Relations and Concrete Terms

If the relations of a term were different, that term itself would be different. If the term were different, its relations would be different. Relations are grounded in the nature of their terms. Consequently the relation can be what it is only if the terms are what they are. The character of the terms appoints and limits the relations in which they stand. Hence, if a thing is spatial, it has spatial relations. But it would be absurd to say that justice is northwest of courage, since the natures of these two preclude that kind of connection.

Most if not all kinds of relations presuppose a common character, usually or always a determinable type, in the related terms, without which the assertion of the specific relation would not merely be false but absurd. If one picture is more beautiful than another, they cannot differ in nature absolutely. There must be something common in respect to which they can be compared. Things temporally related must both be in time. Things spatially related must both be in space. If one person is the uncle of another, both must at least be organisms. Such relations are grounded in the nature of their terms, since if the common nature shared by the terms were to disappear, the relations would disappear as well.

Still, the extent of this determination by a common nature is easily overstated. If we know only that a thing is spatial, we know that it will have spatial relations, but what relations in particular, whether it is north or west or to the left of some other thing, remains unknown. The influence of the common nature does not extend that far.

So are such relations determined not by some universal character possessed in common, but by the concrete and specific natures of the terms? The White House in Washington is a mile or so northwest of the Capitol. You could not infer that particular relation simply from the fact that the two buildings were spatial. You could derive it from something else in the nature of either. The argument is indirect, but is nonetheless worse for that, since it involves showing both that the terms depend on their relations and the relations on the terms. You proceed through denial of the consequent. If you can show first that unless the terms were related in this way, they could not be what they are, you can then argue that their being what they are requires their being related in this way.

Can you show that without standing in these relations the Capitol would not be the Capitol or the White House would not be the White House? The first impulse is to say that this is absurd. Of course the Capitol might have been elsewhere. It might have been placed in New York or St. Louis, or at the geographical center of the country. And as for the White House, it might have either been placed there too, or set up in another state. But this does not answer the question. It assumes that we mean by 'Capitol' simply the chief legislative building of the country, and by 'White House' the official home of the president. And it says there is nothing about a chief legislative seat as such or a president's house as such, to require that they be at one place rather than another. But as an answer to the question, this is irrelevant and question-begging.

It's irrelevant because we're not talking about as such's or abstractions, but about specific concrete things, this unique building, for example. It is question-begging because it assumes that what holds of these abstractions must hold also of the concrete things that embody them. And there is no reason to believe this. 'Chief legislative building' and 'president's house' are not actual parts of nature, they are mere abstract universals. They are arrived at by cutting the connections which their originals had with their context. They are disjecta membra of nature, withered now and mummified. Whether a character can be carved from the body of nature without being affected we will soon investigate. Meanwhile, it's not to be assumed. A human heart in a bottle of alcohol does not even appear to be the thing it was. And one cannot assume abstractions without further consideration for realities.

So the terms we are discussing are not abstractions, but concrete terms. So the question is whether these terms, as they exist in nature, dictate their relations or not.

Could this specific Capitol building, as distinct from mere 'capitolness', have different spatial relations and yet be what it is? Well, what is it? Again, how do we isolate the essence? Well, the differentia of an individual being infinite, any restriction of the essence must be arbitrary. But we've already discussed that point.

If by individual things we mean what the ordinary person means by them, then they do dictate their terms, since their having the relations they have is part of the meaning of their being what they are.

For common sense 'the Capitol' does not mean merely a building of a certain design. If you were to stumble upon a building of the same size and proportions in the jungles of Uganda, it would not be what we mean when we speak of the Capitol. It's being in Washington rather than somewhere else is one of those relational properties that fall within the nature of character of the thing we mean. But a lot of other relational properties do too. To those who know it best, the Capitol is inseparable from its functions, and anyone can see that these connect it to the most complex and intimate way with the treasury, the department of state, the armed forces headquarters, and all the other departments of government in Washington DC. It is a building that must be accessible to hundreds of legislators who live around it. It is run by a staff whose roots are similarly wide-spread. It is surrounded by certain parks and approachable by certain streets. It maintains the closest contacts with airports and postal service centers, through which is has further contacts, with the various parts of the country.

