 That there are tropes seems prima facie reasonable if we reflect on such things as perception (I don’t see color in general, but the color of this object) and causation (it’s the weight of this object that leaves an impression in the palm of my hand, not weight in general). Yet, neither perception nor causation manage to distinguish between a theory positing tropes and one positing, e.g., states of affairs (universal-exemplifications), which means that the support they provide in favor of tropes is weak at best. Prima facie reasons to one side, no matter which terms they use to characterize their posits, most trope theorists agree that tropes occupy a ‘middle position’ in between universal realism and classical nominalism, something they believe allows them to reap all the benefits of both of those views without having to suffer any of their disadvantages. More precisely, in accepting the existence of properties (or, at least, something ‘property-like’), the trope theorist accepts an ontology that is fine-grained enough to be able to explain how distinct concrete particulars can be simultaneously similar to, and different from, each other (something the classical nominalist arguably fails to do, cf. Armstrong 1978). And in rejecting the existence of universals, she avoids having to accept the existence of a kind of entity many find mysterious, counterintuitive, and ‘unscientific’ (Schaffer 2001: 249f; Molnar 2003: 22–25; and Armstrong 2005: 310).