Relations

Edited by Thiago Xavier de Melo (Syracuse University)
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  1. How to Be a Postmodal Directionalist.Scott Dixon - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-31.
    According to directionalism, non-symmetric relations are distinct from their converses. Kit Fine (2000) argues that the directionalist faces a dilemma; they must either (i) reject the principle Uniqueness, which states that no completion (fact, state of affairs, or proposition) is a completion of more than one relation, or (ii) reject the principle Identity, which states that each completion of a relation is identical to a completion of its converse (e.g., Dante’s loving Bice is identical to Bice’s being loved by Dante). (...)
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  2. Directionalism and Relations of Arbitrary Symmetry.Scott Dixon - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    Maureen Donnelly has recently argued that directionalism, the view that relations have a direction, applying to their relata in an order, is unable to properly treat certain symmetric relations. She alleges that it must count the application of such a relation to an appropriate number of objects in a given order as distinct from its application to those objects in any other ordering of them. I reply by showing how the directionalist can link the application conditions of any fixed arity (...)
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  3. Measuring one-dimensional diversity.Karin Enflo - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    A large number of diversity measures have been proposed in the literature, almost all of which are designed for sets with elements that differ in multiple aspects. However, these types of measures are not appropriate for sets with elements that differ in a single aspect only, such as duration, value or probability. In this essay I present a new measure of diversity, designed specifically for single aspect diversity. The measure captures the intuitive idea that single aspect diversity is affected by (...)
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  4. Nominalist Relationalism about Ontological Categories and Forms.Jani Hakkarainen - forthcoming - In Javier Cumpa, Categorial Ontologies: From Realism to Eliminativism. Routledge.
    In this paper, I first argue for a relational account of the concept of ontological form and its difference from being. The former is explicated by the concepts of character-neutral internal relation and existence or being and that the ontological forms of entities consist in these formal ontological relations in which the entities stand. Secondly, I apply this account to ontological categories and their membership-determination, existence and reality. Here I also defend a relational view that categories are construed as pluralities (...)
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  5. Connexions et relations.Gilles Kassel - forthcoming - Revue Ouverte d'Intelligence Artificielle.
    In this article, we pursue the definition of an ontological framework and a species of ontologies called “epistemic ontologies” by focusing on the complex entities, physical and mental, that populate the world. These entities unify other entities on which they unilaterally existentially depend. These complex entities include states of affairs (in the physical sphere) and propositions and events (in the mental sphere). To account for their unity, we appeal to the ontological figure of ‘connection’, in reference to Gustav Bergmann's notion (...)
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  6. Review of The Metaphysics of Relations, Edited by Marmodoro & Yates, OUP, 2015. [REVIEW]Fraser MacBride - forthcoming - Philosophy.
    In this review I take to task the related views of E.J. Lowe, John Heil and Peter Simons according to which relations don't exist because they're dispensable qua truth-makers. I argue that this view is methodologically unstable because we also have reason to believe that relations exist because our best mathematical and scientific theories say so, i.e. quantify over them.
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  7. (1 other version)“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Substance” in Don Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.Yitzhak Melamed - forthcoming - In Garrett Don, The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. 2nd edition. Cambriddge University Press.
    ‘Substance’ (substantia, zelfstandigheid) is a key term of Spinoza’s philosophy. Like almost all of Spinoza’s philosophical vocabulary, Spinoza did not invent this term, which has a long history that can be traced back at least to Aristotle. Yet, Spinoza radicalized the traditional notion of substance and made a very powerful use of it by demonstrating – or at least attempting to demonstrate -- that there is only one, unique substance -- God (or Nature) -- and that all other things are (...)
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  8. Ordinal Type Theory.Jan Plate - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Higher-order logic, with its type-theoretic apparatus known as the simple theory of types (STT), has increasingly come to be employed in theorizing about properties, relations, and states of affairs—or ‘intensional entities’ for short. This paper argues against this employment of STT and offers an alternative: ordinal type theory (OTT). Very roughly, STT and OTT can be regarded as complementary simplifications of the ‘ramified theory of types’ outlined in the Introduction to Principia Mathematica (on a realist reading). While STT, understood as (...)
