Relata-Specific Relations: A Response to Vallicella

Abstract

According to Vallicella's‘Relations, Monism, and the Vindication of Bradley's Regress’ (2002), if relations are to relate their relata, some special operator must do the relating. No other options will do. In this paper we reject Vallicella's conclusion by considering an important option that becomes visible only if we hold onto a precise distinction between the following three feature‐pairs of relations: internality/externality, universality/particularity, relata‐specificity/relata‐unspecificity. The conclusion we reach is that if external relations are to relate their relata, they must be relata‐specific (and no special operator is needed). As it eschews unmereological complexes, this outcome is of relevance to defenders of the extensionality of composition.

Bradley’s Regress

“…Bradley's argument has been much discussed in the literature. More recent contributions include e.g.,Allard (2005);Cameron (2008); Mander (1994);Maurin (2010Maurin ( , 2011Schnieder (2004);Stock (1998);Vallicella (2002);Wieland & Betti (2008).3 For more discussion of this (slightly cryptic) part ofBradley's argument cf. also, Baxter (1996).…”

Estados de cosas y relaciones de fundación

“…Intuiciones en este mismo sentido ya han sido propuestas con anterioridad (cf. Mertz, 1996, 184-195;Meinertsen, 2008;Wieland y Betti, 2008;Maurin, 2011) pero sin introducir relaciones de fundación que hacen la situación teórica mucho más perspicua. Para el caso de un estado de cosas [Ux 1 x 2 …x n t] supóngase un tropo U-en-x 1 , x 2 , …, xn, t. Tal como se ha indicado, debe suponerse que es parte de las condiciones de identidad de tal tropo el ser precisamente la instanciación de U y no de otro universal, y el estar instanciado en x 1 , x 2 , …, x n , t y no otros objetos y otro instante de tiempo.…”

A Neo-Armstrongian Defense of States of Affairs: A Reply to Vallicella

“…It is clear that the argument applies not only to relational facts ordinarily so-called but also to monadic ones since if an individual has a property, and properties are universals, the individual is in some sense or other "related" to the property. Thus for a 3 For other similar statements of the problem see Simons (1994), Maurin (2010), Wieland and Betti (2008), Meinertsen (2008), and Orilia (2006), to name just a few. 4 Note that the sense of "internal" here is different than the customary one.…”

“…If the proponent of the "how relations relate" question is not to be accused of a bias against relations, he needs to offer some preliminary reasons for thinking that an entity whose ontological role is to relate is somehow not up to the task. Without such reasons, the proponent of relating relations can legitimately insist that to ask "how relations relate" in this 11 See Simons (1994), Maurin (2010), Meinertsen (2008), and Wieland and Betti (2008) for such framing of the problem.…”