If these functions and relations were removed, what the ordinary person means by 'the Capitol' would no longer remain. They are part of what that person means by the term, and when this is seen, it is also seen that to call them external is absurd. Particular spatial distances, such as from the Capitol to the White House, or the functions subserved by these, may be unimportant. But they belong to that set of connections without which, in the mass, what we mean by the Capitol would not be itself. Hence they are internal, even though they are internal only in degree.

32.05

Property Internality by the Numbers

Maybe it's absurd to include all relational properties in the nature of a thing. Some belong there, others do not. A boy has an I.Q. of 120. He also wears Arrow shirts. It will be said that the I.Q. characteristic is genuinely essential to him, since his intellectual superiority in certain respects to others of his age could not be removed without a significant difference in his own nature.

But there's nothing essential in his wearing a certain brand of shirts, since he could wear another brand while remaining the person he is. Even though both properties belong to his nature, the first belongs essentially, and the brand of shirts he wears belongs to his nature only accidentally or by chance. Consequently, there are internal and external properties, just as there are internal and external relations.

That could mean that a sharp line can be drawn between the alleged classes of internal and external properties. But this has already been rejected (2.4.26.27-2.4.26.28) The problem of demarcating essences is notoriously insoluble. If the term is an individual, the characteristics that make up its nature are inexhaustible. That's why an individual is not logically definable. An individual has an unlimited number of differientiating characteristics. If the term is general, then trying to state the essence, either that some constant characters have been taken for granted and left out, or that some constant characters have been taken as the essence for irrelevant reasons, such as serving most conveniently to set a figure before us, or that essence and properties (in the logical sense) are interchangeable, or, as in the case of organic kinds, that different characters have differing importance in the determination of other characters, suggesting that essentiality is a matter of degree.

So also of accidents. It's impossible to marke them off sharply from either essence or property. What is blackness to the crow? Is it a separable accident, an inseparable accident (whatever that means), a property , or part of what crows are essentially? Any answer to this question would be wrong.

Crow nature is an immensely complicated thing, and blackness may be intimately connected with many features of it, themselves of varying importance and connected with varying degrees of intimacy. In all probability, the color is neither a mere accident, nor yet as indispensable a part of crow nature as certain other attributes. The color lies in what is logically a no-man's land between pure accident and pure necessity.

These old sharp lines of mutual exclusion between essence, property, and accident are like the lines of a surveyor. Of great coconvenience, no doubt, to ourselves, but misleading when taken as divisions marked out by nature.

The other meaning of the distinction would admit that the division between internal and external characteristics is one of degree only. Thus the characteristic of being intellectually in advance of others of one's age would be a relatively essential one, and the characteristic of being the wearer of a certain brand of shirt is a relatively unessential one, since the difference in the boy's nature involved in the absence of the I.Q. characteristic would be far more pervasive than that involved in the absence of the Arrow shirt.

To call the I.Q. characteristic internal absolutely would be a mistake, since the removal of that characteristic would not leave the subject simply and totally oehter than the boy was, but only particlaly so. And the Arrow shirt characteristic is not absolutely external either. Being the wearer of one kind of shirt rather than another is a trivial characteristic of anyone. But we are dealing, not with the prepared abstractions of logic books, but with attributes in their concrete setting. This characteristic reveals the wearer's choice, and thus is bound up in intimate fashion with his standards of taste, his proneness to imitate, his openness to suggestion, and is therefore in its absence he would be exactly the same.

To the believer in degrees, such an assertion would be ill-judged. It ouwld be hardking back to the view that persons or minds are mosaics. But hard as it may be to say what the other characters are with which the Arrow-shirt-wearing is connected, or precisely how it is linked to them, the relation is not that of one marble to others in a box, this trait could not be difference unless the wearer's choice had been different, and his choice could not have been different without his being different.