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  9. Quo Vadis, Metaphysics of Relations? (Introduction to a Special Issue of Dialectica on the Metaphysics of Relational States).Jan Plate - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    A many-faceted beast, the metaphysics of relations can be approached from many angles. One could begin with the various ways in which relational states are expressed in natural language. If a more historical treatment is wanted, one could begin with Plato, Aristotle, or Leibniz. In the following, I will approach the topic by first drawing on Russell’s Principles of Mathematics (1903) (still a natural-enough starting point), and then turn to a discussion mainly of positionalism. The closing section contains an overview (...)
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  10. The Identity of Necessary Indiscernibles.Zach Thornton - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.
    I propose a novel metaphysical explanation of identity and distinctness facts called the Modal Proposal. According to the Modal Proposal, for each identity fact – that is, each fact of the form a=b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is necessary that the entities involved are indiscernible, and for each distinctness fact –that is, each fact of the form a≠b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is possible for the entities (...)
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  11. From Atoms to Complexes: The Metaphysics of Relations.Ellē Benjamin - 2025 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
    This dissertation defends the existence of relations and their role in constructing structural universals—complex, multiply-located properties. Chapter 1 reviews historical debates on the existence of relations, advocates for a truth-making approach to ontology, and argues that relations are required as truth-makers for relational claims. Chapter 2 examines two competing theories of relations—Positionalism and Anti-Positionalism—as potential truth-makers for relational claims, showing that Positionalism provides a more satisfactory account. Chapter 3 critiques contemporary theories of structural universals and demonstrates how Positionalist relations overcome (...)
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  12. Aristotle on natural simultaneity of relatives in the categories.António Pedro Mesquita - 2025 - New York: Routledge.
    This book addresses the issue of natural simultaneity of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in Categories 7, 7b15-8a12. Natural simultaneity is a form of symmetrical ontological dependence that holds between items that are not causally linked. In this section of the Categories, Aristotle introduces this topic in his analysis of relatives and maintains that, although relatives seem to be for the most part simultaneous by nature, there seem to be some exceptions. He mentions two pairs of relatives as exceptions, namely the (...)
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  13. Properties.Francesco Orilia & Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2025 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    2025 update of the entry "Properties".
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  14. The Ontology of Relations.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2025 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    This book provides an exhaustive overview of the ontology of relations. Moreover, it offers a detailed defense of the existence of irreducible relations in the universe and shows that entities such as powers should be better thought of as relations. At first, the author discusses many classical arguments for and against the existence of relations and draws preliminary distinctions between internal and external relations and symmetrical and non-symmetrical relations. He defends the existence of irreducible relations against several objections, most notably (...)
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  15. Parthood Without Mereology.M. Botti - 2024 - Dissertation, Columbia University
    Objects have, and themselves are, parts. If we endorse a sufficiently liberal notion of object, anything is an object and anything, excluding the universe, is a part of some larger one. If we think that the universe, too, is an object, then any object is a part of it. What is it, then, for an object to be a part? -/- Contra the orthodoxy, in my dissertation I argue that to be a part is no more a relation than to (...)
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  16. A fictionalist theory of universals.Tim Button & Robert Trueman - 2024 - In Peter Fritz & Nicholas K. Jones, Higher-Order Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    Universals are putative objects like wisdom, morality, redness, etc. Although we believe in properties (which, we argue, are not a kind of object), we do not believe in universals. However, a number of ordinary, natural language constructions seem to commit us to their existence. In this paper, we provide a fictionalist theory of universals, which allows us to speak as if universals existed, whilst denying that any really do.
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  17. ZF-Class Nominalism and the Küng-Armstrong Trilemma. A Plea for Moderate Ineffabilism.Francesco F. Calemi - 2024 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 33 (2):205--2023.
    This paper will examine the Küng-Armstrong trilemma against Class Nominalism. We will see that combining Class Nominalism and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF) can provide us with a sophisticated version of Class Nominalism, namely ZF-Class Nominalism, which successfully addresses the objection and leads to a moderate version of ineffabilism about the putative set-membership relation.
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  18. Functional completeness and primitive positive decomposition of relations on finite domains.Sergiy Koshkin - 2024 - Logic Journal of the IGPL 32.
    We give a new and elementary construction of primitive positive decomposition of higher arity relations into binary relations on finite domains. Such decompositions come up in applications to constraint satisfaction problems, clone theory and relational databases. The construction exploits functional completeness of 2-input functions in many-valued logic by interpreting relations as graphs of partially defined multivalued ‘functions’. The ‘functions’ are then composed from ordinary functions in the usual sense. The construction is computationally effective and relies on well-developed methods of functional (...)
