 The suggestion is not without its critics. To these belong MacBride who argues that, “…to call a trope relational is to pack into its essence the relating function it is supposed to perform without explaining what Bradley’s regress calls into question, viz. the capacity of relations to relate” (2011: 173). Rather than solve the problem, in other words, MacBride thinks the suggestion “transfers our original puzzlement to that thing [i.e., the compresence-relation]”. For, he asks “how can positing the existence of a relational trope explain anything about its capacity to relate when it has been stipulated to be the very essence of R that it relates a and b. It is as though the capacity of relational tropes to relate is explained by mentioning the fact that they have a ‘virtus relativa’”(ibid.).