1. Some interpreters might disagree with my unqualified use of“real” in this context. They see Bradley as holding thatall attributions of reality and truth come in degrees. On such areading, Bradley did not think that internal relations have a betterchance of being real; rather, he thought of internal relations ashaving a higher degree of reality than external relations, withneither kind of relation enjoying the highest degree of reality. Idisagree with this reading mainly because I do not see Bradley at thisstage engaging and applying his doctrine of degrees of truth andreality (which he expounds in chapter XXIV ofAR) torelations. The aim of the initial chapters ofAR strikes meas purely destructive when it comes to relations.
2. Bradley’s monism is not easy to characterize. He certainlyseems committed to the existence of only one thing but it is notalways clear how, according to him, the plurality is to be treatedwithin such unity. For more on different types of monism, see theentry onmonism (Schaffer 2016). For more on Bradley’s particular type ofmonism, see the entryF. H. Bradley (Candlish and Basile 2017), and Phemister 2016.
3. Russell writes:
I maintain that there are such facts as thatx has therelationR toy, and that such facts are not ingeneral reducible to, or inferable from, a fact aboutx onlyand a fact abouty only: they do not imply thatxandy have any complexity, or any intrinsic propertydistinguishing them from az and aw which do nothave the relationR. This is what I mean when I say thatrelations are external. But I maintain also—and it is here thatMr. Bradley sees an inconsistency—that whenever we have twotermsx andy related by a relationR, wehave also a complex, which we may call “xRy,”consisting of the two terms so related. This is the simplest exampleof what I call a “complex” or a “unity”.[…] A complex differs from the mere aggregate of itsconstituents, since it is one, not many, and the relation which is oneof its constituents enters into it as an actually relating relation,and not merely as one member of an aggregate. I confess I am at a losshow this is inconsistent with the above account of relations, and Isuspect that the meaning which I attach to the word“external” is different from Mr. Bradley’s meaning;in fact he seems to mean by an “external” relation arelation which does not relate. (Russell 1910: 374)
View this site from another server:
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy iscopyright © 2025 byThe Metaphysics Research Lab, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054