Demarcation and Directedness: Notes on Brentano

Here again is the famous passage from Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874):

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself…(Brentano PES, 68)

Jedes psychische Phänomen ist durch das charakterisiert, was die Scholastiker des Mittelalters die intentionale (auch wohl mentale) Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes genannt haben, und was wir, obwohl mit nicht ganz unzweideutigen Ausdrücken, die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein Objekt (worunter hier nicht eine Realität zu verstehen ist), oder die immanente Gegenständlichkeit nennen würden. Jedes enthält etwas als Objekt in sich… (Brentano, PES 124f)

1) For Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental: it is what distinguishes the mental from the physical. All and only mental phenomena are intentional.  Call this the Brentano Thesis (BT). It presupposes that there are mental items, and that there are physical items.  It implies that there is no intentionality below the level of conscious mind and no intentionality above the level of conscious mind.  BT both restricts and demarcates. It restricts intentionality to conscious mind  and marks off the mental from the physical.

2) BT does the demarcation job tolerably well. Conscious states possess content; non-conscious states do not. My marvelling at the Moon is a contentful state; the Moon's being cratered is not. Going beyond Brentano, I say that there are two ways for a conscious state to have content. One way is for there to be something it is like to be in that state.  Thus there is something it  like to feel tired, bored, depressed, elated, anxious, etc.  even when there is no specifiable object that one feels tired about, bored at, depressed over, elated about, anxious of, etc.  

Call such conscious contents non-directed. They do not refer beyond one's mental state to a transcendent object.  Other contents are object-directed. Suppose I am anxious over an encroaching forest fire that threatens to engulf my property. The felt anxiety has an object and this object is no part of my conscious state.  The content, which is immanent to my mental state, 'points' to a state of affairs that is transcendent of my mental state.  In short, there are two types of mental content, object-directed and non-object-directed.

3) 'Every consciousness is a consciousness of something' can then be taken to mean that every conscious state has content.  Read in this way, the dictum is immune to such counter examples as pain.  That pain is non-directed does not show that pain is not a content of consciousness.

4) Brentano conflates content and object, Inhalt and Gegenstand. The conflation is evident from the above quotation. As a consequence he does not distinguish directed and non-directed contents. This fact renders his theory of intentionality indefensible.

Suppose I am thirsting for a beer.  I am in a conscious mental state. This state has a qualitative side: there is something it is like to be in this state.  But the state is also directed to a transcendent state of affairs, my downing a bottle of beer, a state of affairs that does not yet exist, but is no less transcendent for that.  If Brentano were right, then my thirsting for a bottle of beer would be a process immanent in my conscious life — which is precisely what it is not.

5) To sum this up. Brentano succeeds with the demarcation project, but fails to explain the directedness of some mental contents, their reference beyond the mind to extramental items.   This failure is due to his failure to distinguish content and object, a distinction that first clearly emerges with his student Twardowski.

Brentano was immersed in Aristotle and the scholastics by his philosophical training and his priestly formation. Perhaps this explains his inability to get beyond the notion of intentionality as intentionale Inexistenz (inesse).

Brentano-c-470x260

 

 

Presentism and Evil: If Presentism is False, then God does not Exist

Bradley Schneider sent me the following argument and would like my opinion. I am happy to accommodate him. (I have edited his argument for the sake of brevity, the soul of blog. I have also given it a title.)

PRESENTISM FALSE? THEN GOD DOES NOT EXIST!

1)   An all-good, omniscient, omnipotent God should not allow any horrendous evil.

2)  If there is a solution to the problem of evil, it must entail that God eventually defeats evil and, to defeat evil, God must not only compensate the victims of evil but destroy evil's existence.  

3)  If presentism is not true, however, it means that past events still exist, even if they do not exist now.  
 
4)  But this implies that a horrendous evil that occurred in, say, 1994 (the Rwandan genocide, for example) still exists.  Not only that, it will always exist.  As will every other horrendous evil throughout human history.

5)  God may be able to vanquish evil at the eschaton, but all of the horrendous evils will persist throughout all eternity.  Even while the blessed are enjoying heaven, the horrendous evils will continue to exist.  All of the past evils will remain real and hence undefeated, even if God can assure that no further evil will occur post-eschaton.
 
6)  So God ultimately cannot vanquish evil if presentism is false.
 
7)  Therefore, God doesn't exist if presentism is false.
 
The problem is with (3).   If presentism is not true, then presumably eternalism is true. Presentism is the view that only  temporally present items (times, events, . . .) exist. That is, everything that exists exists at present.  On eternalism, this is not the case: past and future items also exist.  Now for these two views to be contradictory, 'exist(s)' must be used in the same sense. But what sense is that? It cannot be the present-tensed sense because that would reduce presentism to a tautology and eternalism to a contradiction. How so?
 
