E.J. Lowe's four-category ontology demonstrates that formal ontological relations, unlike contingent relations, do not require a further relation to bind them to their relata, blocking the regress at the level of ontological structure.

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Contingent relations(as contrasted with formal ontological relations): Connections between things that happen to exist but didn't have to—like the relationship between a person and their job, which could easily be different.
E.J. Lowe(as a referenced philosopher): A British philosopher specializing in metaphysics and logic who developed detailed arguments about how objects persist through time.
Formal ontological relations(as contrasted with contingent relations): Deep, structural connections between things that exist necessarily—like the relationship between a property and the thing it belongs to—as opposed to accidental connections.
Four-category ontology(as Lowe's main philosophical contribution): Lowe's theory that divides everything in existence into exactly four fundamental types of things, rather than more or fewer categories.
Ontology(Carnap argues this enterprise is based on a mistake): The philosophical discipline that tries to answer hard questions about what there really is.
Regress (infinite regress)(as the philosophical problem being blocked): An endless chain of explanations where each explanation requires another explanation, trapping you in a loop that never reaches a final answer.
Relata(in philosophy of relations): The individual things that a relation connects—for example, in 'Alice loves Bob,' Alice and Bob are the relata (the things being related).

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