Additionally, one of Ockham’s great arguments against Scotus is this. If there are polyadic properties, then how would I explain my spatial relation to the rest of the universe? I would have an infinite (or at least very large) number of polyadic properties instantiated jointly by me and every point in space to which I am spatially related. Additionally, when I move, all these polyadic properties would be destroyed, and I and every point in space to which I am spatially related would jointly instantiate an infinite (or at least very large) number of new polyadic properties. Talk about multiplying extramental entities beyond necessity!

Brilliant. I’m tempted to adopt Scotus’s view so that I can think of the world in that way. I would also like to tell people “hold on a sec, my polyadic properties need to be jointly instantiated”.

Funny that the use of “pale” as an example so readily brings up questions about scientific vs common sense realism and makes color skepticism a relevant topic.

“Some predicates can be true of only one subject. For example, I can use the predicate ‘pale’ of John: I can say ‘John is pale.’, without the need to consider another subject.?”

Perhaps ‘pale’ might be too involved with the comparison of humans to be the best example of a predicate true of the object, John. But as a scientist I could make a measurement that John reflects mostly photons of wavelength X nanometers when in sunlight, which we will call the Pale wavelength of light. Other scientists could test this and agree. But this again is only true in sunlight. Nighttime he reflects mostly a different wavelength because the night time color range differs. The relational context of these property statements also embody the problem of ‘What is a nanometer?’ In the 1960s several scientists discussed how to begin communicating with beings from another solar system. If one civilization tells another civilization about a machine as in the movie Contact, the standards of measure become an issue. It is possible to eventually agree on standards using particular physical measurements of atomic properties. The scientists identified

1. set of very specific pulsars in the milky way
2. which star near these pulsars is our sun
3. which planet near the sun is our planet
4. then finally defined a set of standards for measuring distance, mass, etc, related to measurable properties of specific particles.

So I think we could eventually come up with a definition of a property of John’s skin at noon on a typical day on earth under our sun. … So I finally agree with JT’s statement that “John is pale” is not a relational comparison but a measurable property, if pale is a particular wavelength of reflected photons under our noonday sun. …. Science works to create ‘objective truth’ through a consensus of standards (with only a slight degree of fuzziness).

One must note that the above methodology works only for beings of our galaxy. We would have to identify our galaxy among billions of galaxies, which perhaps could be done.

One must also note that John is pale because of our specific universe. We know what pale photons are because we can compare their wavelength to some agreed upon standard that is in the universe. Obviously there is no standard by which to define John’s pale color without the context of the universe. So, given our universe and the scientists who agree upon a standard measure, John is pale!

… but now I forget why ‘john is pale!’ matters to God and Picasso.

The problem I find with trying to compare modern (continental) claims about relationality with classical philosophical claims about relationality is this: the terms we use today are often loaded with extra little meanings that aren’t necessarily present in the classical discussion, and this leads to misconstruing the classical position pretty badly.

For example, it is common to say the self arises out of relation. But what do we mean by ‘self’? This seems to me a highly specialized term that entails, among other things, self-awareness, consciousnesses, intentionality, and so forth. The idea seems to be that if an object exhibits these features, then we can call it ‘a self’.

But the scholastics agree that these self-features are relational. For example, most scholastics argue that one cannot have intentionality without an object (of intention), so intentionally ontologically requires an object (of intention). If self-features are constituted relationally, and if ‘a self’ is anything which has self-features, then everybody agrees that ‘a self’ is dependent on the relations which constitute ‘the self’.

Another example is the use of the word ‘constitutes’ (as in ‘a self is constituted by relations). Here, ‘constitute’ seems to mean something like ‘is an essential or necessary condition/circumstance/requirement’. If this is right, then if we say that the self is constituted by its relations, we really mean that those relations are essential or necessary conditions or requirements of being ‘a self’. Intentionality, to stick to our example, cannot occur without an object, and so being related to an object intentionally is an essential or necessary condition for intentionality. There can be no intentionality without that relation.

But again, the scholastics completely hold to this. They think there are plenty of polyadic properties (such as intentionality) that things have which are essential and/or necessary for a thing to be the thing it is. A human, for example, can’t be human without intentionality. And the scholastics all argue that these sorts of essential polyadic properties constitute the thing (precisely because that thing cannot be without those polyadic properties).

Kleiner mentions that the relational-metaphysics people are reacting to ‘substance metaphysics’, which is basically a rejection of the claim that relations are accidents. I think this is dead on the money. From what I’ve read in people like Buber, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas (and possibly Derrida), this is exactly what’s going on.

