Trope Simplicity and Divine Simplicity Compared

I concluded my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the divine simplicity with an attempt at softening up the contemporary reader for the possible coherence of the doctrine of divine simplicity  by adducing some garden variety examples of contemporary philosophical posits that are ontologically simple in one or more of the ways in which God is said to be simple. I gave the example of tropes.  One might of course proceed in the opposite direction by tarring tropes with a close cousin of the (alleged) absurdity of the  doctrine of divine simplicity.  You decide whether there is anything to my comparison:

Tropes are ontologically simple entities. On trope theory, properties are assayed not as universals but as particulars: the redness of a tomato is as particular, as unrepeatable, as the tomato. Thus a tomato is red, not in virtue of exemplifying a universal, but by having a redness trope as one of its constituents (on one version of trope theory) or by being a substratum in which a redness trope inheres (on a second theory). A trope is a simple entity in that there is no distinction between it and the property it ‘has.’ Thus a redness trope is red , but it is not red by instantiating redness, or by having redness as a constituent, but by being (a bit of) redness. So a trope is what it has. It has redness by being identical to (a bit of) redness. In this respect it is like God who is what he has. God has omniscience by being (identical to) omniscience. Just as there is no distinction between God and his omniscience, there is no distinction in a redness trope between the trope and its redness. And just as the simple God is not a particular exemplifying universals, a trope is not a particular exemplifying a universal. In both cases we have a particular that is also a property, a subject of predication that is also a predicable entity, where the predicable entity is predicated of itself. Given that God is omniscience, he is predicable of himself. Given that a redness trope is a redness, it is predicable of itself. An important difference, of course, is that whereas God is unique, tropes are not: there is and can be only one God, but there are many redness tropes.

Not only is each trope identical to the property it has, in each trope there is an identity of essence and existence. A trope is neither a bare particular nor an uninstantiated property. It is a property-instance, an indissoluble unity of a property and itself as instance of itself. As property, it is an essence, as instance, it is the existence of that essence. Because it is simple, essence and existence are identical in it. Tropes are thus necessary beings (beings whose very possibility entails their actuality) as they must be if they are to serve as the ontological building blocks of everything else (on the dominant one-category version of trope theory). In the necessity of their existence, tropes resemble God.

If one can bring oneself to countenance tropes, then one cannot object to the simple God on the ground that (i) nothing can be identical to its properties, or (ii) in nothing are essence and existence identical. For tropes are counterexamples to (i) and (ii).

Comments

[Kevin Moore]

Hello, Dr. Vallicella.

Off topic. Would you be willing to read (and perhaps comment on) a paper I have written on existence? I have really enjoyed your book on existence and I think we make some similar moves. I would have sent you an email; but I couldn't find your email address anywhere?

Best,

Kevin

[Clark]

I think there's something to this but, as you note, I'm not sure this will be terribly convincing to people since trope theory seems implausible to many people.

I think the more interesting question, which you didn't deal with in your SEP article, is the relation of the persons to the simplicity. While I know it's a category mistake to then think of tropes in that situation one can't help but thinking about the analogy.

[J.]

We see red houses, red roses, red flags. We do not see redness (and not sure why "tropes" work better than universals). That's not to say a universal Redness does not exist: it does, more than likely, as a chunk of neurons in your corpus callosum, with various associated neurological procedures.

[Bill Vallicella]

Kevin,

Sorry to take so long to respond. I was abroad for a few days at a conference. I will be happy to take a look at your paper. In a recent e-mail, Tim Bayless recommended you to me.