“But they ain't. They're not the same thing, they're just not. They're different things. Things aren't relationships, they're really not, they're things. Which is why I think we should agree to disagree.”
But they are. They’re the same thing, they simply are. They’re identical things. Things are relationships, they really are, they’re relationships (not really much of an argument, eh?  ). And I think that we are agreeing to disagree; however, I am also agreeing to think that you are simply mistaken! 
“I don't think we perceive relations directly…”
What?! I look here and now and see that my left hand is indeed to the left of my right hand: in what way am I not perceiving this relation directly?
“I think we project relations onto phenomena. Think about Kant's conceptual spectacles, the idea that spacetime, colour etc. are the 'filter' we see things through. Relations seem to me to be like that, if you get me.”
Yes I get you, but Kant’s simply wrong. Well, not “simply” wrong. He’s certainly onto something in ways, but Hegel also works towards showing in what manner Kant is mistaken. This relates to how I understand what you are saying about projecting relations onto phenomena. However, if you go back to my initial post starting this thread and look at the Russell quote, then you’ll see that what you are saying is counter to the main premise of this thread: the separation of the way we see the world from how the world is, is indefensible. In other words, while I think that the use of RAW’s binary pairing of etic and emic reality is a useful heuristic device when considering certain solutions to a specific set of problems, it becomes unworkable and a hindrance to us when we are considering a different set of solutions to another set of specific problems.
Like I said to you in the “Science Questions” thread, after you commented on your Buddhist philosophy, I don’t understand, then, why you are having such a difficult time with this “objects as bundles of relations” view, since it seems to me that this is more or less an important part of the original teachings of Siddhartha. Now, S was not taking an ontological stance, it seems, but rather an epistemic one. S appears to say, “Forget about what things are—it is all illusion!” Rather, he seems to urge us to take a certain stance towards knowledge. This seems to me to be that there is no knowledge of an object in itself, but only knowledge of objects in relation to one and other.
Now, at first glance, this seems to be related to the Kantian notion regarding the fact that we can’t know the thing in itself, but we wear, as you say, “conceptual spectacles.” However, we must here recognize that to Kant, consciousness, and thus, knowledge, is specific to the domain of the human being. In Buddhism, however, consciousness appears to be, in a sense, Universal, and not solely limited to the human being. On my interpretation of S’s view, each object is in communication with other objects (every other object); this is to say that each object is a thought in the universal Mind and this Mind cannot know these objects in themselves because in themselves they are empty (again, this relates to Thought Experiment [1]). Therefore, these objects communicate their being through their relations to one and other, and it is through this network or web of communication that the Mind knows via language that there are objects. So, while Siddhartha appears to be shunting metaphysics, he is actually more taking metaphysics and integrating it with epistemology—like Russell appears to request in the quote above. Put differently, Buddhism as originally conceived by S appears to collapse the etic-emic duality. Therefore, we do, in a sense, project relations onto phenomena but at the same time phenomena are projecting relations onto us. Or as the wonderful being, metaphysician, and my former instructor Charlie Martin (he’s the old fella’ on the left—I don’t know why Mark Migotti’s picture is on Charlie’s page!) says, “Everything gets outside itself.”
“Things for me are phenomena that come as a packet…”
But this exactly what I am saying: the packet is the thing that is composed of its relations and the relations are what come together as the thing.
“So the relationship between the phenomena I perceive as things is one of constant conjunction- they're always together.”
Exactly.
“This is distinct from my experience of relations, which are things like 'to the left of' or 'heavier than', judgments that I make about those things (x is heavier than y). So my thoughts go *"thing 1"* "has relation x with" *"thing 2"*. If things were relations that would read 'thing''thing''thing' or 'relation''relation''relation' and would make sense, and mean the same thing either way.”
But it’s not at all distinct from your experience of relations—it appears to be fundamental to anyone’s experience of phenomena: our experience is necessarily dependent upon relations, which is equivalent to, “our experience necessarily depends upon objects” on my view.
I think that your linguistic analysis is a little simplistic (no offense, eh). If we want to cash out “x bears R to y” in terms of what I’ve been saying, it would be more along the lines of:
x bears R to y & (x & y bears R' to R).
Do you see the implicit notion of your “constant conjunction” here? I will try to clearly illustrate by spinning the following example.
Let’s look at the word ‘father’. Our first observation is that ‘father’ is a noun, and a noun is a person, place, or thing. Put differently, we can all clearly agree that “a father” is a thing—namely, a male parent. Now, here’s where Kant is onto something: the subject is contained in the predicate when we say “x is a father” and our statement is true; i.e., if it is true that, for example, cusm is a father, then it is true that cusm is a male parent; thus, the subject ‘cusm’ is contained in the predicate ‘is a father’—if we are talking about the class of things that are fathers, then cusm is necessarily counted among those things. However, the relationship that makes up the “thing” ‘father’ is a relationship between, say, cusm and at least his wife and children—another “constant conjunction” of sorts. Now, this is where Kant dropped the ball and the Buddhist view is apparently superiour because necessarily, for cusm to be a father, then there must be things that are the objects in the sentences “cusm is the father of y and z” and “cusm had sexual relations with x.” In other words, the thing “father” is dependent upon the relations that make up what a father is. Thus, the objects of those sentences are as contained in the predicate as the subject is with respect to our knowing that “cusm is a father” is true. To sum up, “cusm is a father” seems equivalent to “the word ‘father’ applies to cusm.” We see that in the first instance cusm is the subject to the predicate ‘is a father’. In the second instance the subject is ‘the word “father”’ and the predicate is ‘applies to cusm’. So in both cases the object and predicate share an identity of sorts. And, as we have noticed, this identification extends to a whole set of relations that are “external” to the particular individual.
Further, the person that is the father, again, let’s go with cusm (and I hope this ain’t bothering you cusm!), is also a thing—a human being. Now, on a simple physical description, the object cusm is the relations that compose his being. These include his “internal” relations amongst his constituent parts: the relation of organs, blood, cells, bones, and etc. that count in the bundle of things that relate to make up cusm’s physical body. However, if there is only cusm alone, then there is no cusm! He also needs “external” relations to make up his being. He needs to relate to the earth, to the air, to other people, in order for him to be counted as a human being. So we see here how it is that these relations are things which count in the composition of cusm’s being in the world. Without them, he would not be the cusm that we know. Thus, cusm is this bundle of relations, and so, here has been an example where we see relations as things that make up other things that make up other things. To go back to the thought experiment, there can be not “atomic” that doesn’t get outside of itself, and this begins with the relation of identity.
With the ‘lift/lifting’ example, we can see that the object that occupies the subject position of “x is a lift” is, if we know it to be true, necessarily contained in the predicate. Again, like with cusm above, the sentence “the word ‘lift’ applies to x” will be true iff x is a lift, but in the former sentence ‘applies to x’ is the predicate, and ‘the word “lift”’ is the subject. Now in this, it seems implicit that for x to be a lift, then part of the criteria that must be met is the x is capable of lifting y. Thus, all the statements of the form x is lifting y must be counted into what makes x a lift. See, one and the same. |
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