Abstracts

Jody Azzouni

Platonism versus Nominalism in Mathematics

The most popular nominalist strategies of this and the latter part of the last century are canvassed. Philosophical motivations are described; and how powerful twentieth-century logical tools informed the debate between Platonists and nominalists is also described. Until recently, the history of analytic metaphysics has been the history of the attempts to circumvent Quine’s criterion and its corollary the indispensability thesis which place the burden of proof on the nominalist. It is suggested that the most promising route for nominalists is to deny Quine’s criterion.

Umut Baysan

Qualia as Properties of Experiences

Qualia are properties of experiences in virtue of which there is something it’s like to have those experiences. Although the existence and the nature of qualia have long been a matter of dispute, I will argue that realism about properties on the one hand, and realism about conscious experiences on the other hand, together with an innocuous use of the truthmaker principle give us strong reasons to think that there are indeed qualia. Philosophers often worry that admitting qualia into our ontology may lead to insuperable problems of mental causation. But I shall argue that such worries are unfounded.

Alexander Bird

Natural Kinds

How do properties and natural kinds relate? I first examine E.J . Lowe’s four category ontology, which takes natural kinds and properties to compose distinct fundamental categories of entity. Having rejected this approach I look at the reduction of natural kinds to properties. I argue that natural kinds are mereological complexes of natural properties.

Chad Carmichael

Platonic universals

In this paper, I will provide a new defense of the thesis that there are necessarily existing, structured propositions, and I will argue that this ontology of propositions entails realism about universals. Then I will argue that some of the universals thus established must be platonic in the sense that some of them must be capable of existing without having any spatiotemporal location. I will close with a discussion of the benefits of this sort of weak platonic realism over a stronger version which requires all universals to be necessarily unlocated.

Sam Cowling

Properties and the Abstract-Concrete Distinction

The abstract-concrete distinction is standardly taken to partition reality into concrete entities like tables and teapots on the one hand, and abstract entities like numbers and propositions on the other. Competing views of this distinction invoke notions like causation, spatiotemporal location, and necessary existence to mark the divide between entities. Although properties are frequently cited as examples of abstract entities, their status as abstracta is crucially dependent upon assumptions about both the nature of the distinction and the features ascribed to properties. After mapping out certain theoretical options, I’ll argue that the abstract-concrete distinction affords no promising way to settle debates within the metaphysics of properties. I then explore certain views about properties that identify them with locations and discuss how such views raise distinctive questions about the scope and nature of the abstract-concrete distinction.

Michael Devitt

Ostrich Nominalism

“Ostrich Nominalism” is Armstrong’s (1978) pejorative name for the Quinean response to the venerable One over Many problem. Instead of offering a solution to this problem, as do Realists and traditional Nominalists, the Ostrich dismisses the problem as pseudo. The paper discusses the early responses to Armstrong, particularly Devitt (1980) and Lewis (1983). These responded to Armstrong’s request for ontological commitment. The paper then turns to Armstrong’s request for “truthmakers”, a request that has dominated later discussions. Truthmaking is standardly understood semantically as a version of the correspondence theory, but it can be understood metaphysically. Understood semantically, the Ostrich dismisses Armstrong’s request as a misguided attempt to derive a metaphysics from a semantics. Understood metaphysically, as a demand for “groundings”, the Ostrich is again dismissive: this is another bit of unnatural metaphysics. The paper defends this dismissiveness in discussing Rodriguez-Pereyra (2000, 2005). Finally, the paper considers Imaguire’s Priority Nominalism (2018).

Nikk Effingham

Location and universals

There is a division over whether properties are located, existing somewhere in space and time, versus whether they are abstracta, unlocated in the physical realm. After a discussion of some of the reasons for why we might believe properties are located, this chapter more specifically discusses the location of universals (are they multiply located? is multiple location even possible?) and the location of tropes (with specific reference to the role that location might play in individuation).