The characteristic may not be an important part of his nature, but it is a part nevertheless. It's not merely external. It is internal, even though internal only in degree. ('Make a difference in' is used ambiguously to mean both 'logically determine' and 'causally determine'. This does not matter, since causal determination always contains an element of logical necessary. (2.4.32.24ff)

But notice that this view is merely a refinement of the internal relations theory. It is a reply to the argument that all of a thing's relations give rise to properties, and that these properties belong to its nature. The reply was that even if that is true, they do not belong to its nature equally. Some are irrelevant, some are essential. But what this really means is that their removal would involve the alteration of the thing in very different degrees. And this is the internal relations theory about internal characteristics.

32.04

Difference, Relations, and Properties

What is true in the relation of difference is true about other relations. The nature of any term, unless that term is itself a relation, is attributes or properties in the non-technical sense. The nature of an apple means its roundness, redness, juiciness, and so on. So a change in any properties would be a change in the apple's nature.

Now a relation is not a property. But when a term has a relation to anything else, it also has a property because of that relation, a relational property, and that property belongs to its nature just as much as any other property.

If Ann is the mother of Beth, then you are asserting the relational property of being the mother of Beth. And this property is not itself a relation in the sense in which the relation of motherhood is. Hence, even though a relation is not a property, it gives rise to a property. And these properties are a part of the nature of what has those properties. The properties of being 'above the beast of the field', 'a little lower than the angels', and 'the mother of Beth', belong to Ann as part of her nature.

But the relations could not be diffferent without the properties being different. And the properties could not be different without their terms being different. For the properties are part of the terms. Therefore, if all relations were different, their terms would also be different. Consequently, all relations are internal.

32.03

The Difference Difference Makes

The internal relation of each object to each other object is a condition implicit in the being of anything. For something to exist, it must be this rather than that, and the 'rather than that' belongs to its essence just as much as the 'this'.

Something is in this relation to other things from its own nature and because otherness is stated in it, as is its own movement. Its being comprehends negation, through which alone it now has its affirmative existence. . . . It is something by not being other things. (Hegel, Science of Logic)

Everything is related to everything else at least by the relation of difference. Otherwise, a thing would not be the thing it is, since it would then be no different from anything other than itself.

But a relation that cannot be theoretically changed without changing the thing itself is what is meant by an internal relation. Consequently, everything is related internally to everything else.

Common sense is not used to moving among such abstract considerations. It might say that difference is not a relation. The reply would be a definition of relation that includes difference but answered to people's common notion of relation. But we are cut off from this reply, since 'relation' is indefinable.

But the indefinability of a term does not mean that there is anything either arbitrary or indefinite in our thought of it. And difference does fall within the common meaning of relation. Likeness and difference go together in our thought as having the same sort of existence. But likeness is a relation. If difference were not a relation, what else could it be? To call it a substance, or a quality, or an event, or a way of behaving, or anything except a relation is forced and unnatural. Consequently, difference is either a relation or some unique form of being, which it is not.

It might be replied that it's arbitrary to take it's not being something else as part of what a thing is.

It may be objected that it is paradoxical and wilful to treat it as part of the nature of a table that it is not a phoenix or not a prime number, and to place such characteristics on a level with its characteristic of being a table, or even with its negative characteristic of not being a chair. And from any practical point of view it is more important to believe about any substance which is in fact a table, that it has the characteristics of being a table, or of not being a chair, than that it possesses the characteristics of not being a phoenix or a prime number.

And even apart from all practical considerations, we shall gain more knowledge about the nature of the substance by realizing that it possesses the first two characteristics than we shall by realizing that it has the other two characteristics. But the last two characteristics are characteristics of the substance as the first two characteristics are.

