Abstract

The dissertation explicates and defends a version of the doctrine of internal relations. The doctrine, first propounded by the British idealists at the end of the nineteenth century, is treated as a theory of what must be the case in general for two or more objects to be related. It is compared with three other such theories, including Russell's doctrine of external relations and two versions of the thesis that relatedness is to be explained entirely in terms of objects' possessing properties . ;After a preliminary discussion of properties, including an account of intrinsic properties which distinguishes them from essential properties, it is argued that the doctrine of external relations and the two versions of the reductive thesis fail to give plausible accounts of the truth conditions of certain relational sentences, especially sentences expressing what Hume called degrees of quality, and hence fail as accounts of relatedness. ;The doctrine of internal relations is presented as a viable alternative account. An interpretation of the doctrine is given according to which it holds there are neither relations nor properties. The doctrine, according to this interpretation, has as its central tenet that whereas objects are distinct, there are no distinct ways that objects are. For example, a given object's being red is not distinct from its being the shape it is, nor indeed from its being related to other objects. ;Finally, a version of the doctrine is presented according to which the commonsensical view that certain parts of the universe are objects and ipso facto have an ontological status different from other parts is untenable. It is argued that instead we should conceive of the entire universe as a object whose parts stand to it as the parts of paradigmatic objects stand to them. It is further argued that we can account for the nature of the parts and how they are related by positing that the whole is certain ways in which case we avoid needing to posit properties and relations. Thus is the doctrine defended