Douglas Ehring

Trope Nominalism

The topic of this chapter is Trope Nominalism. Three versions of Trope Nominalism are distinguished along with three accounts of trope individuation. Of the three versions of Trope Nominalism distinguished, I argue that Natural Class Trope Nominalism (NCTN) has comparative advantages over its rivals. For example, NCTN is compatible with the categorial simplicity of tropes but the standard version of Trope Nominalism, associated with Williams and Campbell, is not. I respond to some of the main objections to NCTN by combining NCTN with a counterpart theory of properties. I also defend a primitivist account of trope individuation. In particular, I compare the primitivist account of trope individuation with the main alternative view according to which qualitatively exactly similar tropes are distinct just in case they are some spatiotemporal distance apart from each other. Additionally, I outline Trope Bundle Theory, a component of every version of Trope Nominalism. I consider and respond to objections to Bundle Theory including the claim that this theory implies that all of an object's properties are essential to it, that no object can change, and that this theory gives rise to an infinite regress.

Matti Eklund

Normative Properties

In this paper, I provide an overview of various issues regarding normative properties. As is the nature of overviews, a number of disparate themes are brought up. One central theme is the relation between normative concepts and normative properties, and another is what characterizes a property as normative. I also bring up the issue of how central, or not, it is to take the issue of the existence of properties seriously. If there are no properties, questions ostensibly about properties must be conceived. What, if anything, of importance in philosophical discussions of normativity then gets lost? Another question discussed is this. Especially from a realist perspective, it is plausible that there are alternative normative concepts, picking out other properties than the normative properties our normative thought focuses on. What are the philosophical implications of taking seriously the possibility of there being such alternative properties for normative thought to be about?

Peter Forrest

Possible Worlds as Properties

This entry concerns the Worlds are Properties thesis, obtained by adapting David Lewis’ Modal Realism (e.g. 1986) in two ways: (1) replace possible worlds understood as complex particulars by world-natures understood as complex properties; and (2) abandon his problematic token-reflexive theory of actuality in favour of the thesis that all particulars are actual. As a first approximation, we might say that possible worlds are just world-natures and that to be actual is to have an instance. The first part of this entry will provide two versions, the Worlds are Monadic Universals (WAMU), and Worlds are Monadic Particulars (WAMP). The second part presents some serious problems, the Problem of Infinite Worlds and, building on Lewis’ “Magic or Mereology” problems with structural properties. WAMP solves some of these problems better than WAMU, but requires Strong Platonism, namely the existence of properties or relations that not only lack instances but do not depend on ones that have instances.

Eric Funkhouser

Determinables and Determinates

The determinable-determinate relationship has three key characteristics: specification, comparison, and exclusion. Colors are a standard example, as when we say that the property of being scarlet is a determinate of the (more) determinable property of being red. This is because scarlet is a specific way of being red, scarlet and other shades of red can be compared to one another with respect to color, and being scarlet excludes being other determinate shades of red (e.g., crimson). Far from being a tangential topic in property theory, the determination relation can – and perhaps should – be core to the development of a metaphysical theory of properties. It is important to contrast the determination relation with apparently similar asymmetric necessitation relations, such as disjunct-disjunction and species-genus. Fortunately, there are models that capture these distinctions and the other canonical features of determination. This chapter presents a few of these models, as well as some prominent applications of the determination relation – e.g., to resemblance, causation, reduction, and vagueness.

Robert K. Garcia

Types of Tropes: Modifier and Modular

In this essay I explore the significance of a fundamental distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. I argue that these types of tropes are unequally suited for metaphysical work. Modifier tropes have advantages concerning powers, relations, and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes have advantages concerning perception, causation, character-grounding, and the ontology of substance. I also argue that the distinction destabilizes trope theory in general: modifier trope theory threatens to collapse into realism, and module trope theory threatens to collapse into austere nominalism. Thus, the choice between modifier tropes and module tropes is significant and divides the advantages of trope theory simpliciter.

