Relations And Predicates

by Herbert Hochberg (Editor ), Kevin Mulligan (Editor )

Predication and the problems of universals and individuation have preoccupied philosophers from Plato (if not before) to the present. Concerns about relations and the special problems posed by relational predication came later--along with the explicit recognition of "facts" as purported entities that "make" a judgment true, rather than false, and resultant questions about the structure of such grounds of truth. The essays in this volume explore aspects of the history of the classic issues as well as alternative attempts to deal with such issues. Aside from historical aspects of the problems, the essays address a number of central issues, among them, the perennial "Bradley problems(s)" and the broader issue of whether the familiar distinction between particulars and universals, derived from Aristotle's often cited pronouncement that what is universal is what is "predicable of many" while what is particular is not, is viable. The dispute arises between those who take attributes to be universals and those who take them to be special kinds of particulars--individual attributes or tropes, as they are now commonly called. That is, the "red of" in a particular colored patch as opposed to Red itself, as Plato might have put it. There are also the problems posed by the need to account for the order in relational facts ("complexes," states of affairs) by those who recognize relations, either as universals or tropes. Finally, there are questions about predication and relations. These in turn are connected with others regarding the relationship between the liguistic role of predication, diverse ways of understanding that liguistic phenomenon, and purported ontological "ties" or nexuses that aresupposedly reflected by such phenomena.

Genres: Philosophy

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004