Relations
A relation is often considered to be a more general case of a property. Relations are true of several particulars, or shared amongst them. Thus the relation ".. is taller than .." holds "between" two individuals, who would occupy the two ellipses ('..'). Relations can be expressed by N-place predicates, where N is greater than 1.
It is widely accepted that there are at least some apparent relational properties which are merely derived from non-relational (or 1-place) properties. For instance "A is heavier than B" is a relational predicate, but it is derived from the two non relational properties: the mass of A and the mass of B. Such relations are called external relations, as opposed to the more genuine internal relations. Some philosophers believe that all relations are external, leading to a scepticism about relations in general, on the basis that external relations have no fundamental existence.
Read more about this topic: Property (philosophy)
Famous quotes containing the word relations:
“So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man’s life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Consciousness, we shall find, is reducible to relations between objects, and objects we shall find to be reducible to relations between different states of consciousness; and neither point of view is more nearly ultimate than the other.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)