Well, 'Everything that exists (present tense) exists at present' is a trivial logical truth devoid of metaphysical import. On the other hand, 'Past, present, and future items all exist (present tense)' is logically contradictory since wholly past and wholly future items  are not temporally present.  Presentism and eternalism are substantive metaphysical theses that contradict each other only if 'exist(s)' is taken tenselessly.
 
Now glance back at (3).  It reads, in part, "If presentism is not true, however, it means that past events still exist . . . "  This is arguably a presentist misunderstanding of what the eternalist is saying.  'Still exists' means 'existed and exists (present tense).' That is not what the eternalist is saying. He is not saying, for example, that the gladiatorial combat in the Coliseum is still going on. He is saying that past events, i.e., events earlier than his speaking, exist simpliciter, i. e., tenselessly, whatever that comes to.
 
Note also that if past events still exist, then they do exist now, which contradicts the rest of (3): " . . . even if they do not exist now." 
 
So Schneider's argument needs some work.
 
My view is that both eternalism and presentism are fraught with insuperable difficulties. Using either for theological purposes is not likely to get us anywhere.

Relations and Nonexistents

 Consider the following two sentences: 

a) Lions are smaller than dragons.
b) Mice are smaller than elephants.

From this datanic base a puzzle emerges. 

1) The data sentences are both true.
2) 'Smaller than' has the same sense in both (a) and (b).
3) In both (a) and (b), 'smaller than' has the same reference: it refers to a dyadic relation.
4) No relation holds or obtains unless all its relata exist.

What we have here is an aporetic tetrad. The four propositions just listed are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. What we have, then, is a philosophical problem in what I call canonical form. Any three  of the above four, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one.  Which limb of the tetrad should we reject?

One might reject (4) while upholding (1), (2), and (3).  Accordingly, some relations connect existents to non-existents.  It is true that lions are smaller than dragons despite it being the case that dragons do not exist.  The sense of 'smaller than' is the same in both (a) and (b).  And 'smaller than' picks out one and the same dyadic relation in both (a) and (b).

The idea here is that there is nothing in the nature of a relation to require that its obtaining entails the existence of all its relata.  Contrast thinking about the Trevi Fountain in Rome and thinking about the Fountain of Youth. Some will say that in both cases the intentional nexus is a genuine relation since there is nothing in the nature of a relation (to be precise: a specific relatedness) to require that all of its relata exist.  It is the same relation, the intentional relation, whether I think of an existing item or think of a non-existent item.

If you don't like this solution you might try rejecting (2) while upholding the remaining limbs: 'smaller than' does not have the same sense in our data sentences. Accordingly, 'are smaller than' in (b) picks out a relation that actually connects mice and elephants.  But in (a), 'are smaller than' does not pick out that relation.  In (a), 'is smaller than' has the sense  'would be smaller than.'  We are thus to understand (a) as having the sense of 'Lions would be smaller than dragons if there were any.'

(2)-rejection arguably falls afoul of Grice's Razor, to wit: one ought not multiply senses beyond necessity. Here is what Grice himself says:

[O]ne should not suppose what a speaker would mean when he used a word in a certain range of cases to count as a special sense of the word, if it should be predictable, independently of any supposition that there is such a sense, that he would use the word (or the sentence containing it) with just that meaning. (Grice, 1989, pp. 47-48, Quoted from Andrea Marchesi, "A radical relationist solution to intentional inexistence," Synthese, 2021.)

Pick your poison.

 

Forgive and Forget

Forgetting is the easier and more effective of the options if you can manage it. A wrong forgotten is a wrong unavailable for either forgiving or the opposite. But where is the virtue in a mere mental lapse? To forgive the unforgotten wrong — now there is the moral challenge, one rarely met, although almost all of us deceive ourselves in this regard.  We try to forgive, and we may succeed for a time, but then, in an unguarded moment, the memory of the offender obtrudes, and suddenly the thought is front and center: That asshole, that worthless piece of crap!  Such thoughts do not evince forgiveness.

What advice do I give myself? Guard the mind! But even the monks in their monasteries, far from the world and its provocations, are not very successful at that.

We aim at ideals the realization of which is beyond the reach of our own efforts.  One might conclude from this that there must be a Source of help beyond the human-all-too-human. For 'ought' implies 'can': what I morally must do, I must be able to do, if not by my own power, then with the assistance of Another. So there must be this Other.

Or one might conclude that because there is no Other to render assistance, we are crazy to torment ourselves with the contemplation of ideals, which, being unattainable by us, cannot count as ideals for us.

Montaigne on Why Language Matters

My Substack latest begins like this after a quotation from the Frenchman:

Montaigne's point is mine.  Language matters.  It deserves respect as the vehicle and enabler of our thoughts and — to change the metaphor — the common currency for the exchange of ideas.  To tamper with the accepted meanings of words in order  to secure argumentative or political advantage is a form of cheating.  Ludwig Wittgenstein likened languages to games.  But games have rules, and we cannot tolerate those who change the rules mid-game.  We must demand of our political opponents that they use language responsibly, and engage us on the common terrain of accepted usage.

