Doctrine of internal relations

The doctrine of internal relations is the philosophical doctrine that all relations are internal to their bearers, in the sense that they are essential to them and the bearers would not be what they are without them. It was a term used in British philosophy around in the early 1900s.

Some relations are clearly internal in the sense that, for example, four would not be four unless it were related to two in the way it is. Some relations are internal to their bearers under one description but not under another, for example, a wife would not be a wife unless suitably related to a husband, but Mary would still be Mary had she not married. Or take the internal relation where Jack is taller than his wife, Joan. Here the relation is internal to both of them together, in symbolic form it can be given as: Jack(R)Joan, where R is the ordered relation of "Taller than".

The doctrine that all relations are internal implies that everything has some relation, however distant, to everything else. Such a doctrine is ascribed by Russell and Moore to certain ideas by Hegel and the American philosopher, C.S. Peirce. However neither of these philosophers themselves would describe their own beliefs in this manner, i.e., as being doctrinaire. Russell associates it with pragmatism, objective idealism and the absolute idealism of Hegel. It also refers to coherentism, a holist approach to truth.

So for the example given above of Jack (taller than) Joan, Bertrand Russell claims that the ordering of the relation is not internal to Jack and Joan taken together. The order is something external imposed on the couple Jack and Joan. This however leaves the question as to the status of the ordering, since it cannot be non-existent. A further step in the process is needed to get beyond Russell's objection and this is to include the person doing the ordering in the example, so we have Jack is taller than Joan, according to Tom, or in symbolic form (Jack(R)Joan)(R2)Tom. However, here again we have another kind of ordering which is not included in the grouping.

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