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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Bradley's regress argument is not an argument against relations themselves, but against the assumption that relations need to be related to what they relate

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Bradley's regress argument generates an infinite regress only if one assumes that relations must themselves be related to their relata
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    • 2.If the regress is generated by an assumption about how relations connect to their relata, then the regress undermines that assumption rather than the existence of relations
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Russell's own response to Bradley distinguishes external relations (which hold independently) from the demand that relations require further relating relations.
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    • 2.If relations were self-subsistent universals needing no further relating tie, the regress never initiates—Bradley's target is the relational nexus assumption, not relations per se.
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    • 3.Frege's concept-object distinction similarly shows that predicative expressions have unsaturated structure that bonds without requiring a third entity to mediate the bond.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Wittgenstein's Tractatus 2.03 treats objects as fitting together in states of affairs 'like links in a chain'—the structure is internal to the relation, requiring no external cement.
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    • 2.If the linking role is internal to the relation's nature rather than an added relational fact, then Bradley's regress presupposes a Bradleyan picture of relations that well-formed relational ontologies explicitly reject.
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