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  19. Against Second-Order Logic: Quine and Beyond.Fraser MacBride - 2024 - In Peter Fritz & Nicholas K. Jones, Higher-Order Metaphysics. Oxford University Press. pp. 378-401.
    Is second-order logic logic? Famously Quine argued second-order logic wasn't logic but his arguments have been the subject of influential criticisms. In the early sections of this paper, I develop a deeper perspective upon Quine's philosophy of logic by exploring his positive conception of what logic is for and hence what logic is. Seen from this perspective, I argue that many of the criticisms of his case against second-order logic miss their mark. Then, in the later sections, I go beyond (...)
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  20. An experimental study on the ontology of relations.Francesco Orilia & Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2024 - Synthese 203 (art. 75):1-21.
    There is an ongoing debate on the ontology of relations, which features four main competing approaches: directionalism, positionalism, anti-positionalism, and primitivism. This paper focuses on a particular version of positionalism, namely role positionalism, and proposes the results of an experimental philosophy research concerning aspects of it. We tested the intuitions of ordinary subjects regarding the inter-relational generality of the roles typically assumed for spatial and kinematic relations, namely source, destination, theme, location. According to a 2014 paper by Orilia, this generality (...)
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  21. The Paradox of Process Philosophy.Friso Timmenga - 2024 - Inscriptions 7 (2):158-167.
    This essay critically discusses the rising interest in process philosophy in recent years. I argue that the appeal of process philosophy lies in its ability to circumnavigate the binary dichotomies pervasive in European philosophy and defend an interpretation of process philosophy in terms of relationality, difference, and change. After outlining the central tenets of process philosophy, Graham Harman’s critique of a relational account of process philosophy is examined, particularly his assertion that this type of philosophy cannot fully explain genuine change. (...)
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  22. A Proposal for a Metaphysics of Self-Subsisting Structures. II. Quantum Physics.Antonio Vassallo, Pedro Naranjo & Tim Koslowski - 2024 - Foundations of Physics 54 (5):1-29.
    The paper presents an extension of the metaphysics of self-subsisting structures set out in a companion paper to the realm of non-relativistic quantum physics. The discussion is centered around a Pure Shape Dynamics model representing a relational implementation of a de Broglie-Bohm N-body system. An interpretation of this model in terms of self-subsisting structures is proposed and assessed against the background of the debate on the metaphysics of quantum physics, with a particular emphasis on the nature of the wave function. (...)
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  23. "Chomden Reldri on Dharmakīrti's Examination of Relations".Allison Aitken - 2023 - In Kurtis Schaeffer, Jue Liang & McGrath William, Histories of Tibet: Essays in Honor of Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. pp. 283–305.
    Dharmakīrti’s (c. seventh century) Examination of Relations (Sambandhaparīkṣā) is unique in the Indian Buddhist canon for its being the only extant root text devoted entirely to the topic of the ontological status of relations. But the core thesis of this treatise—that relations are only nominally real—is in prima facie tension with another claim that is central to Dharmakīrti’s epistemology: that there exists some kind of “natural relation” (svabhāvapratibandha) that reliably underwrites inferences. Understanding how Dharmakīrti can consistently rely on natural relations (...)
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  24. Symmetric relations.Scott Dixon - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (12):3615-3639.
    There are two ways to characterize symmetric relations. One is intensional: necessarily, _Rxy_ iff _Ryx_. In some discussions of relations, however, what is important is whether or not a relation gives rise to the same completion of a given type (fact, state of affairs, or proposition) for each of its possible applications to some fixed relata. Kit Fine calls relations that do ‘strictly symmetric’. Is there is a difference between the notions of necessary and strict symmetry that would prevent them (...)
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  25. In Defense of Irreducible Relations.Francesco Orilia & Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2023 - Argumenta 8 (2):387-405.
    At least since Russell, mainstream analytic philosophy has distinguished internal and external relations and acknowledged the existence of both. This seems in line with both the manifest and scientific images of the world. However, there is a recent deflationary trend about relations, which focuses on the truthmakers of relational statements in order to show that putative external relations are in fact internal, and that internal relations do not really exist. Lowe’s posthumous 2016 paper is a thorough presentation of this line (...)
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  26. Events and Modes.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2023 - Metaphysica 24 (1):71-99.
