Question

The SEP article on tropes discusses this notion of piles of tropes. The PI stands for primitivist individuation of tropes, meaning their individuation admits of no informative analysis or explanation. On that view, nothing prevents one from assigning multiple exactly similar tropes to the same object, which is metaphysically redundant and makes no empirical difference:

Answer 1

The student's question involves the primitivist individuation of tropes in philosophy, suggesting that it does not require further analysis, leading to possible metaphysical redundancy.

Step-by-step explanation:

The concept discussed in the student's question pertains to the primitivist individuation of tropes, which is a topic in metaphysical philosophy. A trope is a specific property or quality that is a case of a more general property, like a particular shade of blue or a certain shape. On the primitivist view, the individuation of tropes is considered primitive; that is, it does not provide any further informative analysis or explanation beyond the identification that two or more tropes are different simply because they are numerically distinct. This leads to situations where several identical tropes may be ascribed to a single object without making any empirical difference, resulting in what has been termed metaphysical redundancy. This idea parallels a phenomenon in psychology where an individual might take pride in the privileged comprehension of complex concepts, leading to a positive valuation of those concepts.