Assorted other rants, riffs, railings, resistings, and refusals are on my Facebook page.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Musical Duos

Saturday night, time to punch the clock and pour yourself a stiff one. Me, I'm drinking a  Jack and Coke. How about you?

Mickey and Sylvia, Love is Strange, 1956

Nino Tempo and April, Deep Purple, 1963. The lyrics are pure sweet kitsch. But what's wrong with a little kitsch and sentimentality? Up yours, Theodor Adorno.

Everly Brothers, When Will I be Loved?

Righteous Brothers, Little Latin Lupe Lu

Simon and Garfunkel, I am a Rock.  I have my books and my poetry to protect me!

Ike and Tina Turner, It's Gonna Work Out Fine, 1961. I went to see the preacher man.

Sonny and Cher, I Got You, Babe, 1965.  Don't let them say you hair's too long!

Jan and Dean, Dead Man's Curve, 1963. Walk not back from Dead Man's Curve.

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, 1949. This one goes out to Hillary Clinton.

Peter and Gordon, I Go to Pieces

Peter and Gordon, Summer Song

Chad and Jeremy, Yesterday's Gone

Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo, Last Tango

Analysis of a Passage from Husserl’s Logical Investigations

Ed sends this:

Just found this very odd quote from Logical Investigations:

If I have an idea of the god Jupiter, this god is my presented object, he is ‘immanently present’ in my act, he has ‘mental inexistence’ in the latter, or whatever expression we may use to disguise our true meaning. I have an idea of the god Jupiter: This means that I have a certain presentative experience, the presentation-of-the-god-Jupiter is realized in my consciousness. This intentional experience may be dismembered as one chooses in descriptive analysis, but the god Jupiter naturally will not be found in it. The ‘immanent’, ‘mental object’ is not therefore part of the descriptive or real makeup (deskriptiven reellen Bestand) of the experience, it is in truth not really immanent or mental. But it also does not exist extramentally, it does not exist at all. This does not prevent our-idea-of-the-god-Jupiter from being actual, a particular sort of experience or particular mode of mindedness (Zumutesein), such that he who experiences it may rightly say that the mythical king of the gods is present to him, concerning whom there are such and such stories. If, however, the intended object exists, nothing becomes phenomenologically different. It makes no essential difference to an object presented and given to consciousness whether it exists, or it is fictitious, or is perhaps completely absurd. I think of Jupiter as I think of Bismarck, of the tower of Babel as I think of Cologne Cathedral, of a regular thousand-sided polygon as of a regular thousand-faced solid.

This relates to my earlier question. What is the intentional object here? Is it the idea-of-Jupiter? Or Jupiter himself?

1) Note first that 'inexistence' does not mean non-existence. This is a very common mistake made by most analytic philosophers.  When I am thinking about the god Jupiter, with or without imagery, Jupiter is the intentional object of my act. An act is an intentional (lived) experience, ein intentionales Erlebnis.  It is a mental item I live through, a psychic content if you will, "realized in my consciousness."  But every act has an intentional object (IO), just as every such object is the object of an act.    In the Jupiter case, the intentional object does not exist in reality.  So we say that it is a merely intentional object (MIO).  To say that this IO is inexistent in the act is just to say that the act has an intentional object which may or may not exist (in reality) without prejudice either to the directedness of the act or to the identity of the act.  (The identity of an act token is determined by its IO; equivalently, act tokens are individuated by their IOs.) So don't confuse 'inexistent' with 'non-existent.' Every intentional object is inexistent, but only some are non-existent. If an IO is nonexistent, then we say it is merely intentional.

2) Mental acts, not to be confused with mental (or physical) actions,  are occurrent episodes of object-directed experiencing.  Acts exist in reality. Obviously, Jupiter is not a real part or constituent of my act when I think of Jupiter.  Jupiter, as the object of my act, does not exist in my act as a real constituent thereof. (The same goes for the PLANET  Jupiter. I have a big head, and a broad mind, but not that big of a head or that broad of a mind.)   But neither does the god Jupiter exist in reality, extramentally.  As H. says, "it does not exist at all."  This much is clear. Jupiter is not in my head, nor in my mind as a real constituent of the mental events and processes that occur when I am thinking about Jupiter. It is also not an extramental existent.  Jupiter is before my mind as the intentional object of my act.  This object is what it is whether or not it exists in reality.  Suppose we are all wrong, and the god Jupiter does exist in reality. Nothing would change phenomenologically, as H. says.

3) Ed asks, "What is the intentional object here? Is it the idea-of-Jupiter? Or Jupiter himself?"  

