I'm reading about properties. I'm having a hard time distinguishing between individuals and particulars, as they relate to universals.
A precise definition of both would also be helpful.
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Sign up to join this communityParticular: a thing without properties. It has to instantiate universals(properties) in order to have a shape, a color, a taste etc.
Individual: the red apple. It does not instantiate anything. In the ontology of someone believing in individuals (nominalists), there are no abstract things as properties, just individuals, and there are red individuals, blue individuals etc. The predicate just describes an individual, but does not denote an object.
Trope: a trope is a particularized property. This apples redness for example. The tropes of this apple of course differ from the tropes of that apple.
Universal: Redness, Shape, Length, Weight, whatever. Particulars instantiate these in order to ~have~ properties.
Individuals aren't being used as a technical term; they are just what one would normally say they are - for example there are two individual apples on that table.
Now consider the statement: both of those apples are red.
We are ascribing the property red to two individual apples.
If the property red is universal this just means there is just a universal property red that we are ascribing to both apples.
Looking more closely at the apples we see they actually differ in shade, so now we declare the property red is particular, and when say both apples are red, each particular apple may differ in shade.
That is if a property is universal we apply it universally; and if its particular we apply it particularly.