Dear Shupeng,

Thank you for submitting your term paper.

You cover a lot of topics in this short paper. I have a few comments.

(1) The first-order ontology does not require that entities be construed as bundles of
properties. The first-order ontology is a theory about what exists, whereas the
property-bundle theory of entities is a theory about what an entity is. “Did Aristotle’s
brother exist?” is a different question from “What is it to be Aristotle’s brother?” Similarly,
“What entities exist?” is a different question from “What is it to be an entity?”
(2) Katz’s realism in linguistics is mainly semantic, that is, Katz opposes Quine’s
nominalistic skepticism about linguistic meanings. Katz thinks that linguistic meanings
are abstract objects worthy of serious study independently of contingent associations
with syntax and phonology. This topic is somewhat separate from the topic of
second-order ontology vs. first-order ontology.
(3) Sometimes your discussion seems to be over-ambitious and falling short on details. For
example, you say on p.6:
A solution to this for second-order trope theory could be to consider the
second-order resemblance relation between tropes as non-denoting(see Skiba
2020；Besson 2009; Bacon et al. 2016).
It is unclear what this “solution” really is. What does it mean for the second-order
resemblance relation between tropes to be non-denoting? Does it mean that the
second-order resemblance relation between tropes does not exist? Or does it mean that
the second-order resemblance relation between tropes does not represent anything? Or
does it mean something else? In philosophical writing, it is as important to be clear on
details as it is to cover a good amount of material.

All in all, the paper is written well and is a testament to the hard work you have put into writing it.

It was a pleasure having you in the seminar. Enjoy your Spring Break!

Best,

– Takashi