It is not the idea-of-Jupiter because that is the act — the occurrent episode of object-directed experiencing — I live through when I think of Jupiter.  We cannot say that because Jupiter does not exist in reality, it must exist in my head or in my mind. That is nonsense as Twardowski made clear.   

The intentional object is also not a really existent extramental thing.

The intentional object is Jupiter himself, a transcendent non-existent item.  The above passage seems headed in a Meinongian direction.  How this comports with the strict correlativity of act and intentional object is surely a problem.

Buckner on Intentionality

I decided to insert a brief critique of London Ed into one of the intentionality chapters of my book in progress. Here it is:

One mistake to avoid is the conflation of object-directedness with object-dependence. D. E. Buckner speaks of an “. . . illusion that has captured the imagination of philosophers for at least a hundred years: intentionality, sometimes called object-dependence, a supposed unmediated relationship between thought and reality . . . .” (Reference and Identity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures: The Same God? Rowman and Littlefield, 2020, p. 195) Apart from his eliminativism about intentionality, Buckner is doubly mistaken in his characterization of it. No one except Buckner has, to my knowledge, characterized intentionality in general from Brentano on down as object-dependence, but it is standard, especially among analytic philosophers, to characterize it in terms of object-directedness. As George Molnar puts it,

The fundamental feature of an intentional state or property is that it is directed to something beyond itself . . . All mental states and processes have an internal reference to an object. The identity of the intentional state is defined in terms of this intentional object. . . . Since intentionality constitutes the identity of mental phenomena, it follows that the nexus between the mental state or process in question and its intentional object is non-contingent. (Powers: A Study in Metaphysics, Oxford, 2003, p. 62, second and third emphases added.)

Molnar goes on to make the usual points that the intentional object may or may not exist and that intentional objects are property-indeterminate (Ibid.) Given this intentionality 'boilerplate,' it should be clear that object-directedness and object-dependence are distinct notions that pull in opposite directions. Given that the nexus of act and intentional object is non-contingent, the identity of the act and its directedness does not depend on an external object. An object-directed thought need not be object-dependent in the sense of requiring an external thing for its identity. If I am thinking of Lucifer, I have a definite object in mind, an object to which my thought is directed. But of course, having an object in mind is no guarantee of its existence 'outside' the mind. The Lucifer-thought is what it is whether or not its intentional object is real. The thought does not depend on a real object for its identity or its directedness. The directedness of the thought is intrinsic to it and not supplied by a relation to a thing in the external world. This is why Brentano denies that intentionality is a relation, strictly speaking, but only something relation-like. Relations, standardly understood, require for their obtaining the real existence of all of their relata; many of our acts of thinking, however, are directed at objects that do not exist, and this without prejudice to the identity of these acts. This is not to deny that there may be some object-dependent thoughts, where an object is a real thing in nature. Perhaps it is the case that (some) meanings “ain't in the head” (H. Putnam) but are in the external world in roughly the way the meaning of the demonstrative 'this' is exhausted by the real thing to which it refers on a particular occasion of its use; intentionality theory, however, in both the phenomenological and analytic traditions has had from the outset a decidedly internalist bias, where internalism is the view that the individuation of mental items depends entirely on factors internal to the subject and not on any factors external to the subject as on externalism. This should come as no surprise since phenomenology is philosophy from the first-person point of view.

Buckner's first mistake is to interpret intentionality along the lines of an externalist model when this model makes hash of what the main thinkers have maintained, including Brentano, Husserl and Chisholm. His second mistake is his claim that the intentional nexus is unmediated or direct, a conceit belied by Husserl's doctrine of the noema.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some California Tunes from a Happier Time

Sir Douglas Quartet, Mendocino, 1969. This one goes out to Mendocino Joe.

Eric Burdon and the Animals, Monterey. This one goes out to Monterey Tom. 

Eagles, Hotel California.  Some of finest guitar-slinging of the '70s.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lodi

GG Kettel, San Francisco Bay Blues. Ferrara, Italy, 2007

Scott Mackenzie, San Francisco

Johnny Bond, Hot Rod Lincoln. San Pedro, Grapevine Hill. 

Doors, L. A. Woman

Beach Boys, California Girls

Mamas and Papas, California Dreamin'

Dave Bagwill comments (4 July):

Bill, listening to that Beach Boys tune tonight brought back a vivid memory.
 
Back when I lived in the Bay Area, and the Oakland A's were winning lots of ball games – Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Reggie Jackson (who made a throw from deep right field, at the fence, on a line to third base -on the base, in fact – catching a runner who had tagged at second base), Rick Monday et. al. – I attended a Saturday afternoon double-header with a friend from the bank.
 
It was a perfect day for baseball, and the stands were sold out; it felt great, until the first music pumped out of that stupendous sound system – and then it felt even better. 'California Girls' started playing, and just the first two or three beats was enough to electrify the crowd into a spontaneous rising and a thunderous roar of happiness.
 
