MA Defence: Dax Avery Hamouth, Philosophy

Why Relational Facts Need to Be at Least as Primitive as Monadic Facts

Dax Avery Hamouth

Supervisor: Ulf Hlobil

ABSTRACT: The problem of relations has turned on the question of whether or not relations are real “things” (in the same sense as “Objects are things”). This is a mistake and has been the reason so little has been accomplished in the discourse about how to deal with relational sentences and relational facts. I claim instead we should be concerned with the facts which make relational sentences true, and whether those facts are primitively relational, insofar as they cannot be analysed into non-relational, monadic facts. With this claim defended, I argue that it becomes clear that some facts must be primitive relational facts.