    I shall refine in this article Jaegwon Kim's theory of events by appealing to modes, i.e., particular properties that also depend on their 'bearers' for their identity. Events will turn out to be occurrent modes, i.e., relational modes having further modes and times as their relata. In Section 1 I shall briefly present Kim's theory and some difficulties that affect it. In Section 2, after having made some preliminary assumptions on modes and universals, I shall introduce occurrent modes. In Section (...)
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  27. Relationism and the Problem of Order.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2023 - Acta Analytica 38 (2):245-273.
    Relationism holds that objects entirely depend on relations or that they must be eliminated in favour of the latter. In this article, I raise a problem for relationism. I argue that relationism cannot account for the order in which non-symmetrical relations apply to their relata. In Section 1, I introduce some concepts in the ontology of relations and define relationism. In Section 2, I present the Problem of Order for non-symmetrical relations, after distinguishing it from the Problem of Differential Application. (...)
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  28. Symmetric relations, symmetric theories, and Pythagrapheanism.Tim Button - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (3):583-612.
    It is a metaphysical orthodoxy that interesting non-symmetric relations cannot be reduced to symmetric ones. This orthodoxy is wrong. I show this by exploring the expressive power of symmetric theories, i.e. theories which use only symmetric predicates. Such theories are powerful enough to raise the possibility of Pythagrapheanism, i.e. the possibility that the world is just a vast, unlabelled, undirected graph.
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  29. FORT: a minimal Foundational Ontological Relations Theory for Conceptual Modeling Tasks.Fatima Danash & Danielle Ziebelin - 2022 - 41st International Conference on Conceptual Modeling.
    Foundational relations play an important role in the ontological foundations of conceptual modeling. Their investigation has been theoretically addressed in philosophical/ontological theories, and empirically offered in foundational ontologies (FOs). FOs are comprehensive theories that model the world as top-level entities and relations. Empirically, for modelers aiming to use foundational relations without an urge for entity types, FOs seem to be complex to comprehend, comply with, and integrate in practice. And since the practice of these relations is critical for conceptual modeling (...)
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  30. Contraries, Oppositions, and Contradictions: A Species/Genus Account of Humean Contrariety.Brent Delaney - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-22.
    Hume’s account of contrariety in Book I of the Treatise poses several interpretive puzzles. I consider each in turn and offer a novel interpretation of contrariety based on Hume’s discussion of the passions. That Book II and Book I form a complete chain of reasoning suggests that the way in which passions are related is analogous to the way in which ideas are related in the understanding. I argue that Hume identifies three species of empirical contrariety in Book II: contraries, (...)
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  31. Do Humean Relations Exist?Brent Delaney - 2022 - Philosophica 30 (59):155-173.
    Since the publication of Hume’s Treatise, scholars have been divided on how to interpret the ontology of Humean relations. In particular, is Hume’s theory of relations consistent with positivism, (skeptical) realism, or anti-realism? In this essay, I propose a novel distinction separating impressions and ideas from relations such that relations are construed as forming a distinct category equal to impressions and ideas. In so doing, I interpret Hume as fundamentally agnostic toward the ontology of relations.
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  32. Naturalness, Arbitrariness, and Serious Ontology.A. R. J. Fisher - 2022 - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher, Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 134-53.
    David Lewis is typically interpreted as a class nominalist. One consequence of class nominalism, which he embraced, is that the reduction of ordered pairs, triples, etc to unordered sets of sets is conventional. The reaction by his Australian counterparts D.M. Armstrong and Peter Forrest was that Lewis was not being ontologically serious. This chapter evaluates this debate over serious ontology. It is argued that in one sense Lewis is ontologically serious, but that his additional commitment to structuralism about classes should (...)
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  33. Why 0-adic Relations Have Truth Conditions: Essence, Ground, and Non-Hylomorphic Russellian Propositions.Cody Gilmore - 2022 - In Chris Tillman & Adam Murray, The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge.
    I formulate an account, in terms of essence and ground, that explains why atomic Russellian propositions have the truth conditions they do. The key ideas are that (i) atomic propositions are just 0-adic relations, (ii) truth is just the 1-adic version of the instantiation (or, as I will say, holding) relation (Menzel 1993: 86, note 27), and (iii) atomic propositions have the truth conditions they do for basically the same reasons that partially plugged relations, like being an x and a (...)