It was just great to be an American, and that song was a huge part of the 'gestalt' = weather, a ball game, hot dogs, friendship, the flag, a sense of security and fellowship. And Sal Bando hit two home runs in the first game.

The Sense in which I am Australian

John Heil, From an Ontological Point of View, Oxford 2003, pp. vii-viii:

. . . the paradigmatic Australian trait: ontological seriousness. You are ontologically serious if you are guided by the thought that the ontological implications of philosophical claims are paramount. The attitude most naturally expresses itself in an allegiance to a truth-maker principle: when an assertion about the world is true, something about the world makes it true.

Such an attitude could be contrasted to the idea that, in pursuing philosophical questions, we must start with language and work our way outwards. My belief is that this attitude is responsible for the sterile nature of much contemporary analytical philosophy. If you start with language and try to work your way outwards, you will never get outside language. In that case, descriptions of the world, or 'stories', go proxy for the world. Perhaps there is something about the Australian continent that discourages this kind of 'hands-off' philosophizing. 

The above partially explains why Edward Buckner, my main sparring partner for many years, and I are ever at loggerheads. I am ontologically serious in Heil's sense, and Buckner is not. It regularly seems to me that he is pushing some sort of linguistic idealism. I have never been able to get him to understand the truth-maker principle.  Perhaps there is something about the British Isles . . . . 

And then there is David Brightly, also an Englishman. On Possibility, a discussion with Mr. Brightly,  brings out some of the differences in approach of dwellers in fog and desert dwellers.

External Relations and Bare Particularism

K. V. writes,

I am a first year Jesuit novice of the USA Midwest province. I'm from Cincinnati, OH. I have interests in philosophy. I know Thomism well. My hope is to do metaphysics and philosophical logic within the analytic tradition. 
 
I saw that you wrote a paper on external relations and Bradley's Regress. Can I ask you a couple questions regarding external relations? Do you think that first order logic is ontologically committed to external relations? Also, if all relations are external, would this entail a sort of bare particularism about objects? In other words, would all necessary properties be conceived of as something added, rather than as the essence?
It is good to make your acquaintance, K. V. Best wishes for your studies.
 
First we need to clarify 'internal and 'external' as applied to relations.  
 
External Relations. My coffee cup rests on a coaster which rests on my desk. Consider first the dyadic on top of relation the relata of which are the cup and the coaster. This is an external relation in the sense that both the cup and the coaster can exist and have the intrinsic (non-relational) properties they have whether or not they stand in this relation. Removing the cup from the coaster need not induce an intrinsic change (a change in respect of an intrinsic property or change in existential status) in the cup or in the coaster. One could also put the point modally. In the actual world, the cup is on the coaster at time t. But there is a merely possible world W in which the cup is not on the coaster at t. In W, cup and coaster both exist and possess the same intrinsic properties they have in the actual world, but the cup does not bear the external on top of relation to the coaster.

Now consider the triadic between relation that relates the members of the ordered triple <coaster, cup, desk>. This relation is also external. The terms (relata) of the relation can exist and have the intrinsic properties they have whether or not they stand in the relation.

A-Internal Relations. If a relation is not external, then it is non-external. One sort of non-external relation is an A-internal relation, where ‘A’ honors David M. Armstrong:

Two or more particulars are internally related if and only if there exist properties of the particulars which logically necessitate that the relation holds. (Universals and Scientific Realism, II, 85)

Consider two balls, A and B. Each has the property of being red all over. Just in virtue of each being red, A and B stand in the same color as relation.  Each ball's being (the same shade of) red logically suffices for them to stand in the relation in question.  This relation is internal in that the non-obtaining of the relation at a later time or in a different possible world would induce an intrinsic change in one or both of the balls. In other words, the two balls could not cease to be the same color as one another unless one or both of the balls changed color. But the two balls could cease to be ten feet from each other without changing in any intrinsic or non-relational respect. Spatial relations are clear examples of external relations.

 
In a theological image, for God to bring it about that Mt. Everest is higher than Mt. Kiliminjaro he need do only two things: create the one mountain and then create the other. He doesn't have to do a third thing, namely, bring them into the higher than relation. 

A-internal relations can be said to be founded relations in that they are founded in intrinsic (non-relational) properties of the relata. Thus the relational fact of A’s being the same color as B decomposes into a conjunction of two non-relational facts: A’s being red & B’s being red. These non-relational facts are independent of each other in the sense that each can obtain without the other obtaining.  A-internal relations reduce to their monadic foundations.  They are thus an "ontological free lunch" in Armstrong's cute phrase.   They do not add to the ontological inventory. They are no "addition to being." So if every relation were A-internal, then the category of Relation, as an irreducible category of entities, would be empty.

