more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 5371

[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations ]

Full Idea

We can know the properties of the relations required to preserve the correspondence between sense-data and reality, but we cannot know the nature of the terms between which the relations hold.

Gist of Idea

Because we depend on correspondence, we know relations better than we know the items that relate

Source

Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 3)

Book Ref

Russell,Bertrand: 'The Problems of Philosophy' [OUP 1995], p.16

A Reaction

Thus Russell always puts great emphasis on relations in his metaphysics. I would say that he is right, and that what he calls the 'nature of the terms' are essences, and that these are knowable, by inference and explanation.

The 35 ideas with the same theme [what we should understand a relation to be]:

21345 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]
14216 The 'positionalist' view of relations says the number of places is fixed, but not the order [Fine,K]
14217 The 'standard' view of relations is that they hold of several objects in a given 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]