Trope (philosophy)
Encyclopedia
The term "trope" is both a term which denotes figurative and metaphorical language and one which has been used in various technical senses. The term trope derives from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 τρόπος (tropos), "a turn, a change", related to the root of the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change"; this means that the term is used metaphorically to denote, among other things, metaphorical language. Perhaps the term can be explained as meaning the same thing as a turn of phrase in its original sense.

The term is also used in technical senses, which do not always correspond to its linguistic origin. Its meaning has to be judged from the context, some of which are given below.

Basic meaning as metaphor

Here a trope is a figurative and metaphorical use of a word or a phrase. The verb to trope means then to make a trope.

Greek philosophy

A trope or mode is one of the ten skeptical arguments or "ways of refuting dogmatism", also called the Ten Modes of Pyrrhonism, described by the Greek physician and philosopher Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....

.

In philosophy of history

The use of tropes has been extended from a linguistic usage to the field of philosophy of history
Philosophy of history
The term philosophy of history refers to the theoretical aspect of history, in two senses. It is customary to distinguish critical philosophy of history from speculative philosophy of history...

 by, among other theorists, Hayden White
Hayden White
Hayden White is a historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe...

 in his Metahistory (1973). Tropes are generally understood to be styles of discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...

 — rather than figures of style — underlying the historian's writing of history. They are historically determined in as much as the historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

 of every period is defined by a specific type of trope.

For Hayden White, tropes historically unfolded in this sequence: metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

, metonymy
Metonymy
Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...

, synecdoche
Synecdoche
Synecdoche , meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which a term is used in one of the following ways:* Part of something is used to refer to the whole thing , or...

, and finally, irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...

.

Trope theory in philosophy (metaphysics)

Trope theory in metaphysics is a version of nominalism
Nominalism
Nominalism is a metaphysical view in philosophy according to which general or abstract terms and predicates exist, while universals or abstract objects, which are sometimes thought to correspond to these terms, do not exist. Thus, there are at least two main versions of nominalism...

. Here, a trope is a particular instance of a property, like the specific redness of a rose, or the specific nuance of green of a leaf. Trope theories assume that universals are unnecessary. This use of the term goes back to D. C. Williams (1953). The basic problem has been discussed previously in philosophy without using the term "trope". The following is a brief background:

The basic problem is the problem of universals
Problem of universals
The problem of universals is an ancient problem in metaphysics about whether universals exist. Universals are general or abstract qualities, characteristics, properties, kinds or relations, such as being male/female, solid/liquid/gas or a certain colour, that can be predicated of individuals or...

. One part of the problem of universals is determining what it is for two tokens (or separate instances of something) to be of the same type. How can different things be the same? The arguments are complex, and involve semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

, metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 and epistemology. Part of the problem would be determining what it is for six different green objects to all be the same in respect to their color.

One classical solution is that of realism as found in the middle period of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's philosophy, with the Republic
Republic (Plato)
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man...

as a crowning work. According to this solution there are ideas
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...

 or forms
Substantial form
A theory of substantial forms asserts that forms organize matter and make it intelligible. Substantial forms are the source of properties, order, unity, identity, and information about objects....

 for any property. These forms exist timelessly as singular, perfect individuals in a metaphysical (timeless, supra-sensible) world of their own. They correspond to what is later called universals. Somehow the form of a specific color creates many secondary images of itself, as when a prototype is used to make copies or an object casts several shadows. Expressed more abstractly the individual colour-instances (the green of this leaf, the similar green of this frog) all partake in the same idea of green. In Plato the theory of forms
Theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...

 is related to his theses about innate knowledge. In Phaedo
Phaedo
Plato's Phaedo is one of the great dialogues of his middle period, along with the Republic and the Symposium. The Phaedo, which depicts the death of Socrates, is also Plato's seventh and last dialogue to detail the philosopher's final days .In the dialogue, Socrates...

the turn of the argument is that we cannot learn from experience what similarity is through abstraction
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....

, but must possess it in an innate form before we have any experience (Phaedo 74a-75d).

Nevertheless Plato in the Parmenides dialogue himself formulated several problems for his view. One is: How can the idea, being single, nevertheless be present in a multitude of separate instances without being split apart.