B-internal relations. To say that two or more particulars are B-internally related, where ‘B’ honors Bradley and Blanshard, is to say that there is no possible world in which the particulars exist but do not stand in the relation in question. Thus two B-internally related particulars cannot exist without each other. Each is essential to the other. Here is an example. Set S has five members essentially (as opposed to accidentally) , while set T has seven members essentially. These essential properties of S and T found the relation larger than (has a greater cardinality than) that obtains between them. Although there are possible worlds in which neither set exists, there is no possible world in which both sets exist but fail to stand in the relation in question.  So S and T are B-internally related.

 
Here is a simpler example, Socrates and his singleton {Socrates}.  The first is an element of the second, and cannot fail to be an element of the second. And the second cannot fail to have Socrates as its sole element.  So Socrates and his singleton stand in a B-internal relation.  
 
Go back to the cup and the coaster. The first is on top of the second.  If they were B-internally related, then that very cup could not have existed without that very coaster, and vice versa. In every possible world in which the cup exists, the coaster exists.  That strikes me as preposterous. So while I grant that there are B-internal relations, not all relations are B-internal. There are external relations.

In sum, external relations are not founded in the non-relational properties of their relata. A-internal relations are founded in accidental non-relational properties of their relata. B-internal relations are founded in essential non-relational properties of their relata.

My reader asks a question that I will precisify as follows: Is standard first-order predicate logic with identity ontologically committed to external relations?  I should think so. The quantifiers range over a domain of existents.  If that were not the case, 'Cats exist' could not be replaced salva veritate with 'For some x, x is a cat.' For the particular quantifier to be an existential quantifier, the domain of quantification must be a domain of existents.  
 
So modern predicate logic includes a commitment to ontological pluralism, to a plurality of numerically distinct individual existents.  This is a totality of "independent reals" (to borrow a phrase from Josiah Royce). Each of these independent existents has no need of any other one for its existence.  In Humean terms, they are "distinct existences," i.e., numerically distinct existents.   No doubt they stand in external relations. The cat is on the mat but it has no need of the mat to exist and the mat pays the same compliment to the cat.  The relation that connects them is external.   
 
The reader's second question is none too clear.  He may be asking this: If all relations are external, does it follow that concrete particulars that stand  in such relations are bare particulars? First of all, what is a bare particular?
 
A bare particular is not a particular without properties. As a matter of metaphysical necessity, everything has properties. What make a bare particular bare is not its lack of properties, but the way it has the properties it has. It has them by exemplifying/instantiating them, where (first-order) exemplification is — or is modelled on — an asymmetrical external relation.  Thus the bare particular in a red round spot — to use a typical Bergmannian, 'Iowa,' example — stands in an external relation to the property of being red and the property of being round in the same spot.   A bare particular is not an Aristotelian primary substance; it is not an individual essence or nature.  It has properties but they are all accidental properties.  It cannot not have properties, but there is no necessity that it have the very properties it has. So, from 'Necessarily, every bare articular has properties' one cannot validly infer 'Every bare particular has the properties it has  necessarily.'  By contrast, an Aristotelian primary substance (prote ousia) is an individualized essence or nature.
 
The answer to the second bolded question, I think, is in the affirmative. But to explain this with any rigor would take more time than I presently have to invest.

The Fix We Are In: How Should We Respond to the ‘Woke’ Revolutionaries?

The difference between paleo-liberal and post-liberal responses to the 'woke' Left is well described in a recent Substack entry White tribalism is a third response. I have been entertaining (with some hospitality) the notion that whites may need to go tribal pro tempore, for the time being, in order to defend themselves and their interests (which are not just their interests but the interests of civilization and high culture) against the various tribalisms promoted by the Left. Call it Tribalism Pro Tem.
 
But so far my 'official' position on this weblog and elsewhere  would fall under the paleo-liberal or classically liberal rubric. As I see it, a sound conservatism, American conservatism I call it, takes on board what is good in classical liberalism.  Against Deneen, whose position is limned in the above-linked Substack piece by N. S. Lyons, I would object that there is no inevitability to the slide from the classical liberalism of the Founders, which was respectful of traditions, to a society of atomized, deracinated individuals. I suspect that Deneen succumbs to the classic slippery slope fallacy.
 
This just over the transom from a reader:
A question for you:  It seems like I'm one of the alt-right "tribalists" you take yourself to disagree with.  (Correct me if I'm wrong.)  But do we really disagree?  Let me try to clarify my position a little.
 
I'd be very happy to live in a society where race and other tribal markers don't matter much.  They could be a purely personal or social kind of thing with no political meaning.
 
On the other hand, when I look around and see how non-white (etc.) tribalism is being weaponized against white people, and specifically white-Euro-Christian men, it seems to me that we have no practical​ option other than consciously identifying as the tribe under attack.  It's largely a defensive thing.  We are being attacked as​ white people, or white men, so it's not enough to just call ourselves "Americans" or "Canadians" or whatever.  Those civic identities have already been deconstructed or rejected by the people who hate us and seek power over us.  They just don't care.  And others like us are not going to be motivated by appeals to these more abstract categories when their enemies are attacking them for being white, and male.
 
