Properties

2. A note on relations

Relations are also supposed to be features or attributes of particulars. Properties are one-place, or monadic, entities. Relations are many-place, or polyadic, entities. Only an n-tuple of entities can stand in an n-place relation. (An n-tuple is a pair of entities, or a triple of entities, or . . . and so on for any number n). Moreover, certain relations are asymmetric: if present day Paris is larger than ancient Troy, then ancient Troy is not larger than present day Paris. Accordingly, at least for some relations, only ordered n-tuples of entities stand in such relations. Views and debates about properties carry over directly to relations. One issue that is especially pressing for Aristotelians concerns the location of relations in space and time. If present day Paris is in France in the twenty-first century ad, and Troy was in the Asia Minor of antiquity, when and where is the relation of being-larger-than located? (Aristotle himself seems to have been sceptical about the existence of relations, and so would not have found the problem pressing.)