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  34. The Fundamentality and Non-Fundamentality of Ontological Categories.Jani Hakkarainen - 2022 - In Miroslaw Szatkowski, Jonathan Lowe and Ontology. Routledge.
    In this paper, I propose a solution to an almost ignored problem in metaphysics and metametaphysics: what is categorial fundamentality and non-fundamentality? My proposal builds on E. J. Lowe’s view on the issue. By means of the newcomer notion of generic identity, I can give an account of something that Lowe did not explicate: the constitution of formal ontolog- ical relations. Formal ontological relations (e.g. instantiation) are internal relations that deter- mine ontological form and category-membership. I argue that categorial fundamentality (...)
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  35. Bradley’s Relation Regress and the Inadequacy of the Relata-Specific Answer.Jani Hakkarainen & Markku Keinänen - 2022 - Acta Analytica 38 (2):229-243.
    F. H. Bradley’s relation regress poses a difficult problem for metaphysics of relations. In this paper, we reconstruct this regress argument systematically and make its presuppositions explicit in order to see where the possibility of its solution or resolution lies. We show that it cannot be answered by claiming that it is not vicious. Neither is one of the most promising resolutions, the relata-specific answer adequate in its present form. It attempts to explain adherence (relating), which is a crucial component (...)
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  36. Lowe’s Eliminativism about Relations and the Analysis of Relational Inherence.Markku Keinänen - 2022 - In Mirosław Szatkowski, E. J. Lowe and Ontology. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 105-122.
    Contrary to widely shared opinion in analytic metaphysics, E.J. Lowe argues against the existence of relations in his posthumously published paper There are probably no relations (2016). In this article, I assess Lowe’s eliminativist strategy, which aims to show that all contingent “relational facts” have a monadic foundation in modes characterizing objects. Second, I present two difficult ontological problems supporting eliminativism about relations. Against eliminativism, metaphysicians of science have argued that relations might well be needed in the best a posteriori (...)
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  37. Is Peirce’s Reduction Thesis Gerrymandered?Sergiy Koshkin - 2022 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 58 (4):271-300.
    We argue that traditional formulations of the reduction thesis that tie it to privileged relational operations do not suffice for Peirce’s justification of the categories and invite the charge of gerrymandering to make it come out as true. We then develop a more robust invariant formulation of the thesis, one that is immune to that charge, by explicating the use of triads in any relational operations. The explication also allows us to track how Thirdness enters the structure of higher order (...)
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  38. The Magical Santayanan Groundwork for Metaphysical Coherentism.Forrest Adam Sopuck - 2022 - The Pluralist 17 (2):107-140.
    There is a tension in Santayana's ontological system, one that is generated by the interactions of his doctrine of existence, doctrine of systematization, and critical agnosticism on the infinity of material substance. From and, in conjunction with what will be called the expansionist postulate, an infinite material expansion is generated, one that is in conflict with. This tension is remediated by a coherentist proposal regarding Santayanan existence, the relevant feature of which is that existents at distinct orders of organization are (...)
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  39. Aristotle and Linearity in Substance, Measure, and Motion.Paul Taborsky - 2022 - Axiomathes 32 (6):1375-1399.
    The model of a closed linear measure space, which can be used to model Aristotle’s treatment of motion (kinesis), can be analogically extended to the qualitative ‘spaces’ implied by his theory of contraries in Physics I and in Metaphysics Iota, and to the dimensionless ‘space’ of the unity of matter and form discussed in book Eta of the Metaphysics. By examining Aristotle’s remarks on contraries, the subject of change, continuity, and the unity of matter and form, Aristotle’s thoughts on motion, (...)
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  40. Natural Fiction and Artifice in Hume's Treatise.Brent C. Delaney - 2021 - Dissertation, York University
    David Hume's early philosophy appeals to fiction and artifice to explain several important features in our cognitive and social activity. In this dissertation, I develop a typology of Humean fictions and artifices to clarify and render his account consistent. In so doing, I identify a special class of fictions I divide into natural fictions and natural artifices. I argue that this special class of fictions represents a significant break with prior English-speaking philosophers, such as Francis Bacon and John Locke, in (...)
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  41. Explaining the differential application of non-symmetric relations.Maureen Donnelly - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3587-3610.
