A new defence of natural class trope nominalism
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Date
2005-09-08T13:37:42Z
Authors
Friesen, Lowell K
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Abstract
According to natural class trope nominalism, properties are natural classes of tropes, where the "naturalness" of natural classes is taken to be primitive and unanalyzable. In this thesis I defend natural class trope nominalism from two objections: i) that the naturalness of natural classes is analyzable, and ii) that natural class trope nominalism cannot account for certain modal facts (namely, that there could have been more or fewer tropes of any given type), an objection raised by Nicolas Wolterstorff. I defend natural class trope nominalism from (i) indirectly by presenting several putative analyses (namely, those of D. M. Armstrong, Keith Campbell, and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereya) of natural classes and arguing that they are all deficient, thereby undermining the claim that natural classes are analyzable. Douglas Ehring has recently defended natural class trope nominalism from (ii) by developing a counterpart theory for types of tropes. However, counterpart theory is not universally accepted. So I present three non-counterpart-theoretic alternatives. The natural class trope nominalist can meet Wolterstorff's objection a) by positing existent, but uninstantiated, tropes, b) by accepting modal realism, and c) by accepting a thesis called 'transworld property exemplification'.
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natural class trope nominalism, trope, universal, natural class, resemblance, Douglas Ehring, D. M. Armstrong, Keith Campbell, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereya, Nicolas Wolterstorff