Dear Matthew, (01)
That is the point I (and Peter van Inwagen) were trying to make: (02)
> The argument I would give against tropes is that it is an unnecessary
> category. You can manage perfectly well without it, so you should. Or you
> should be clear about the benefits that introducing the category provides,
> and I have not found any benefits that would give me a return on my
> ontological investment, only added complexity. (03)
But I'd like to clarify and qualify the following point: (04)
> I don't think things being difficult to understand is a good
> argument against them. (05)
That is true if there are experts in the field who do understand
them. There are very important technical subjects that experts in
a field use successfully every day. It would be a serious mistake
for a layman to forbid experts from using them. (06)
> I don't understand the Higgs Boson, but it looks increasingly
> likely that it exists. (07)
That's true. But if a professional physicist couldn't explain it
in a way that other professionals in the field could understand,
that would be a sign of an inarticulate genius or a crackpot. (08)
In either case, it's not something I would recommend for
an introductory textbook. (09)
By the way, in that same article I cited, Peter van I. did say
that he was asked to review an article about tropes and immanent
universals for a research journal. Instead of rejecting it,
he asked that it be given to someone else to review. (010)
John (011)
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