Daniel Giberman

Universal/Particular

The task of distinguishing universality from particularity is difficult twice over. It faces a host of first-order challenges, since first-order proposals about the distinction (e.g. only universals are instantiable, or only particulars can have identical twins, or only universals can be multi-located) tend to be threatened by counterexamples. But it also faces formidable methodological challenges, such as how to decide whether the distinction ought to be exclusive and exhaustive, or whether it ought to aim for complete neutrality with respect to other issues in metaphysics and beyond. After discussing the relationship(s) between the distinction and several pairs of pre-philosophical notions, this chapter aims to provide an instructive—albeit non-exhaustive—examination of some principal approaches to the first-order and methodological challenges, respectively.

Vera Hoffmann-Kolss

Intrinsic and Extrinsic

A property is intrinsic iff individuals have it in virtue of how they themselves are, not in virtue of the relations in which they stand to other individuals; a property is extrinsic iff it is not intrinsic. Having a mass of 3 kg, being an electron, and being nearsighted are examples of intrinsic properties; having two children, living in a red house, and owning more than 1,000 books are examples of extrinsic properties. The debate about the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties revolves around three systematic questions: (1) Can the distinction be reductively defined, that is, can it be reduced to other notions? (2) How is the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction related to other distinctions between different kinds of properties? (3) What are the general features of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction? In this paper, I discuss these three questions in turn. I explain why (1) many contemporary philosophers are skeptical that intrinsicality can be reduced to notions such as possible worlds or relational properties. I point out that (2) the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction is logically independent of many other metaphysical distinctions between properties, such as the distinctions between essential and accidental properties, between dispositional and categorical properties and between determinable and determinate properties. And I argue that (3) the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction is hyperintensional and vague.

Guido Imaguire

Priority and Grounding Nominalism

In this paper I will present and defend two new grounding-based solutions the problem of universals. I start characterizing this problem as a bundle of four intimately connected questions: (i) the question of existence, (ii) the One over Many, (iii) the question of predication and (iv) the question on the fundamentality profile of properties. Then, I present Priority Nominalism (PN), which is a grounding-based version of ostrich nominalism. According to PN, the answers to the four questions are: (i) universals do not exist, since we do not have to quantify over them in our fundamental truths, (ii) the One over Many argument is insufficient to force upon us the existence of universals, for the One over Many statement (‘there is something, F-ness, which a and b have in common’) is non-fundamental and (iii) only simple predicative facts like a is F are ultimately fundamental. Concerning (iv), PN does not claim that, strictly speaking, ‘universals are derivative’, for it accepts grounding orthodoxy, according to which only facts are adequate relata of grounding links. That universals are derivative will be explicitly defended by Grounding Nominalism (GN), which also considers simple predicative facts fundamental and rejects the One over Many. The main novelty of GN is the claim that universals, although not fundamental, exist in the same sense as particulars do. At the end, I will discuss the pros and cons of both views.

Nicholas K. Jones

Quantification and ontological commitment

Beginning with an influential Quinean paradigm for ontological commitment, I introduce three prominent deviations from it. These deviations are modular and can be freely recombined. The first supplements the paradigm with non-committal quantifiers over things that do not exist. The second supplements the paradigm with apparatus for theorising about fundamentality, such as ground, truthmaking, and metaphysical structure. The third supplements the paradigm with primitive apparatus for generalising into non-term syntactic positions. I discuss whether predicates harbour ontological commitment according to each of these paradigms.

Markku Keinänen and Jani Hakkarainen

Trope Bundle Theories of Substance

The trope bundle theories of substance aim to construct objects and all other entities by means of aggregates of tropes. Tropes are particular natures like -e charge or particular roundness in some location. By their fundamental categorial nature, tropes are neither properties nor objects. Rather, trope bundle theorists, which follow the lead of Williams’ (1953) paradigmatic trope theory, aim to analyze inherence (objects’ having a property) in terms of parthood, co-location and/or existential dependencies, for instance. In the present paper, we consider the main alternative trope theories analyzing inherence starting from Williams’ and Campbell’s (1990) classical views. Although leading to an impressive categorial ontological economy, the classical trope theories encounter some serious problems. One such difficulty is to explain the possibility of co-located objects, another providing an account of tropes as parts of certain kinds of objects. We argue that trope theories introducing existential dependencies among tropes, such as the trope theory SNT we have proposed, provide interesting solutions. Nevertheless, we argue that the trope theoretic project is endangered unless trope theorists can generalize their analysis of inherence to adherence (a trope relating two or more entities).

