabdellatif]

With the lollipop example, its property of roundness seems a bit different than that of its sweetness or redness because it resembles a sphere, something that is abstract. You can have different views of redness or sweetness but not of roundness because its abstraction is a sphere which is true for everyone.

[MatheMusicalManiac]

I am admittedly a realist as per 2:47 but must be missing something for I don't see anything but a semantic difference between relationships (or properties) and tropes.

For example, if phrased correctly to represent a trope POV, I see no difference between these two propositions:

P1: There exists the relationship/property *apple* and the relationship/property *red* and we can assign both relationships/properties to "this"
P2: There exists the trope of *appleness* which further posses the trope of *redness* and "this" posses both tropes

[TheLoobis]

1:30 Oh just answer the damn question!

[amoonbeamk]

WHY can't we commit to strange universals? from a cogsci perspective, all concepts are learned from exemplars by the process of analogical abstraction in our brains, so if we've seen a bunch of holey objects then we have the concept 'full of holes'. What's wrong with having abstract universals as part of our knowledge?

[vaper]

could the idea of universials be thought of as "predicate realism"?

[I_Am_Midnight-i]

HEY CARNADES, Inspiringphilosophy has made a video where he tried to debunk YOUR argument against logic. PLEASE make a video response to him as his objection is so bad it needs to be debunked. If you dont, I’ll make it myself to debunk him, the video is called “the laws of logic defended”

[ParadymRap]

Hmm... that's a concept. If "trope" is supposed to mean any proposition or property which can be said to be true about an object, then I don't see how that creates any contradiction.

[rickwoemmel]

You state that some trope theorists claim that there is nothing but tropes. Can anyone tell me who those theorists are? I would like to do other research on this. Thank you!