Online research in philosophy

I show how existing concepts of supervenience relate to two more fundamental ontological relations: determination and dependence. Determination says that the supervenient properties of a thing are a function of its base properties, while dependence says that having a supervenient property implies having a base property. I show that most varieties of supervenience are either determination relations or determination relations conjoined with dependence relations. In the process of unpacking these connections I identify limitations of existing concepts of supervenience and provide ways of overcoming them. What results is a more precise, flexible, and powerful set of tools for relating sets of properties than current concepts of supervenience provide. I apply these tools to a recalcitrant problem in the physicalism literature – the problem of extras.

Some people think that pastness, presentness and futurity (and their metric variants, such as being two days past) are genuine propeties of times and events. These putative properties are sometimes called “A properties” and the philosopers who believe in them are often called “A Theorists.” Other philosophers don’t believe in the reality of A properties, but instead say that talk that appears to be about such properties is really about “B relations” – two-place temporal relations like earlier than, simultaneous with, and later than (together with their metric variants, like two days earlier than). The latter philosophers are often called “B Theorists,” and the debate between A Theorists and B Theorists has dominated the philosophy of time since 1908.1 The two views can be put this way. The A Theory: There are genuine, irreducible A properties; talk that appears to be about A properties is not analyzable in terms of B relations.

My aim is to show that theories which try to construct truthmakers out of objects and properties/relations alone are not tenable: The Frege–Wittgenstein idea of incompleteness does not yield truthmakers. Armstrong’s theory of partial identity and the theory of moments, i.e., of non-transferable properties, yield truthmakers, but these theories have counter-intuitive consequences. I conclude that the notion of a truthmaker makes ontological demands beyond objects and properties/relations and propose that truthmakers are exemplification relations which are necessarily tied to objects and properties/relations.

In the ordinary way of representing relations, the order of the relata plays a structural role, but in the states themselves such an order often does not seem to be intrinsically present. An alternative way to represent relations makes use of positions for the arguments. This is no problem for the love relation, but for relations like the adjacency relation and cyclic relations, different assignments of objects to the positions can give exactly the same states. This is a puzzling situation. The question is what is the internal structure of relations? Is the use of positions still justified, and if so, what is their ontological status? In this paper mathematical models for relations are developed that provide more insight into the structure of relations “out there” in the real world.

'Ontological dependence' is a term of philosophical jargon which stands for a rich family of properties and relations, often taken to be among the most fundamental ontological properties and relations. Notions of ontological dependence are usually thought of as 'carving reality at its ontological joints', and as marking certain forms of ontological 'non-self-sufficiency'. The use of notions of dependence goes back as far as Aristotle's characterization of substances, and these notions are still widely used to characterize other concepts and to formulate metaphysical claims. This paper first gives an overview of the varieties of these notions, and then discusses some of their main applications.

A straightforward ontological account would be one which acknowledges relations as real beings, and that means, according to the scholastic tradition, as universals. The realist move in this sense which has been re-established within contemporary analytical ontology at least since Russell's early theory, is, however, not the only possible way to take relations seriously. In my paper I shall argue that there is much room for the ontological reconstruction of relations, even if one does not accept universals. The background for this argument is a particularist and realist theory, based on tropes ("trope" being the short name for "property instance" or "individual quality"). One way of reconstruction is that relations themselves are particulars. They are supposed to be relational or polyadic tropes (J. Bacon, D. Mertz). The other way is to hold that relations are internal or formal, and therefore do not require a category sai generis (K. Mulligan, P. Simons). I shall discuss these alternatives and finally opt for the second, i.e., the reconstruction of relations as internal to their relata. Moreover, I offer an argument for why basic relations such as existential dependence should be granted a transcategorial status within trope ontology. Hence, the gist of my paper is to take relations seriously without falling prey either to stubborn nominalism or to strict realism. What I intend to explore is a middle avenue thereby choosing the best of both sides in order to explicate a moderate view on the realism of relations.

Due to the influence of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), twentieth-century philosophers have devoted a great deal of attention to questions concerning the logic and metaphysics of relations. But systematic philosophical interest in relations does not originate in the twentieth century. On the contrary, it originates in antiquity, dating back at least to Aristotle’s short treatise, the Categories.1 In the Categories, Aristotle attempts to provide a philosophical account of relations (or relatives, ta pros ti) as part of an overall inventory of the basic kinds of things there are (onta). He identifies relations as one of the ten irreducible kinds of being, and devotes an entire chapter—the seventh chapter of the treatise—to analyzing their nature and ontological status. Aristotle’s discussion in Categories 7 provides the starting point for a long and rich tradition of thinking about relations, one which stems from antiquity, runs through the Middle Ages, and eventually makes its way into the early modern period. Despite the prominence of..

Due to the influence of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), twentieth-century philosophers have devoted a great deal of attention to questions concerning the logic and metaphysics of relations. But systematic philosophical interest in relations does not originate in the twentieth century. On the contrary, it originates in antiquity, dating back at least to Aristotle’s short treatise, the Categories.1 In the Categories, Aristotle attempts to provide a philosophical account of relations (or relatives, ta pros ti) as part of an overall inventory of the basic kinds of things there are (onta). He identifies relations as one of the ten irreducible kinds of being, and devotes an entire chapter—the seventh chapter of the treatise—to analyzing their nature and ontological status.

The purpose of this entry is to provide a systematic introduction to medieval views about the nature and ontological status of relations. Given the current state of our knowledge of medieval philosophy, especially with regard to relations, it is not possible to discuss all the nuances of even the best known medieval philosophers' views. In what follows, therefore, we shall restrict our aim to identifying and describing (a) the main types of position that were developed during the Middle Ages, and (b) the most important considerations that shaped their development. We shall have occasion along the way, however, to examine in detail certain aspects of the views of important representatives of all the main medieval positions, including Peter Abelard (1079 1142), Gilbert of Poitiers (1085 1154), Albert the Great, (1200 1280), Thomas Aquinas (1225 1274), John Duns Scotus (1265 1308), Henry Harclay (1270 1317), Peter Auriol (1280 1322), and William Ockham (1285 1347).

This paper argues for a metaphysics of relations based on a characterization of quantum entanglement in terms of non-separability, thereby regarding entanglement as a sort of holism. By contrast to a radical metaphysics of relations, the position set out in this paper recognizes things that stand in the relations, but claims that, as far as the relations are concerned, there is no need for these things to have qualitative intrinsic properties underlying the relations. This position thus opposes a metaphysics of individual things that are characterized by intrinsic properties. A principal problem of the latter position is that it seems that we cannot gain any knowledge of these properties insofar as they are intrinsic. Against this background, the rationale behind a metaphysics of relations is to avoid a gap between epistemology and metaphysics.