No abstract

Grounding theorists insist that grounding and explanation are intimately related. This claim could be understood as saying either that grounding 'inherits' its properties from (metaphysical) explanation (and that, therefore, contemplating the nature of explanation informs us about the nature of grounding) or it could be interpreted as saying that grounding plays an important-possibly an indispensablerole in metaphysical explanation (and that, therefore, that there are these explanations justifies positing grounding). Or both. I argue that saying that grounding 'inherits' its properties from explanation can only be justified if grounding is explanatory by nature (if so-called 'unionism' is true), but that this view is untenable. We ought therefore to be 'separatists' and view grounding and explanation as distinct. As it turns out, though, once grounding has been in this sense distinguished from the explanation it backs, the view that the role grounding plays in explanation justifies its introduction ends up in serious trouble. I conclude that the role grounding plays in explanation (if any) does not justify attributing to grounding whatever nature we think it has, and it most likely does not give us any special reason to think grounding exists.

Trope theory is the view that the world is a world of abstract particular qualities. But if all there is are tropes, how do we account for the truth of propositions ostensibly made true by some concrete particular? A common answer is that concrete particulars are nothing but tropes in compresence. This answer seems vulnerable to an argument (first presented by F. H. Bradley) according to which any attempt to account for the nature of relations will end up either in contradiction, nonsense, or will lead to a vicious infinite regress. I investigate Bradley's argument and claim that it fails to prove what it sets out to. It fails, I argue, because it does not take all the different ways in which relation and relata may depend on one another into account. If relations are entities that are distinct from yet essentially dependent upon their relata, the Bradleyan problem is solved. We are then free to say that tropes in compresence are what make true propositions ostensibly made true by concrete particulars.Keywords Trope theory · Bradley regress · Truth maker "Trope theory" here refers to the view that: (i) there are tropes; (ii) tropes are abstract, particular and simple entities; 1 and (iii) there is nothing but tropes. 2 Two further 1 The trope is simple in the sense that its qualitativeness and particularity do not have separate grounds in the trope. That tropes are (or, even, that they can be) simple in this sense has been criticized by Hochberg (2004). I defend this view in my (2005). 2 This, I take it, is the most wide-spread understanding of trope theory although minor variations exist. Trope theory is discussed and to some extent defended by, among others:

No abstract

Trope theory is the view that the world is (wholly or partly) constituted by so-called tropes, which are entities most often characterized as a kind of abstract particular or particular property. Very little is uncontroversial when it comes to tropes and the theory or theories in which tropes (not always so-called) figure. What attracts many to the theory is that it, in occupying a sort of middle position in between classical nominalism (according to which all there is, is particular) and classical realism (according to which there is a separate and fundamental category of properties), appears to avoid some of the troubles befalling either of those views. More precisely, by accepting the existence of entities that are, or that at least behave like, properties, the trope theorist avoids the charge, often made against classical nominalists, of positing entities that are somehow too unstructured to be able to fulfill all of our explanatory needs. And by not accepting the existence of universals, the trope theorist avoids having to accept the existence of a kind of entity many find mysterious, counterintuitive, and “unscientific.” Apart from this very thin core assumption—that there are tropes—different trope theories need not have very much in common. Most trope theorists (but not all) believe that there is nothing but tropes. Most of these one-category trope theorists (but, again, not all) hold that distinct concrete particulars (which are understood by most, but again not all, as bundles of tropes) are the same—for example, have the same color—when (some of) the tropes that characterize them are members of the same (exact) similarity class. And most (but not all) hold that resemblance between tropes is determined by the tropes’ individual, intrinsic nature, which is taken as a primitive.