The insight here seems to be that (some) relations are not accidents, so anybody who thinks relations are accidents must be wrong. We could bring up intentionality again to make the point: intentionality cannot be intentionality without being related to an object, so ‘being related to an object’ cannot be accidental. It is, rather, essential and necessary for intentionality to exist at all.

But I don’t know any scholastic (or classical philosopher) who argues that relations are only accidents. The scholastics believe there are plenty of relations which are essential and constitutive of certain kinds of substances (for example, intentionality, consciousness, or even existence itself — since the scholastics thought we were all created such that existence itself is constituted by a relation to a creator). So I’m not really sure who it is that the relational-metaphysicians have in mind when they react to ‘substance metaphysics’.

Additionally, there is a very basic sense in which all of Aristotle’s metaphysics is relational. For Arisotle, everything comes to be and passes away according to act and potency. A lump of clay, for example, is potentially a statue, and when someone shapes it into a statue, that potentiality is actualized. But for Aristotle, act and potency are relational (Notice that act and potency are two-place predicates). So for Aristotle, nothing at all can even exist without being related.

Yeah, I suspect there’s just a lot of misunderstanding in the substance/relation metaphysics stuff.

So my answer is: no. Saying that things are really related in the ways we say they are does not commit one to little threads. It just means we have to do a little work to say why the statement is true.

For the realist like Scotus, as I said, a relational statement is true because there is a little thread that makes it true. To put this another way, the relational statement expresses true things about the little thread.

For the nominalist like Ockham, a relational statement is true because the mind can compare certain properties or features of the relata. To put this another way, the relational statement expresses true facts or comparisons about the relata.

Some predicates can be true of only one subject. For example, I can use the predicate ‘pale’ of John: I can say ‘John is pale.’, without the need to consider another subject. But other predicates cannot be true of only one subject. They require two predicates. For example, I cannot use the predicate ‘taller than’ of John: I cannot say ‘John is taller than’, and then just stop the sentence there. I have to include another subject, e.g., George: ‘John is taller than George’. So ‘____ is pale’ is a one-place predicate, because we make it true by filling in the one blank, but ‘_____ is taller than ____’ is a two-place predicate because we can only make it true if we fill in both blanks. (We can have n-place predicates too, since some predicates can only be true of n predicates, but I’ll just talk about two-place predicates for simplicity.)

But at this point, the question becomes: why exactly do two place predicates require two subjects, while one-place predicates require one subject?

One fairly intuitive answer is to say that just as things have properties which make one-place predicates true of them, so too do things have properties which make two-place predicates true of them. Consider one-place predicates first. It seems entirely intuitive and natural to say that one of John’s features or properties is that he is pale, and because he has that property, the statement ‘John is pale’ is true. And since this is so intuitive and easy to understand, why should we not just say the same thing for two-place predicates? Why not just say that some properties make two-place predicates true in the same way?

So let’s picture exactly what that would look like. First consider the properties that make one-place predicates true. The one-place predicate ‘being pale’ is true of John because the predicate refers to a property ‘being pale’, which sticks to John. This makes a one-place predicate true because it sticks to one thing (namely, John). Now transfer this over to properties that make two-place properties true. It would follow that a two-place predicate like ‘is taller than’ is true of John and George because the predicate refers to a property ‘being taller than’, which sticks to John and to George. This makes the two-place predicate true because it sticks to two things (namely, John and George).

Of course, it’s hard to picture this. It’s easy to picture John’s paleness, because we can just imagine a sort of free floating white patch. But paleness is visual in the first place, so it’s easy to imagine. Non-visual things like ‘being taller than’ aren’t like that, so it’s hard to imagine ‘being taller than’ floating free from John and George like we can imagine a white patch floating free from John. The best we can really do is to imagine it as if it were visible, and so we imagine a sort of invisible thread stretching between John and George.

But nevertheless, the point is that one-place predicates are so easily explained by saying there is a property that sticks in one thing, and so we should just use the same model to explain two-place predicates: they are explained because there is a property that sticks in two things. Today, we call those properties that stick in one thing (or better: require only one thing to be instantiated) ‘monadic properties’, and we call those properties that stick in two things (or better: are instantiated by two things jointly) ‘polyadic properties’. This latter term is just a technical name for ‘relations’.

By admitting polyadic properties, we now have an easy way to explain two-place predicates (relational predicates). If you ask me what is the truth-maker of ‘John is taller than George’, I can just say that there is a property (‘being taller than’) which sticks in both of them, stretching between them, and that is why we have to predicate the phrase ‘is taller than’ of two subjects. After all, it sticks in two subjects, not one. And this is all just like how ‘John is pale’ works. The property ‘being pale’ sticks in one subject, so we have to predicate the phrase ‘is pale’ of only one subject. Nice and easy, and pretty intuitive.