    Non-symmetric relations like loves or between can apply to the same relata in non-equivalent ways. For example, loves may apply to Abelard and Eloise either by Abelard’s loving Eloise or by Eloise’s loving Abelard. On the standard account of relations, different applications of a relation to fixed relata are distinguished by the direction in which the relation applies to the relata. But neither Directionalism nor its most popular rival, Positionalism, offer accounts of differential application that generalize to relations of arbitrary (...)
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  42. Mechanisms and Relations.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2021 - Erkenntnis 86 (1):95-111.
    Mechanisms are organized collections of objects and activities that underlie certain phenomena/behaviours. In this article, I shall argue that the organizations of mechanisms should be thought of as external relations, namely, as relations that do not entirely depend on their relata’s existence, nor on their natures, nor on their intrinsic properties. After having introduced in the first two sections mechanisms and the ontology of relations, I shall analyse the organizations of mechanisms along four different dimensions: spatial, temporal, causal and hierarchical. (...)
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  43. Emergence and Structural Properties.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2021 - Synthese 198 (9):8755-8778.
    I present in this article a new theory of structural properties or, more precisely, of structural kinds, such as being methane. According to this theory, structural kinds are kinds that are both emergent and sustained in their existence. In the first section, I introduce structural properties and four problems that affect the most widely held conception of them, namely, the pictorial conception. In the second section, I introduce some theses about emergence, powers, emergent powers, relations and structures that I have (...)
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  44. Structures as Relations.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 11):S2671-S2690.
    I shall explore in this article the hypothesis that structures are relations between the components of complex entities. After having introduced hylomorphism, its major advantages and the major views of the nature of structures, I shall introduce the distinctions between external and internal relations and the one between symmetrical and non-symmetrical relations. I shall also describe the theory of non-symmetrical relations that I accept, i.e., the O-Roles theory, as most structures seem to be external and non-symmetrical relations. Later on, I (...)
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  45. Spatial Relations Are External.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (3):341-355.
    The thesis I wish to argue for in this article is that spatial relations such as occupying and being 1 km distant from are external. In the “Section 1” section, I shall introduce the distinction between external and internal relations and some other basic concepts in the ontology of relations. Afterwards, in the subsequent sections, I shall deal with different theories of space: substantivalism and relationism ; the spatial property theory ; super-substantivalism and super-relationism ; and spatial essentialism. I shall (...)
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  46. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Modes.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2021 - Metaphysica 22 (2):223-249.
    I offer in this article an account of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties based on the ontology of modes. Modes are particular properties that directly depend for their identity on their "bearers". In Section 1, I shall introduce the ontology of modes. In Section 2, I shall examine the problem of distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic properties by considering another, related problem: that of distinguishing between internal and external relations. In Section 3, I shall present my own account (...)
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  47. Slot Theory and Slotite Theory.Nikk Effingham - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (1):17-35.
    ‘Instantiation-directed slot theorists’ believe that properties/relations have slots which are filled by their instances/relata e.g., where Abigail is taller than Bronia, there are two slots in the relation Taller Than such that Abigail fills the first slot and Bronia fills the second. This crude statement of the theory runs into ‘The Problem of Filling’, whereby a natural understanding of the relation between slots, filling, and instantiation leads to absurd results. This paper examines a variety of solutions to that problem, one (...)
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  48. Measures of Similarity.Karin Enflo - 2020 - Theoria 86 (1):73-99.
    This article analyses the relationship between the concept of single aspect similarity and proposed measures of similarity. More precisely, it compares eleven measures of similarity in terms of how well they satisfy a list of desiderata, chosen to capture common intuitions concerning the properties of similarity and the relations between similarity and dissimilarity. Three types of measures are discussed: similarity as commonality, similarity as a function of dissimilarity, and similarity as a joint function of commonality and difference. Relative to the (...)
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  49. (1 other version)A pragmatist view of the metaphysics of entanglement.Richard Healey - 2020 - Synthese 197 (10):4265-4302.
    Quantum entanglement is widely believed to be a feature of physical reality with undoubted (though debated) metaphysical implications. But Schrödinger introduced entanglement as a theoretical relation between representatives of the quantum states of two systems. Entanglement represents a physical relation only if quantum states are elements of physical reality. So arguments for metaphysical holism or nonseparability from entanglement rest on a questionable view of quantum theory. Assignment of entangled quantum states predicts experimentally confirmed violation of Bell inequalities. Can one use (...)
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  50. Properties.Francesco Orilia & Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    2020 update of the entry "Properties".
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