So it's in this (weird) context that I think white men should be conscious and proud of their "tribal" identity, as a healthy and empowering response to the hateful tribalism of others.  In a different context I wouldn't advocate this kind of tribalism.  Against a society that says it's shameful and immoral to be a white man–which, let's be frank, is what they're really saying–we should affirm that there's nothing wrong with us, that we like ourselves and won't apologize for being who we are.
 
Do you disagree?
I agree with qualifications, caveats, and codicils.
 
I can't see that a white-tribal or white-male-tribal response to the pernicious tribalisms promoted by the Left is a good solution in the long run.  But in the short run I see no acceptable alternative to a pro tempore white tribalism.  So I don't disagree with my reader on the practical plane. But as a theist and a personalist, I consider a self-identification as a member of a tribe to be a false self-identification.  I am not just an animal of a particular sex and race, and because I am not just that, any self-identification as just that is a false self-identification.  I am more than that.  And I would add that my life-project is to realize that 'more' and to achieve individuation as a person. This individuation is not a given but a task. It is a spiritual task.  This is an existentialist motif expressed in a neo-Kantian way. But this is not the place to expatiate further on this theme.
 
Who am I ultimately? Just a token of a type? Just an interchangeable member of a particular tribe of animals? You wouldn't have to be a theist to reject this sort of crude self-identification. One could take oneself to be zoon logikon in Aristotle's sense, a rational animal.  One could reject God and the soul and still achieve a loftier self-apperception than that of a bit of the Earth's fauna determined by the biological categories of race and sex.  Now I accept the biological reality of race and sex: they are not social constructs. 'Society' — whatever that is — did not 'assign' me my male sex upon birth. The very notion is absurd. Nor did any group. Nor can I interpret myself as black or female and thereby bring about a change of race or sex.  Race and sex are neither social constructs nor personal constructs. My reality is logically and ontologically antecedent to my self-understanding. Indeed, I am essentially (as opposed to accidentally) Caucasian and male. An essential (accidental) property of a thing is a property that thing cannot (can) exist without.
 
My interlocutor will probably feel that I am sidestepping the pressing, practical issue by raising the questions that most deeply interest me, namely, those about the metaphysics of the self.  He will remind me that I am no Boethius and would have a very hard time investigating the metaphysics of the self in the gulag or under torture. And he would be right to so remind me.
 
Suppose a black guy gets in my face and attacks my whiteness and all of its values and virtues (objectivity, punctuality, self-control, ability to defer gratification, love of learning, etc.) I will point out that his smart phone would not exist if it were not for the cultural goods  produced in the West and the values and virtues just listed.   I will point out that no high culture at the level of the West came out of sub-Saharan Africa.  I will point out his ingratitude at the thousands that died in the U.S. Civil War to free the slaves. I will remind him that slavery existed on the continent of North America long before the Unites States of America came into existence, and that the moral and philosophical foundations of this polity made possible the elimination of slavery.
 
And so I would do something I would prefer not to do, namely stick up for the white tribe.  And I would do it as long as I had to do it. I would play the role part-time of the pro tem white tribalist. But at the same time that I was playing this role out of a necessity imposed on me ab extra, I would not forget who I am really am.  And who is that? Well, there are several options the exploration of which does not belong here.  But let me just note that if you are a classical theist you will not take yourself to be identical to an animal slated for utter destruction in a few years determined by your biology.
 
One more point which I think is very important. I wrote above of whiteness and its values and virtues. But we whites do not own these virtues and values any more than we own the truths of mathematics and natural science. They are universal and belong to all. It is just that whites have proven to be so much better at their discovery, articulation, dissemination, and so much better at living in accordance with them and reaping the benefits from such living.  If blacks want to improve their lives, they will have to engage in some serious cultural appropriation, which is not really cultural appropriation given the universality of the virtues and values.  They will have to order their lives along the lines of the 'white' virtues and values that they foolishly denigrate. 

Charles Murray, Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America, Introduction and Chapter One

Herewith, some notes and commentary. Double quotation marks are used for quoting, single for sneering, mentioning, etc.

Murray CharlesThe first truth is that "cognitive ability" is differently distributed among the groups under examination: American whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians. The second is that these groups "have different rates of violent crime." (ix)  These propositions are indeed truths. But why discuss these incendiary matters?  Because "We are engaged in a struggle for America's soul." (x)  We are indeed, and the stakes are high. 

The first chapter  is entitled "The American Creed Imperiled" and covers pp. 1-8.  

America's soul is her founding ideals, the American creed, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.  Among the ideals: liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, human rights, the rule of law, and private property.  I would add limited government to the list and insist that private property is the foundation and sine qua non of individual liberty, which of course entails opposition to totalitarian schemes such as socialism and communism.