This is, essentially, the realist solution for people like Scotus. It is, I think, guided largely by the intuition that a feature or property of something is what makes statements true about it.

The nominalist position for Ockham is to reject that polyadic properties exist outside the mind. We can accept monadic properties, but not polyadic properties. We should not say that there is some property (‘being taller than’) stretching between John and George. Instead, John has his own monadic property ‘being such and such a height’, and George has his own monadic property ‘being such and such a height’, and our minds compare these two properties to see that one is greater than the other. That’s what explains the phrase ‘John is taller than George’.

To put this in a more technical way, the truth-maker of a two-place predicate is not one (polyadic) property which stretches between two things. It is two (monadic) properties, each instantiated by their own thing, and then a mental comparison between those two properties. The only thing that ‘stretches between two things’ is the mental act comparing the two things.

I think the nominalist position is guided largely by a desire for ontological parsimony. Ockham wants to find a way that we can explain the truth of two-place predicates without positing unnecessary extramental entities. To explain two-place predicates, Scotus posits both the two things, their individual properties, and the property (the relation) that stretches between them. Ockham says we don’t need this extra step, because we can explain it simply by appealing to the two things, their individual properties, and a mental act of comparison.

(Additionally, one of Ockham’s great arguments against Scotus is this. If there are polyadic properties, then how would I explain my spatial relation to the rest of the universe? I would have an infinite (or at least very large) number of polyadic properties instantiated jointly by me and every point in space to which I am spatially related. Additionally, when I move, all these polyadic properties would be destroyed, and I and every point in space to which I am spatially related would jointly instantiate an infinite (or at least very large) number of new polyadic properties. Talk about multiplying extramental entities beyond necessity!)

While Ockham’s position might have ontological parsimony, Scotus’s position has explanatory parsimony. On Scotus’s view, a statement like ‘John is produced by George’ is straightforwardly true. The subjects directly refer to John and George, and the predicate directly refers to a property stretching between them. On Ockham’s view, the statement needs some re-phrasing to state it more accurately. Ockham will want to re-phrase the statement to read something like ‘At some point in time, George caused John to come to exist’. This includes a lot more information than the original statement (including temporal stuff), and one might get suspicious that this kind of drastic re-phrasing of a statement just to make it literally true smells of a desperate attempt to ‘explain away’ the obvious.

Time may not exist.

Buber would want these relational connections to be real. Physics probably wants them to be real too. No thing in isolation is a real thing.

I see two different tags that you are applying to a person. JT is ‘funny’. This tag seems to be to be in the mind completely. However, JT is the son of BIGJT is a relational tag that may have a physicality that exists as a ‘string between two events of history’ of NOW and BIRTH. The string of history comes with words that describe the actual string … son ,dad ,mother, age.

The physicality of this string probably needs to be discussed in the same terms that Augustine uses in Confessions when he ponders NOW and THEN. The NOW is a fleeting slice of time. As the NOW passes by, it becomes a THEN that cannot be directly accessed. He ponders the existence of the long string of THENS. The questions arise … Do the THENs still exist or have they moved out of existence? Does only NOW really exist? If THENs still exist, do FUTURE_THENs exist? In the mind of the theistic realist, THENs, NOW, and FUTURE_THENs all really exist in God’s NOW. So, God, like the Tralfamadorians of “Slaughterhouse Five”, see the long string of moments through time as a mountain chain to be experienced as a four-dimensional NOW. The Son-of, Father-to, Older-than, describe the relationships of the existing strings of history that tie two points of a history together.

This mountain range of time-space history would be the view of Eintein’s general relativity. Time is just a fourth dimension in the time-space continuum. However, there is a difference between God’s point of view and our four-dimensional experience. The physics equations allow us to go forward and backward in time. However, our experience tells us that we cannot do this. We are restricted to a NOW. The future and the past are not a ‘reality’ to be observe through direct observation. Does the reality of NOW disappear when it becomes a THEN? Augustine thanks God for memory as it seems to give us a shadow experience of the string of history, which may really still exist … in the mind of God? If THENs still exist, then the passage of time is just an illusion to us.

In any case, there could be a physical string of history that exists that relate a time-space event to other time-space events.

I probably need to think harder about relations on my own. I think Mercury is closer to the Sun than Earth is, and I think that will be true even after all the thinkers are extinct. Does this commit me to little invisible threads?