Internal relations

[Justin Schwartz <jschwart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am still puzzled. I think Chris sets up some false dichotomies here.
Given the definition below of internal relations, I think most Analytical
Philosophers would say that some things are internally related, partly
defined by their relations, and others are not. Maybe there are strict
externalists who deny anything is constituted by its relations to anything
else, but I can't think of any just now.

Chris suggest Kant and drags in
his distinction between appearance and reality, suggesting that Kant
thinks that appearances are externally related. This cannot be right.
Appeanaces are related internally to (a) things in themselves, of which
thry are the appearances and (b) to other appearances, since they are for
Kant essentially a matter of lawlike (thus relational) patterns in
appearance. Of course K doesn't use the external-internal language. But K
must definitely does not believe that relations among appearances are
linguistic or conventional! And K's view,a t any rate, is not widely held
by anyone these days.

Perhaps the real issue is whether everything is internally related to
everything else. This is one way of reading Hegel's dictum that the truth
is the whole. That would be an interested claim, but raises the quesytion
about how quarks are internally related to the class struggle in Decatur
or the price of fish in Singapore. I note that even Hegel seems to regard
some relations are more important for understanding any given thing than
others.

--Justin


On Thu, 18 Jan 1996, Chris M. Sciabarra wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Jan 1996, Justin Schwartz wrote:
> > On Wed, 17 Jan 1996, Chris M. Sciabarra wrote:
> > > Justin asks me about the meaning of internal relations....
> > > Blanshard writes:
> > > "A given term is internally related to another if in the absence of the
> > > relation it could not be what it is.  A term is externally related to
> > > another if the relation could equally be present or absent while the term
> > > was precisely the same."
> >
> > Given this definition a great many analytical philosophers accept
> > something like this view. In fact, everyone will accept that I cannot be a
> > parent without children, a spouse without someone I'm married to, a worker
> > without having an employer, etc. If that's all there is to it there's no
> > problem. So why does it seem to hard in Hegel?
>
>       Well, Justin, I think the problem becomes one of internalism vs.
> externalism.  Hegel and his successors (and even some of his predecessors
> in the idealist tradition) argue that EVERYTHING is ultimately internal.
> The externalists are more than likely, nominalists (epistemologically
> speaking), and argue that internalism is ultimately an issue of how one
> (arbitrarily) defines something.  Rorty tells us in his article that
> externalists hold "that none of a thing's properties are essential to it
> (and thus, a fortiori, that no relations are internal to it.  This view
> is put forward by those who make a firm distinction between the thing
> itself and a description of it."  Externalists seem to hold on to the
> Kantian distinction between appearance and essence, and argue that since
> nobody can REALLY know the essence of things, appearance is all that
> matters, and appearance differs -- as do definitions -- based upon
> convention or arbitrary linguistic distinctions.  Internalists however,
> have another problem -- one of individuation.  Those who argue that
> nothing can be analyzed unless everything is understood ultimately depend
> upon a kind of synoptic delusion, a premise that omniscience is possible.
>
>       The dialectician falls between these extremes, viewing definition
> not as absolute intrinsically or metaphysically, but as contextually
> specific.
>
>       See pp. 56-65 in AYN RAND:  THE RUSSIAN RADICAL for a more
> extensive discussion of precisely these themes.
>                                       - Chris
> ==================================================
> Dr. Chris M. Sciabarra, Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Politics
> INTERNET:  sciabrrc@xxxxxxxxxxx
> http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc
> ==================================================
>
>
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