For any person who asserts that the table is not a prime number would be saying something that is true. The assertion may be unimportant, foolish, a waste of time. But it is not fales, and it must be true. And it cannot be true unless it is made true by the nature of that thing about which the assertion is made. (G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies)

Consequently, if something is as characterized by not being x as it is characterized by being y, then a change in its relations of difference would mean a change in itself. Therefore, it is internally related to everything else in the universe.

32.02. . . 4b77

Necessary Internal Relations

WHY believe reality is intelligible?

The total is intelligible only if it's a system, all-inclusive, and perfectly integrated.

And perfect integration assumes that no two parts can each be different from the other without each entailing a difference in the other. Hence, perfect integration is possible only if all the parts are internally related by difference.

And without the constant influence of the implicit ideal of thought in the scientific search for connection beyond apparent irrelevance, that belief would probably have been dismissed a long time ago as fanaticism or even atheism.

Proof of the rationality of things is not logically possible, since it would assume that same supposedly independent rationality whose applicability is in question in trying to prove it.

But the question is not whether logic is applicable to some unexperienced object. It's whether our known world of persons and things can be understood or intelligibly construed.

If the known world of things and persons cannot be understood or intelligibly construed, then thinking is useless from the start, since the conditions of understanding could not possibly, in that case, be fulfilled. The question "Why?" would simply have no answer when it is asked about various arrangements in the system.

Even uncertainty about the answer would leave us permanently ignorant, not just about whether we can know reality, but whether there is any knowledge about reality.

Science and theory assume we can know reality. And at each successive step in thought when I ask why, I assume there's an intelligible answer, whether I find it or not.

But the desirability of something does not prove it exists. Any evidence that the world I'm trying to construe is a set of internally related parts must come from other more basic sources.

32.01

Mind and Metasystem

Reflection is always trying to solve a problem.

To solve the problem, you have to know what the problem really is. But to know what the problem is, you have to know what questioning is. A question is a system of ideas that is trying to fix a problem in its own structure. Questioning clarifies the problem to figure out how to solve it.

Once the system of ideas is as complete as we can make it, we can construct theories. The more complete the system, the better, easier, and faster the solutions.

Wording the question well is part of the process of answering it. Very few can or do truly think. Many minds wander from the subject in hopeless reverie or they just get bored. They can't think about ideas. They may be tired or distracted or just not interested. Or they may be over-emotional. They might be insane, or just plain wierd. These things we pass by. They distort and disrupt by breaking in from the outside.

They have an importance, and some thinking is at the mercy of those factors. But thinking can can never surrender itself completely to the control of the subject-matter and it can be objectively logical, even though it can be influenced by instincts, desires, and feelings. If that were not the case, one could not know that influencing-factors fact itself.

If all thinking is governed by non-logical factors, then that statement itself is also governed by those non-logical factors, and that statement has no more claim on our acceptance than any other non-logical factor.

If we can't solve a problem, it's because of a lack of knowledge, creativity, or the will to inquire.

21.01

Concrete Necessity and Human Insight

Of course we have not proved our view of the goal of thought. There can be no question of proof where the nature of proof itself is in question. All we can say is: Here is the standard and ideal that we actually use in thinking.

When we understand, it's always through a system. As our understanding grows more complete, it's always through a system of greater unity.

If the ideal seems unconvincing and artificial, consider its alternatives. Do they formulate better or worse what we mean by understanding? When we read a famous book called Ethics Geometically Demonstrated, most of us feel we are getting insight.

In the end this illumination is merely following associations.

But that explanation of understanding cannot itself be verified.

If we deny all degrees to necessity, and confine it to a set of the barest abstractions, not much insight remains. The genuineness of insight does not depend on ensuing changes in practice. Perhaps in a poem, a piece of music, or some religious experience an insight is gained that one hesitates to call understanding, because understanding has become so identified as something abstractly intellectual. But such insight is understanding, unique, limited in degree, but still with rights of its own. And to reject it as understanding on the ground of its concreteness is absurd.

If I accept the ideal of concrete necessity, these varying insights are legitimized, ordered, and appraised. If I accept any other, some insights must be excluded.

32.24