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Full Idea
Roads in the directional sense (A-to-B or B-to-A) are merely roads in the adirectional sense up which a direction has been imposed.
Gist of Idea
Language imposes a direction on a road which is not really part of the road
Source
Kit Fine (Neutral Relations [2000], 1)
Book Ref
-: 'Philosophical Review' [-], p.6
A Reaction
This is Fine's linguistic objection to the standard view of relations. It is undeniable that language imposes an order where it may not exist ('Bob and Jane play tennis'), and this fact is very significant in discussing relations.
Related Idea
Idea 14217 The 'standard' view of relations is that they hold of several objects in a given order [Fine,K]
| 14217 | The 'standard' view of relations is that they hold of several objects in a given order [Fine,K] |
| 14216 | The 'positionalist' view of relations says the number of places is fixed, but not the order [Fine,K] |
| 14218 | A block on top of another contains one relation, not both 'on top of' and 'beneath' [Fine,K] |
| 14219 | Language imposes a direction on a road which is not really part of the road [Fine,K] |
| 14220 | Explain biased relations as orderings of the unbiased, or the unbiased as permutation classes of the biased? [Fine,K] |