Concrete Individuals and the Failure of the Trope Bundle Solution

Abstract

What account can we give of the nature of the individuality of concrete particulars that allows many properties to inhere in them? Campbell argues that concrete particulars are bundles of tropes, or of instances of qualities. It is argued that we should individuate tropes spatiotemporally, as Schaffer suggests we should, and that such a spatiotemporal individuation principle makes Campbell’s model require that the Identity of Indiscernibles be a necessary truth, which he rejects. The problem of concrete individuals is the problem of how many distinct properties inhere in one, single individual. What account can we give of the nature of the individuality of concrete particulars that allows many properties to inhere in them? Before putting forward his own solution to this problem, Campbell speaks of a proposed solution, the universal bundle theory. This solution states that for some concrete particular, a, if we list all the universals which a instantiates—say F, G, and H—then the bundle of F, G, and H will be a itself. However, says Campbell, there could be some concrete particular, b, which also instantiates all and only F, G, and H. Thus, on this view, b would be identical by definition with the very same bundle with which a is identical, merely on the basis that a and b instantiate the very same universals—in other words, on the basis of the indiscernibility of a and b. But, as Campbell points out, this solution makes the Identity of Indiscernibles a necessary truth, while in reality it is no such thing. Campbell’s own solution is that concrete individuals are bundles, not of universals, but of tropes—more specifically, bundles of all and only compresent tropes. While the Res Cogitans (2015) 6 Fishman | 8