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Bradley's regress is a philosophical problem concerning the nature of relations. It is named after F. H. Bradley who discussed the problem in his 1893 book Appearance and Reality . It bears a close kinship to the issue of the unity of the proposition.
Bradley raises the problem while discussing the bundle theory of objects, according to which an object is merely a "bundle" of properties. This theory raises the question of how the various properties that together comprise an object are related when they in fact comprise an object. More generally, the question that arises is what has to be the case for any two things to be related. Bradley's Regress appears to show that the notion of two things being related generates an infinite regress.
Suppose, for example, that a respects b. This state of affairs seems to involve three things: a, b, and the relation of respecting. For the state of affairs of a respecting b to obtain, it doesn't, however, suffice that these three things (a, b, and the relation of respecting) exist. They must also be related in some way. What is required, we might say, is that a and b "stand in" the relation of respecting. But now we seem to have another state of affairs: the state of affairs of a and b standing in the relation of respecting. This state of affairs in turn seems to involve four things: a, b, the relation of respecting, and the relation of standing in. Again, however, for it to be the case that a and b stand in the relation of respecting, it doesn't suffice that these four items exist. They must also be related in some way. What is required, we might now say, is that a, b, and the relation of respecting stand in the relation of standing in. And so on, ad infinitum.
In Appearance and Reality, Bradley seems to conclude that the regress should lead us to abandon the idea that relations are "independently real". One way to take this suggestion is as recommending that in the case of a respecting b, we are dealing with a state of affairs that has only two constituents: a and b. It does not, in addition, involve a third item, "the relation of respecting", to which a and b must then bear some further relation ("standing in").
A different option is to accept that the regress is real, but to deny that it is a vicious regress.
A third option, taken by P.F. Strawson and Gustav Bergmann, is to deny the proposition that instantiation is a relation. Gottlob Frege went even further by rejecting instantiation altogether. William F. Vallicella criticized both options; according to Vallicella, both options fail because they cannot explain why objects and properties are connected. [1]
Michael Della Rocca uses a version of Bradley's regress to argue in favor of strict monism, which denies that relations or distinctions are intelligible. On his view, "if we are to retain the notion of substance or being at all, then, instead of individuated, differentiated substances or beings, we should accept only undifferentiated substance or being that stands in no relations of distinction, either internal or external. There is simply substance or being. Similarly, there is simply action, there is simply knowledge, there is simply meaning. And, of course, there is no distinction between being, action, knowledge, and meaning." [2]
In ontology, the theory of categories concerns itself with the categories of being: the highest genera or kinds of entities according to Amie Thomasson. To investigate the categories of being, or simply categories, is to determine the most fundamental and the broadest classes of entities. A distinction between such categories, in making the categories or applying them, is called an ontological distinction. Various systems of categories have been proposed, they often include categories for substances, properties, relations, states of affairs or events. A representative question within the theory of categories might articulate itself, for example, in a query like, "Are universals prior to particulars?"
Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontological property of being.
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Substance theory, or substance–attribute theory, is an ontological theory positing that objects are constituted each by a substance and properties borne by the substance but distinct from it. In this role, a substance can be referred to as a substratum or a thing-in-itself. Substances are particulars that are ontologically independent: they are able to exist all by themselves. Another defining feature often attributed to substances is their ability to undergo changes. Changes involve something existing before, during and after the change. They can be described in terms of a persisting substance gaining or losing properties. Attributes or properties, on the other hand, are entities that can be exemplified by substances. Properties characterize their bearers, they express what their bearer is like.
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. The project had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science. Wittgenstein wrote the notes for the Tractatus while he was a soldier during World War I and completed it during a military leave in the summer of 1918. It was originally published in German in 1921 as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. In 1922 it was published together with an English translation and a Latin title, which was suggested by G. E. Moore as homage to Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).
An object is a philosophical term often used in contrast to the term subject. A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed. For modern philosophers like Descartes, consciousness is a state of cognition that includes the subject—which can never be doubted as only it can be the one who doubts—and some object(s) that may be considered as not having real or full existence or value independent of the subject who observes it. Metaphysical frameworks also differ in whether they consider objects existing independently of their properties and, if so, in what way.
In theology, the doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is simple. The general idea can be stated in this way: The being of God is identical to the "attributes" of God. Characteristics such as omnipresence, goodness, truth, eternity, etc., are identical to God's being, not qualities that make up that being as a collection, nor abstract entities inhering in God as in a substance; in other words, one can say that in God both essence and existence are one and the same. This is not to say that God is a simpleton or "simple" to understand. As Peter Weigel states, "Divine simplicity is central to the classical Western concept of God. Simplicity denies any physical or metaphysical composition in the divine being. This means God is the divine nature itself and has no accidents accruing to his nature. There are no real divisions or distinctions in this nature. Thus, the entirety of God is whatever is attributed to him. Divine simplicity is the hallmark of God’s utter transcendence of all else, ensuring the divine nature to be beyond the reach of ordinary categories and distinctions, or at least their ordinary application. Simplicity in this way confers a unique ontological status that many philosophers find highly peculiar." So when it comes to God's essential nature/attributes, there are no parts or accidents; this is not to be confused with, for example, God's accidental/contingent relation to the world.
In philosophy, the unity of the proposition is the problem of explaining how a sentence in the indicative mood expresses more than just what a list of proper names expresses.
