Tropes, Universals and Visual Phenomenology

Abstract

Tropes, Universals, and Visual Phenomenology Philosophers of perception who believe that visual states are representations usually also accept that visual states present that some properties are instantiated. However, a proper philosophical account of such "visual properties" is lacking. An important question concerns whether visual properties should be characterized as universals, i.e. as properties that can be instantiated multiple times, or as tropes, i.e. individualized properties that are not multiply instantiable. While some philosophers adopt an agnostic stance towards this issue (e.g., Siegel 2010, pp. 58-59), in recent decades various authors have developed arguments aiming to show that visual properties should be characterized as tropes (Lowe 1998, 2008; Mulligan 1999; Nanay 2012). One argument for the trope interpretation, which will be the focus of this paper, is the claim that the way in which we visually experience properties makes it plausible to characterize them as tropes. For instance, it has been stated that when visually experiencing an object as having a property, we are not phenomenally presented with a relation of instantiation between an universal and an object (Mulligan et al. 1984), and that the perceptual phenomenon of visual-property constancy provides a reason to accept the trope interpretation of visual properties (Almäng 2016).