Abstract
There is an ongoing debate on the ontology of relations, which features four main competing approaches: directionalism, positionalism, anti-positionalism, and primitivism. This paper focuses on a particular version of positionalism, namely role positionalism, and proposes the results of an experimental philosophy research concerning aspects of it. We tested the intuitions of ordinary subjects regarding the inter-relational generality of the roles typically assumed for spatial and kinematic relations, namely source, destination, theme, location. According to a 2014 paper by Orilia, this generality is rather wide, as it encompasses relations of temporal order, causation, quantitative order, transaction, possession, and parthood. Our findings do not support this proposal, except for parthood, and, in a limited way, for temporal order. We also tested the intuitions of ordinary subjects regarding the contrast between the pro-converses option, according to which non-symmetric relations split into distinct converse relations, and the anti-converses option, according to which non-symmetric relations have no distinct converses. Although traditionally positionalism is associated to the latter option, in recent works by Orilia role positionalism is associated to the former option for at least some relations, while remaining anchored to the latter option for other relations. Our findings support this mixed line to some extent, but not quite in the way suggested by Orilia in such works.
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Notes
As regards symmetric relations, they can be viewed as having no directions, or as having two opposite directions at once, and as capable of being exemplified by the same relata in multiple orders. For example, if John is next to Mary, next to is exemplified by John and Mary, in that order, since it has the direction from John to Mary, and also by Mary and John, in that other order, since it also has the direction from Mary to John (see Paolini Paoletti, 2023).
See the references provided in Sect. 1.
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It may be thought that we could have used additional screening questions regarding converses, based on the assumption that, for at least some relations, there is consensus on whether or not the relation in question has a distinct converse. As far as we know, no relation is such that there is consensus on this and thus we did not consider this option. We felt however that, although the screening questions focus mainly on roles, they somehow also provide, if answered successfully, some evidence of a competence about relationality that is relevant for a proper understanding of the questions regarding converses, which will be discussed in Sect. 6.
The Population Standard Deviation measures the degree of variation among the individual results. It can be taken to reflect how much the participants converge on, or diverge from, the mean value.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research through the PRIN 2017 project “The Manifest Image and the Scientific Image” prot. 2017ZNWW7F_004, and our research was approved by the Ethical Committee of the University of Macerata, on July, 8, 2021. We wish to thank two anonymous referees for their useful comments. We also wish to thank Ivana Bianchi, Roberto Burro, Vincenzo Mauro and Stefano Perri for their advice on statistical matters.
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Orilia, F., Paolini Paoletti, M. An experimental study on the ontology of relations. Synthese 203, 75 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04485-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04485-3