John A. Keller

Paraphrase and Properties

In this paper, I distinguish between two importantly different types of paraphrase: revising and reconciling paraphrase. Revising paraphrases are revisionary replacements of the original claims, replacements that are intended to be consistent with one’s other commitments. Revising paraphrases reflect a change in both what one believes and what one says. Reconciling paraphrases are restatements of the original claims, restatements that are intended to show that those original claims were consistent with one’s other commitments all along. Reconciling paraphrases need not reflect a change in what one believes or says. I argue that there isn’t much of substance to be said specifically about revising paraphrases (the norms governing belief change are generic), and give an account of reconciling paraphrases. I then defend the use of such reconciling paraphrases against some influential objections. Next, I contrast the method and ideology of paraphrase, according to which apparent levels in reality are explained linguistically rather than metaphysically, with the method and ideology of ground, according to which apparent levels in reality are explained metaphysically rather than linguistically. Finally, I argue that since the ideology of paraphrase is unavoidable, we have good reason to try to make do without the ideology of ground.

Fraser MacBride

Relations: Nature and Representation

In this paper I propose and defend what I will call ‘The Iconic Theory of Relations’. This theory has a metaphysical core and, so to speak, a semantic shell. According to the metaphysical core, relations are irreducible universals. According to the semantic shell, there is a class of basic sentences which represent in virtue of expressions standing in linguistically salient relations which thereby model things standing in worldly relations. I argue for this theory by considering two recurrent problems that bedevil relations, (1) the regress associated with Bradley, and (2) the abundance of converse relations. Along the way I will contrast the iconic theory with other more familiar theories of relations.

Jennifer McKitrick

Dispositional Properties

It is tempting to see the contemporary discussion of dispositional properties as a debate between two clearly delineated camps, neo-Humeans who continue to seek reductive analyses of dispositional properties, and neo-Aristotelians who countenance powers as a fundamental part of their ontology. However, the situation is more complicated. There are various motives and methods for reducing dispositional properties. Furthermore, there is no comprehensive “powers metaphysic” that all powers theorists share, and no consensus about what the term “dispositionalism” means. On the contrary, believing that dispositions exist leaves many unanswered questions and topics for debate. In this talk, I will pose some of those questions and explore the range of answers, most of which have been defended in recent dispositions literature. These questions include: (1) What are properties? (2) What are dispositions? (3) What kind of properties exist? (4) Are dispositions reducible? (5) Are dispositions perceivable? and (6) Do dispositions have triggers?

Anne Sophie Meincke

Emergent Properties

Emergent properties are higher-level properties that are dependent on, but irreducible to, lower-level properties. Often this is also framed in terms of supervenience: Emergent properties supervene on the properties from which they emerge. In my paper, I first show how the concept of emergence, aiming to provide an explanation of complexity from the bottom up, is tied to a physicalist framework, in contrast to top-down approaches as, for instance, Aristotelian hylomorphism. Second, I argue that because of this theoretical legacy, the concept of emergence is of limited use to those who take seriously the multi-layered and dynamic character of reality. At least, one ought to recognise that the idea of supervenience and stable emergence bases breaks down in thermodynamically open systems, such as living systems.

Bo R. Meinertsen

Aristotelianism and States of Affairs

The relationship between immanent realism and states of affairs matters, since it would seem that the only place for immanent universals to reside is in states of affairs. As to universals, immanent realism has an easier job than transcendent realism when explaining the relationship between universals and their instances. However, a naturalist outlook requires that immanent universals be concrete, which leads to challenges. As to states of affairs, which here are understood as concrete compounds of particulars and universals, or ‘Armstrongian states of affairs’, the question is if the particulars and universals in them are bound together by a relation or not? That is, is immanent realism relational or not? Attention is paid to Armstrong’s rejection of relational realism and his formulations of non-relational realism. Since both are unconvincing, the chapter ends with a sketch for a return to relational realism.