Truthmaker theory is "the branch of metaphysics that explores the relationships between what is true and what exists". The basic intuition behind truthmaker theory is that truth depends on being. For example, a perceptual experience of a green tree may be said to be true because there actually is a green tree. But if there was no tree there, it would be false. So the experience by itself does not ensure its truth or falsehood, it depends on something else. Expressed more generally, truthmaker theory is the thesis that "the truth of truthbearers depends on the existence of truthmakers". A perceptual experience is the truthbearer in the example above. Various representational entities, like beliefs, thoughts or assertions can act as truthbearers. Truthmaker theorists are divided about what type of entity plays the role of truthmaker; popular candidates include states of affairs and tropes.
In philosophy, a distinction is often made between two different kinds of knowledge: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Whereas knowledge by description is something like ordinary propositional knowledge, knowledge by acquaintance is familiarity with a person, place, or thing, typically obtained through perceptual experience. According to Bertrand Russell's classic account of acquaintance knowledge, acquaintance is a direct causal interaction between a person and some object that the person is perceiving.
In logic and philosophy, a property is a characteristic of an object; a red object is said to have the property of redness. The property may be considered a form of object in its own right, able to possess other properties. A property, however, differs from individual objects in that it may be instantiated, and often in more than one object. It differs from the logical/mathematical concept of class by not having any concept of extensionality, and from the philosophical concept of class in that a property is considered to be distinct from the objects which possess it. Understanding how different individual entities can in some sense have some of the same properties is the basis of the problem of universals.
In analytic philosophy, actualism is the view that everything there is is actual. Another phrasing of the thesis is that the domain of unrestricted quantification ranges over all and only actual existents.
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definition of the term. According to epistemic approaches, the essential mark of mental states is that their subject has privileged epistemic access while others can only infer their existence from outward signs. Consciousness-based approaches hold that all mental states are either conscious themselves or stand in the right relation to conscious states. Intentionality-based approaches, on the other hand, see the power of minds to refer to objects and represent the world as the mark of the mental. According to functionalist approaches, mental states are defined in terms of their role in the causal network independent of their intrinsic properties. Some philosophers deny all the aforementioned approaches by holding that the term "mental" refers to a cluster of loosely related ideas without an underlying unifying feature shared by all. Various overlapping classifications of mental states have been proposed. Important distinctions group mental phenomena together according to whether they are sensory, propositional, intentional, conscious or occurrent. Sensory states involve sense impressions like visual perceptions or bodily pains. Propositional attitudes, like beliefs and desires, are relations a subject has to a proposition. The characteristic of intentional states is that they refer to or are about objects or states of affairs. Conscious states are part of the phenomenal experience while occurrent states are causally efficacious within the owner's mind, with or without consciousness. An influential classification of mental states is due to Franz Brentano, who argues that there are only three basic kinds: presentations, judgments, and phenomena of love and hate.
David Malet Armstrong, often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher. He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.
An infinite regress is an infinite series of entities governed by a recursive principle that determines how each entity in the series depends on or is produced by its predecessor. In the epistemic regress, for example, a belief is justified because it is based on another belief that is justified. But this other belief is itself in need of one more justified belief for itself to be justified and so on. An infinite regress argument is an argument against a theory based on the fact that this theory leads to an infinite regress. For such an argument to be successful, it has to demonstrate not just that the theory in question entails an infinite regress but also that this regress is vicious. There are different ways in which a regress can be vicious. The most serious form of viciousness involves a contradiction in the form of metaphysical impossibility. Other forms occur when the infinite regress is responsible for the theory in question being implausible or for its failure to solve the problem it was formulated to solve. Traditionally, it was often assumed without much argument that each infinite regress is vicious but this assumption has been put into question in contemporary philosophy. While some philosophers have explicitly defended theories with infinite regresses, the more common strategy has been to reformulate the theory in question in a way that avoids the regress. One such strategy is foundationalism, which posits that there is a first element in the series from which all the other elements arise but which is not itself explained this way. Another way is coherentism, which is based on a holistic explanation that usually sees the entities in question not as a linear series but as an interconnected network. Infinite regress arguments have been made in various areas of philosophy. Famous examples include the cosmological argument, Bradley's regress and regress arguments in epistemology.
William F. Vallicella is an American philosopher.
In philosophy, a state of affairs, also known as a situation, is a way the actual world must be in order to make some given proposition about the actual world's truth; in other words, a state of affairs is a truth-maker, whereas a proposition is a truth-bearer. Whereas states of affairs either obtain or fail-to-obtain, propositions are either true or false. Some philosophers understand the term "states of affairs" in a more restricted sense as a synonym for "fact". In this sense, there are no states of affairs that do not obtain.
Appearance and Reality is a book by the English philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley, in which the author, influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, argues that most things are appearances and attempts to describe the reality these appearances misrepresent, which Bradley calls the Absolute. It is the main statement of Bradley's metaphysics and is considered his most important book. The work was an early influence on Bertrand Russell, who, however, later rejected Bradley's views.
Relations are ways in which things, the relata, stand to each other. Relations are in many ways similar to properties in that both characterize the things they apply to. Properties are sometimes treated as a special case of relations involving only one relatum. In philosophy, theories of relations are typically introduced to account for repetitions of how several things stand to each other.
In the philosophy of mathematics, Aristotelian realism holds that mathematics studies properties such as symmetry, continuity and order that can be immanently realized in the physical world. It contrasts with Platonism in holding that the objects of mathematics, such as numbers, do not exist in an "abstract" world but can be physically realized. It contrasts with nominalism, fictionalism, and logicism in holding that mathematics is not about mere names or methods of inference or calculation but about certain real aspects of the world.