Monday, June 9, 2014

A quick argument for tropes

  1. Every thought is a trope of a thinker.
  2. There are thoughts.
  3. So, there are tropes.

2 comments:

Brian Cutter said...

Do you take this argument to be significantly different from, or dialectically more forceful than, the following argument (?): (1*) Every kick is a trope of a kicker. (2*) There are kicks. (3*) So,there are tropes.

I suppose one difference is that we can raise a kind of Cartesian doubt about (2*) that doesn't apply to your (2) (maybe there's no material world at all, in which case kicking couldn't occur, but thinking could). But that won't be an important difference for those who don't take such skeptical scenarios seriously.

Alexander R Pruss said...

It's more like this. It seems that I am aware of my thoughts as entities--they are objects of my perception. Am I aware of kicks? Well, I can see x kicking y. But that's not seeing *the kicking* perhaps. But it seems phenomenologically plausible that not only am I aware that I thinking, but I am aware of the thought.