Friederike Moltmann

Properties in the ontology of natural language: Properties as reifications of kinds of tropes or kinds of abstract states

How does natural language permit reference to properties and what does this tell us about the (descriptive) metaphysics of properties? In English (and we may assume in natural languages in general), there are two sorts of terms for properties: A-terms, i.e. bare (determinerless) adjective nominalizations such as wisdom, and B-terms, i.e. explicit property-referring terms of the sort the property of being wise. As I has argued in previous work, A-terms and B-terms stand for different sorts of things. Wisdom behaves like a kind-referring term (in the sense of Carlson 1977), referring to a kind of trope. The property of being wise refers to a property as an abstract object. This is reflected in distinct readings of various sorts of predicates (with A-terms, but not B-terms, encounter and exist involve existential quantification over instances, is admirable generic quantification, and look for quantification over instances in satisfaction situations). Moreover, B-terms can be based on disjunctive, conjunctive, and quantified linguistic material (the property of being tall and / or intelligent, the property of owning a car), but not so A-terms. This suggests that B-terms denote entities abstracted from a sentential content, as would be represented by a λ–expressions. However this cannot be right. The complement of B-terms cannot be eventive (* the property of walking / thinking / playing golf / talking to someone / becoming wise), and it cannot describe concrete, spatially located states (* the property of sleeping / standing / sitting). Rather the complement must describe abstract or ‘Kimean’ states (Maienborn 2007, Moltmann 2013) – the implicit arguments of be or abstract state verbs like own, resemble, weigh (the property of being wise / owning several homes / resembling a horse / weighing ten kilo / being the agent of an act of talking / being the cause of a commotion / being the experiencer of an act of kindness). Alternatively, the complement of property can be an A-term, denoting a kind of trope (the property of wisdom). Gerundive terms like being wise themselves are kind-referring terms, denoting kinds of (abstract) states. This means that in the ontology of natural language, properties are conceived as entities that correlate with kinds of tropes or kinds of abstract states, rather than being the correlates of predicates or sentential contents.

Bence Nanay

Properties in Perception

This paper explores the various ways in which understanding what kind of properties perception represents helps us to make progress in a number of debates in the philosophy of perception. Among the topics discussed are: (1) The range of properties represented in perception, (2) The determinacy of properties represented in perception and (3) Whether the properties represented in perception are tropes or universals.

Dee Payton

Social Properties

On most views of how properties are individuated, there are many, many different properties. And there are many different types of properties, too. Some properties, like being money, seem obviously social. Others, like being negatively charged, seem not to be. But what makes for the difference here, between what is social and what isn’t? Is the social/non-social distinction really just a difference between what is biological, and what is not? Or perhaps instead, is the more fundamental difference here best understood as one between the natural and the non-natural? This chapter provides a general overview of the analytic social metaphysics literature on social properties and its treatment of these questions. At the end of the chapter I provide a brief argument for my own view: that many social properties can be distinguished from the rest by their relationship to natural language.

Katarina Perovic

Temporally Extended Properties

On the face of it, some properties and relations appear to take time to be instantiated. They are not instantiated at an instant, but through a temporal interval. Examples of such properties and relations are cognitive ones such as understanding and thinking, but also various biological, chemical, and microphysical properties and relations such as absorbing, freezing, radiating, and decaying. I believe that it is important to take such temporally extended properties (TEPs) seriously and that theories of persistence would do well to account for such properties in their system. I examine a few fourdimensionalist strategies for dealing with TEPs and find them all wanting. I then move on to exploring some possible threedimensionalist accounts of TEPs, and indicate the strategies that seem the most promising.

