Pat, (01)
I agree with your comments. I just wanted to add a few points. (02)
PH
> Also, using CL or RDF allows you to treat the relations as first-class
>entities
> and quantify over them. This immediately removes one class of arguments in
>favor
> of the 'constituent' view, that it is necessary to quantify over these things
> that are relations in a relational view... (03)
I agree. (04)
In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the article on tropes
(written by John Bacon) makes the following point: (05)
JB
> Tropes have been variously called ‘property (and relation) instances’,
> ‘abstract particulars’, ‘concrete properties’, ‘unit properties (and
>relations)’,
> ‘quality (and relation) bits’, ‘individual accidents’, and (in German)
>Momente. (06)
See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tropes/ (07)
Bacon gives some history of the ideas and terminology. He also gives a
precise definition of the version he prefers -- the idea that tropes are
instances of relations or instances of properties (monadic relations).
He calls them _relatons_ and _qualitons_. (08)
In logic, a relaton or qualiton would just be a ground-level clause:
a single relation with all its argument places filled with elements
of the domain. (09)
At the end of the article, Bacon concludes: (010)
JB
> The thing-property view, the property-cluster theory, the relaton-cluster
> theory, and even perhaps model-theoretic particularism are apparently
> all capable of modeling each other (Bacon 1988). (011)
That would confirm the claim that the terminology for describing the
logic (and its model theory) is all that is needed to describe every
formal distinction in any ontology specified in that logic. (012)
In summary, you can boil down all that philosophical verbiage in two
simple definitions: (013)
1. A universal is a relation. (014)
2. A trope is a ground-level clause. (015)
If you have a logic that allows quantified variables to range over
such things, you don't need any metalevel terminology beyond the
words that describe the logic. (016)
John (017)
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