Bradley’s regress has long been a serious problem for realists about relations; it aims to show that for a relation to obtain between an n-tuple of entities, an infinite number of relations have to obtain first, thus rendering relational facts like e.g. the fact that John loves Mary, impossible. In this paper I will be considering two recent approaches to addressing the regress, namely D.W. Mertz and Anna Maurin’s approach. I’ll try to show why both attempts ultimately fail at what they set out …
Read moreBradley’s regress has long been a serious problem for realists about relations; it aims to show that for a relation to obtain between an n-tuple of entities, an infinite number of relations have to obtain first, thus rendering relational facts like e.g. the fact that John loves Mary, impossible. In this paper I will be considering two recent approaches to addressing the regress, namely D.W. Mertz and Anna Maurin’s approach. I’ll try to show why both attempts ultimately fail at what they set out to do, each trading the regress it was supposed to solve for another regress of equal severity. In the end, I will try to highlight what I take to be a helpful takeaway from their failure.
