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Single Idea 21345
[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
]
Full Idea
Aristotle categorised relations as accidents - Socrates's whiteness, the sphericity of this ball - entities dependent on substances. Relations are not substances, so they must be, if anything at all, accidents.
Clarification
'Accidents' are non-essential features of things
Gist of Idea
Aristotle said relations are not substances, so (if they exist) they must be accidents
Source
report of Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], §7) by John Heil - Relations 'Historical'
Book Ref
'Routledge Companion to Metaphysics', ed/tr. Le Poidevin/Simons etc [Routledge 2012], p.312
A Reaction
Heil says this thought encouraged anti-realist views of relations, which became the norm until Russell.
The
35 ideas
with the same theme
[what we should understand a relation to be]:
21345
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Aristotle said relations are not substances, so (if they exist) they must be accidents
[Aristotle, by Heil]
|
16656
|
The separation from here to there is not the same as the separation from there to here
[Aristotle]
|
16658
|
The only reality in the category of Relation is things from another category
[Henry of Ghent]
|
16659
|
Relations do not add anything to reality, though they are real aspects of the world
[Olivi]
|
18528
|
The single imagined 'interval' between things only exists in the intellect
[Auriol]
|
18529
|
Relations are expressed either as absolute facts, or by a relational concept
[William of Ockham]
|
21346
|
The ratio between two lines can't be a feature of one, and cannot be in both
[Leibniz]
|
19383
|
A man's distant wife dying is a real change in him
[Leibniz]
|
10419
|
If relations can be reduced to, or supervene on, monadic properties of relata, they are not real
[Leibniz, by Swoyer]
|
13078
|
Relations aren't in any monad, so they are distributed, so they are not real
[Leibniz]
|
13498
|
Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations
[Peirce, by Hart,WD]
|
21576
|
With asymmetrical relations (before/after) the reduction to properties is impossible
[Russell]
|
21534
|
The only thing we can say about relations is that they relate
[Russell]
|
21540
|
Relational propositions seem to be 'about' their terms, rather than about the relation
[Russell]
|
21341
|
Philosophers of logic and maths insisted that a vocabulary of relations was essential
[Russell, by Heil]
|
5371
|
Because we depend on correspondence, we know relations better than we know the items that relate
[Russell]
|
5407
|
That Edinburgh is north of London is a non-mental fact, so relations are independent universals
[Russell]
|
21562
|
There is no complexity without relations, so no propositions, and no truth
[Russell]
|
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]
|
21339
|
We want the ontology of relations, not just a formal way of specifying them
[Heil]
|
21349
|
Two people are indirectly related by height; the direct relation is internal, between properties
[Heil]
|
21340
|
Maybe all the other features of the world can be reduced to relations
[Heil]
|
18508
|
Most philosophers now (absurdly) believe that relations fully exist
[Heil]
|
13076
|
Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata
[Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
|
13683
|
A relation is a feature of multiple objects taken together
[Sider]
|
21354
|
It may be that internal relations like proportion exist, because we directly perceive it
[MacBride]
|
14009
|
It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist
[Bourne]
|
14010
|
All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal
[Bourne]
|
14926
|
Relations without relata must be treated as universals, with their own formal properties
[Ladyman/Ross]
|
14929
|
A belief in relations must be a belief in things that are related
[Ladyman/Ross]
|
22606
|
Neo-Humeans say there are no substantial connections between anything
[Ingthorsson]
|