Bradley Rettler

Truthmaking

A natural thought is that truths have truthmakers -- for some, all, or every true proposition, there’s something that makes it true. D.M. Armstrong has argued that accepting the existence of truthmakers requires accepting the existence of properties, and that truthmaking places some constraints on what theories of properties one can accept. In this chapter, I discuss the connection between truthmaking and properties. First, I give an overview of truthmaking, and offer Armstrong’s truthmaker argument for properties, pointing out two additional assumptions the argument makes. I then discuss a response by Josh Parsons that points out an additional assumption. Next, I consider whether we should accept the additional assumptions, and which theories of properties satisfy those assumptions. I conclude by discussing Armstrong’s extension of the truthmaker argument for properties to a truthmaker argument for states of affairs.

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra

Class Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism

Class Nominalism and Resemblance Nominalism both face the famous coextension difficulty. One solution to this problem consists in adopting a Lewisian form of Modal Realism. This solution has been adopted by David Lewis and by myself in previous work. But Modal Realism is wrong. It will be argued that both Resemblance Nominalism and Class Nominalism can solve the Coextension Difficulty without committing to Modal Realism.

Carlo Rossi

Events, Processes, and Properties

Talk about properties pervades the contemporary ontological debate about the nature of events and processes. To begin with, many follow the view Kim famously developed that events are exemplifications of properties at times (1966, 1973). According to the canonical notation used by Kim, events would be triplets of the form of [s, P, t], where s stands for a substance, P for a property, and t for a time or an interval of time. On the other hand, some have argued (Mourelatos 1978, Stout 1997, Steward 2013) that the properties we could draw between mass-noun and count-noun expressions are crucial to articulate the ontological divide between events and processes. Events, according to this line of thought, would be countable and temporally bounded entities, whereas processes would be regarded as massy non-countable entities. Others still (Moltmann 2013) consider there is a strong parallel between events and tropes, a move which would somehow call into doubt the conception of events and even processes as particulars. Accordingly, the aim of this chapter/presentation will be to explore (i) how properties play a central role in characterizing the categories of events and processes and (ii) how the category of properties could either resemble or contrast with the categories of events and processes depending on the features we ascribed to the latter.

Carolina Sartorio

Causation and Properties

In this paper I discuss the role that properties play in theorizing about token causation. I argue that properties play a significant (albeit not always obvious) role. The main way in which properties are helpful to causal theorizing is that they allow us to make fine-grained causal discriminations that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to make—at least not as naturally. Those fine-grained causal discriminations are important for the sake of causal theorizing itself, but also given the conceptual link that exists between causation and moral responsibility. The paper discusses a range of topics where properties play a central role. They include: the debate over the causal relata, the debate over the transitivity of causation, the debate over an alleged asymmetry between hasteners and delayers, and the debate over switches.

Sonia Sedivy

Aesthetic Properties

This paper will provide an overview of the challenges posed by aesthetic properties and of some ways of addressing the difficulties. The first problem is how to characterize aesthetic properties at all given their tremendous diversity – across diverse kinds of artworks, natural objects and even functional artefacts; across historical eras; and open to ‘faultless disagreement’ among appreciators even ‘ideal critics.’ The second difficulty is that the notion of aesthetic properties seems to be inter-related with and perhaps inextricable from notions of aesthetic value and aesthetic experience. The third problem is posed by explaining their ‘metaphysical standing.’ Should we be objectivists or subjectivists, realists or non-realists about aesthetic properties? Can we provide some explanation in terms of emergence, supervenience or grounding?

Caj Strandberg

Moral Properties

The article provides an introduction to the metaethical debate about moral properties with some emphasis on the connection between metaphysical views on properties and metaethical theories on moral properties. Theories on moral properties vary along three dimensions: realism vs. anti-realism, naturalism vs. non-naturalism, and reductionism vs. non-reductionism. It is argued that realism should be understood in terms of specific mind independence which entails that moral properties are not arbitrarily dependent on the mental states of individuals agents. It is further noticed that theories on moral properties should account for the practicality of morality. The article then considers different versions of naturalism and non-naturalism in reductionist and non-reductionist forms. It is briefly discussed how these theories account for the practicality of morality and what metaphysical challenges they might face. Moreover, it is suggested that specific mind independence offers plausible classifications of metaethical theories as ‘realist’ or ‘anti-realist’.

