In the article two versions of an argument for particularism are presented and discussed. The first has Avicenna as originator; Donald Mertz is the originator of the second version. While the first version takes for granted a reduction of polyadic attributes, the second does not. In fact, Mertz vehemently rejects the reduction. The article ends with an attempt to make it plausible that Mertz’s ...

We investigate the patterns and evolution of cultural ideas and symbols in media using network analysis techniques. We leverage the TV Tropes wiki of media works, cross-referenced with the widelyrecognized character/situation types (tropes) that these works contain, to construct a bipartite graph representation of 4,616 films and their associated tropes. We perform community detection on a weig...

A trope is a particular property: the redness of a rose, the roundness of the moon. It is generally supposed that tropes are individuated by primitive quantity: this redness, that roundness. I argue that the trope theorist is far better served by individuating tropes by spatiotemporal relation: here redness, there roundness. In short, tropes are not this-suches but here-suches. I generally favo...

David Armstrong believes in universals. Once universals are accepted, it must also be accepted that they resemble one another to various degrees. Colors, for instance, fall into a complicated multidimensional resemblanceorder. Armstrong claims that all universals are complex universals, and that they resemble one another insofar as they have common universal constituents. Armstrong’s reductive ...

Trope ontology is exposed and confronted with the question where one trope ends and another begins. It is argued that tropes do not have determinate boundaries, it is arbitrary how tropes are carved up. An ontology, which I call field ontology, is proposed which takes this into account. The material world consists of a certain number of fields, each of which is extended over all of space. It is...