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| 21354 | It may be that internal relations like proportion exist, because we directly perceive it |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers maintain that we literally perceive proportions and other internal relations. These relations must exist, otherwise we couldn't perceive them. | |||
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 3) | |||
| A reaction: [He cites Mulligan 1991, and Hochberg 2013:232] This seems a rather good point. You can't perceive the differing heights of two people, yet fail to perceive that one is taller. You also perceive 'below', which is external. |
| 21353 | Internal relations are fixed by existences, or characters, or supervenience on characters |
| Full Idea: Internal relations are determined either by the mere existence of the things they relate, or by their intrinsic characters, or they supervene on the intrinsic characters of the things they relate. | |||
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 3) | |||
| A reaction: Suggesting that they 'supervene' doesn't explain anything (and supervenience never explains anything). I vote for the middle one - the intrinsic character. It has to be something about the existence, and not the mere fact of existence. |
| 21352 | 'Multigrade' relations are those lacking a fixed number of relata |
| Full Idea: A 'unigrade' relation R has a definite degree or adicity: R is binary, or ternary....or n-ary (for some unique n). By contrast a relation is 'multigrade' if it fails to be unigrade. Causation appears to be multigrade. | |||
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 1) | |||
| A reaction: He also cites entailment, which may have any number of premises. |