Ostrich Tropes

Daniel Giberman (University of Texas at Arlington)

Dan Giberman (University of Texas, Arlington) will be giving a Zoom talk, followed by a Q&A, at Tel Aviv University. Attendance is open, but interested parties should contact David Mark Kovacs (david dot mark dot kovacs at gmail dot com) to register. 

Time: 14 June (Sunday), 11am (EST) / 4pm (GMT+1) / 6pm (IST)

Title: Ostrich Tropes

Abstract: According to the family of views in the metaphysics of properties known as ‘trope’ theories, properties are collections of particular qualitative instances. Though increasingly influential, the family is sufficiently diverse for there to be little agreement as to the prospects—or even the content—of its members. The present essay articulates and defends a conception of tropes as primitively qualitatively complex, somewhat in the vein of Quinean nominalist objects. After clarifying the relationships among tropes, properties, property exemplification, and property conferral, the essay discusses the benefits of this new ‘ostrich’ trope theory. Specifically, the theory explains better than prior trope theories both the spatiotemporal status of tropes and the capacity tropes have to confer properties onto objects. Moreover, the theory is immune to many of the concerns that threaten more orthodox trope ontologies, such as objections from trope simplicity, causal overdetermination, and undue similarity to austere nominalism.