 Swapping: According to the so-called ‘swapping argument’ (first formulated in Armstrong 1989: 131–132; cf. also Schaffer 2001: 250f; Ehring 2011:  78f.),[22]  if properties are tropes, and individuation is primitive, two distinct yet exactly similar tropes might swap places (this redness here might have been there, and vice versa). The result, post-swap, is a situation that is ontologically distinct from that pre-swap. However, empirically/causally the pre- and post-swap situations are nevertheless the same (cf. LaBossiere 1993: 262 and Denkel 1996: 173f. for arguments to the contrary). That is, given the natural laws as we know them, that this red-trope here swaps places with that red-trope there makes no difference to the future evolution of things. Which means that, not only would the world look, feel and smell exactly the same to us pre- and post-swap, it would be in principle impossible to construct a device able to distinguish the two situations from one another. The reason for this is precisely that any device able to detect the (primitive) difference between the two situations would have be able to somehow communicate this difference (say, by making a sound, by turning a handle, or …). But since whether this red-trope here is there or not makes no difference to the future evolution of things, it can make no difference to whatever the device does when we turn it on (cf. Dasgupta 2009). This makes admitting the possibility of swapping seem unnecessary. If we also accept the (arguably reasonable) Eleatic principle according to which only changes that matter empirically/causally should count as genuine, we can draw the even stronger conclusion that swapping is not genuinely possible, and, hence, that any account of individuation from which it follows that it is, should be  abandoned.[23]