Tuomas Tahko

Laws of Nature

The role of properties in specifying different views on laws of nature is significant: virtually any position on laws will make some reference to properties, and some of the leading views even reduce laws to properties. This chapter will first outline what laws of nature are typically taken to be and then specify their connection to properties in more detail. We shall see that different conceptions of properties also result in different views of the status of laws, such as the question whether laws are necessary or contingent. Some conceptions of properties that have an especially intimate connection to laws include natural, essential, and dispositional properties. Finally, there are also important links between properties, natural kinds, and laws of nature that deserve our attention.

Elanor Taylor

Sparse and Abundant Properties

To believe that properties are abundant is to believe that there are a great many properties, including a property corresponding to (almost) every predicate. To believe in sparseness is believe that among these is a privileged minority – a small group suited to play certain important roles in phenomena including similarity, laws of nature, causation, reference, explanation, fundamentality, and induction. Sparseness is a worldly, objective matter, such that that the interests of inquirers play no role in determining which properties are sparse. In this piece I will offer a quick, opinionated overview of sparseness. I will begin with motivations for positing sparseness, and different roles for sparseness, and will then explore questions about the objectivity of sparseness and the role of sparse properties in inquiry.

Kathe Trettin

Relations and Tropes

As trope ontology in the strict sense takes tropes, i.e., individual properties or qualities, as the fundamental entities from which all complex things are constructed, this paper deals with some relations referred to by trope theorists to explain possible configurations & combinations of tropes. On the standard view, tropes are connected (i) by Compresence to explain individual objects or substances, and (ii) by Similarity or Resemblance to explain the construction of universals. Accordingly, the prospects and problems of these types of relation are assessed. The essential background question, however, is whether on trope ontology one can avail oneself of relations at all, and if so, how. I shall argue that trope explanations of Similarity do quite well against popular objections, whereas Compresence is a doubtful candidate for thing-construction, as it, apart from other difficulties, relies heavily on an absolute conception of space & time. The best explanatory resource for dealing with relations of all sorts in metaphysics, or so it seems to me, is the reflection on Ontological Dependency. So, in the end of the paper I shall hint to my favourite account so far, a modal-existential conception, which takes the underlying notions of dependence (Modality and Existence) to be transcategorial. Thus, the outlook on the difficult affair between relations and tropes might be, after all, quite promising.

Barbara Vetter

Power, potentiality and modality

One tradition in metaphysics, associated primarily with David Lewis, accounts for the metaphysics of properties in terms of modality (possible worlds). More recently, a number of views have been proposed that go in the opposite direction: accounting for modality in terms of properties. Views of this kind differ both with regard to the modality that they primarily account for (metaphysical or nomological; possibility, necessity, or counterfactuals), and with regard to their conception of the properties that give rise to these modalities. I examine two main options: dispositional essentialism and potentialism, and discuss some of the challenges that they share in spelling out the properties at the basis of their accounts.

Jo E. Wolff

Quantitative Properties

Many of the most important properties in the physical sciences are quantitative properties: think of mass, charge, temperature, or length. In virtue of their central role in physical theories, they look like they might have a claim to being fundamental properties. But what are quantitative properties, and in particular: what makes such properties quantitative? This chapter begins with two traditional attempts at capturing what makes a property quantitative – being numerical and being determinable – and argues that neither is satisfactory. I then turn to influential attempts which, inspired by the representational theory of measurement, attempt to identify particular relations as characteristic for quantitative properties. These attempts fare better than the traditional ones, but have their own limitations. I conclude with a discussion of my own recent attempt at identifying criteria for quantitativeness, which builds on a more abstract understanding of the representational theory of measurement.