The other solution is that of nominalism
Nominalism
Nominalism is a metaphysical view in philosophy according to which general or abstract terms and predicates exist, while universals or abstract objects, which are sometimes thought to correspond to these terms, do not exist. Thus, there are at least two main versions of nominalism...

. Here the thesis is that universals such as the idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...

s or form
Substantial form
A theory of substantial forms asserts that forms organize matter and make it intelligible. Substantial forms are the source of properties, order, unity, identity, and information about objects....

s of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 are unnecessary in an explanation of language, thought and the world. Only single individuals are real, but they can be grouped together by a human observer through their similarities. Nominalists are usually empiricists. Berkeley
George Berkeley
George Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...

, for example, argued against universals or abstract
Abstract object
An abstract object is an object which does not exist at any particular time or place, but rather exists as a type of thing . In philosophy, an important distinction is whether an object is considered abstract or concrete. Abstract objects are sometimes called abstracta An abstract object is an...

 objects using nominalistic arguments. He used the term idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...

 to denote specific perceptions of an atomistic nature. They could be grouped through similarities or one could take a specific instance, for example the green hue of this frog one is looking at now, as a kind of paradigm case or prototype, and regard everything that was similar to it as belonging to the same type or category. One attraction of the nominalistic program is that if it can be carried out it solves Plato's problem in Parmenides
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...

, since the need for a single idea or form or universal green then vanishes and it can be expunged through Occam's razor
Occam's razor
Occam's razor, also known as Ockham's razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae , is a principle that generally recommends from among competing hypotheses selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.-Overview:The principle is often summarized as "simpler explanations...

, i.e. the rule that one should always prefer the simplest theory or account of anything.

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

 (1912, chapter IX) argued against Berkeley and took the same basic position as Plato. His argument was basically one against any form of nominalism
Nominalism
Nominalism is a metaphysical view in philosophy according to which general or abstract terms and predicates exist, while universals or abstract objects, which are sometimes thought to correspond to these terms, do not exist. Thus, there are at least two main versions of nominalism...

. It says, briefly, that if we introduce several instances of green as separate individuals, we nevertheless have to accept that the reason that we group them together is because they are similar. Therefore we must presume at least one true universal, that of similarity.

Two popular recent solutions to the problem of universals, as it relates to the possibility of entities existing in multiple locations at the same time, are as follows.

David Armstrong
David Malet Armstrong
David Malet Armstrong , often D. M. Armstrong, is an Australian philosopher. He is well-known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the...

, a prominent Australian philosopher, argues, that there are instantiated universals, like Russell and the middle Plato. Briefly, an instantiated universal is a property (such as being green) that can exist in multiple locations at the same time. Going back to the problem of universals, for six different objects to all be green would be for each object to instantiate the universal green. The very same, identical universal green would be wholly located at each green object. To be even more specific, if a frog and a leaf are the same shade of green, the green of the frog and the green of the leaf are one and the same entity, which happens to be multiply located.

Keith Campbell
Keith Campbell (philosopher)
Keith Campbell is an Australian philosopher working in metaphysics.With D.M. Armstrong, Campbell is one of the founders of so called Australian metaphysics and, within it, of a variety of trope theory...

 and Michael LaBossiere, among others, reject instantiated universals in favor of tropes. Briefly, a trope is a property (such as being green) that can only exist in one location at one time. Trope theorists explain what it is for two tokens (individual instances) to be of the same type in terms of resemblance. As an example, for six different objects to all be green would be for each object to have its own distinct green trope. Each green trope would be a different entity from the other green tropes, but they would resemble each other and would all be taken to be green because of their resemblance.

Further reading

  • Bacon, John (2008). "Tropes", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (link)
  • MacLeod, M. & Rubenstein, E. (2006). "Universals", The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, J. Fieser & B. Dowden (eds.). (link)
  • Quine, W. V. O. (1961). "On What There is," in From a Logical Point of View, 2nd/ed. N.Y: Harper and Row.
  • Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo (2008). "Nominalism in Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (link)
  • Russell, Bertrand
    Bertrand Russell
    Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

     (1912). The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford University Press.
  • White, Hayden
    Hayden White
    Hayden White is a historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe...

    (1973). Metahistory, Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Williams, D. C. (1953). "On the Elements of Being", Review of Metaphysics, vol. 17.
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