Some notes on internal and external relations and representation

Abstract

Internal Relations Internal relations are those relations that are intrinsic to the nature of one or more of the relata. They are a kind of essential relation, rather than an essential property. For example, an arc of a circle is internally related to the center of that circle in the sense that it could not be that arc of that circle without having that relation to that center of the circle. A classic example is that of part to whole: this X could not be a part of Y unless it had an appropriate " part of " relationship to Y. (I like my " arc of circle " example better.) The Idealists of the 19 th century made massive use of internal relations. The universe was supposed to be a whole united by internal relations among everything. Russell reacted strongly against internal relations (although some of his reasons were based more on the fact that the Idealists Green and Bradley supposed all internal relations to be symmetric than on internal relations per se), but was unable to do away with all of them (Hylton, 1990). E.g., the relations among his logical types are internal. Quine has ushered in a period in which all things intensional or modal or normative are under grave suspicion, and to be rejected if at all possible. Internal relations have mostly disappeared from the scene because of their 'essentialism'. All relations are assumed to be external, except that most people, including most philosophers, today don't know what an internal relation is, and, therefore, don't know what an external relation is either. Representation The relation of an encoding to its content is external. The " … " of Morse code would be exactly the same set of dots even if it were not paired with the character " S ". Because the relationship of an encoding to its content is external, that content must be specified explicitly in order for the encoding to have any content, and, therefore, for the encoding to be a representation at all. It must be specified explicitly because there is no other way in which any content is determined. Having representational content be internally related to a representation is necessary in order to be able to avoid the problem of an infinite regress of interpreters. If the relation between the representation and its content is external, then there is nothing in …