But the founding ideals were a long time in achieving.  On 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous 'I have a dream' speech that "evoked the American creed from start to finish." (2) The next year brought the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson.  "The act had to be a good and necessary thing. As a college junior at the time, I certainly thought so." (3)

But the 1964 Act drove a "philosophical wedge . . . between those who wanted strict adherence to the ideal of treating people as individuals, equal before the law, and those who advocated group-based policies as a way to achieve social justice." (3-4)  But what's with the "social"?  What's wrong with plain old 'justice'? How could justice not be social?  Could old man Murray be unaware that 'social justice' is a leftist code-phrase?

The wedge was driven deeper.

Group-based policies proliferated and by the end of the 20th century 'American creed' had fallen into desuetude and the thing itself had been repudiated altogether to be replaced by intersectionality, critical race theory, and a "bastardized vision of socialism." (4)  The new ideology came to dominate "the left wing of the Democratic Party."   Question for  Murray: Is there a right wing? Who belongs to it?

The label that sums up all the newfangled Unsinn is 'identity politics.'  "The core premise of identity politics is that individuals are inescapably defined by the groups into which they were born — principally (but not exclusively) by race and sex — and that this understanding must shape our politics." (5, emphasis in original)   The American creed is thereby "turned on its head."  Treating people as individuals becomes immoral because it ignores racism and sexism. Racism is systemic and white privilege omnipresent. The power of the state not only may be used, but must be used to treat people of color preferentially.

It took him a while, but Murray came to see that left-wing identity politics is "toxic."  (6) I would add that the same goes for the identity politics of the alternative right.  Be that as it may. The topic is Murray. He finds identity politics "toxic" because "It is based on the premise that all groups are equal in the ways that shape economic, social, and political outcomes for groups and that therefore all differences in group outcomes are artificial and indefensible." (6) Murray goes on to say that the premise is "factually wrong." "Hence this book about cognitive ability and criminal behavior."

Here is the way I would present the fundamentally fallacious  leftist identity-political reasoning:

1) We are all equal in the ways Murray mentions.  We are equal in interests, aptitudes, intelligence, work habits, criminality, etc. But

2) There is no equality of outcome.

3) The only possible explanation of this is systemic racism and sexism and unearned white privilege. Therefore

4) It is morally acceptable to use the power of the state to equalize the inequalities. And individual liberties be damned.

The main problem with the argument, of course, is that (1) is provably false.  

Unfortunately, Murray backpedals out of fear of being misunderstood and, I would guess, fear of being labelled a nasty racist and white supremacist. He assures us:

I am not talking about racial superiority or inferiority, but about differences in group averages and overlapping distributions. Differences in averages do not affect the abilities of any individual. They should not affect our approach, positively or negatively, to any person we meet. (6)

No? Take the third sentence. If Murray is convinced that blacks as a group are more criminally prone than whites as a group, and he encounters a black person whom he does not know, then it would be highly irrational of him NOT to allow that conviction of his to affect his approach to the black person.  Suppose Murray is walking down a street and a number of black youths are approaching him, while on the other side of the street coming in his direction are a number of white Mormon youths. Would it not be highly irrational of Murray to remain on the black side of the street?

Now look at the first sentence. Obviously Murray is talking about racial superiority/inferiority if he argues that Asians as a group are better at math that blacks as a group.  "Come on, man!" as Joey B. would say.

To Murray I say: you will be called a racist and a white supremacist no matter what you say. So man up and don't try to curry favor with our political enemies.

………………………….

A reader comments:

I was reading your post about Murray and thinking over your example toward the end about the group of black youths on the street.  Years back I read an example almost exactly like this in a philosophy paper, except that the author was careful not to include any racial description of the "teenagers" in the story.  (Maybe in the same way that newspapers like to call a black criminal an "area man" or "local youth".)  
 
According to the author, he couldn't help but cross the street on the basis of his "prejudiced" belief that a group of "scowling" teenagers dressed like gangbangers represents some kind of danger.  He later feels ashamed​ of his belief that they "pose a danger" because, after all, "I do not know them" and "they could be harmless".  The belief was "epistemically ungrounded".
 
Isn't that amazing?  You'd think anyone would have to agree that in this situation it's obviously rational​ to believe that a bunch of young men "pose a danger" and rational​ to act on your assessment of danger by simply crossing the street.  But NO.  Here we have a senior distinguished philosopher just asserting for no particular reason that his belief and behavior was not rational​.  And he even thinks it was immoral​ or something.  Anyway, he claims to be ashamed.
 
So there may be no getting through to these people.  Or maybe they know what they're saying is ridiculous but they're so desperate to appear "good" that you can't have an honest conversation with them about even the blindingly obvious.
The prospects for fruitful conversation do indeed seem dim. We are living through a period of race madness which addles the brains of many including the distinguished philosopher you mention.  White liberal guilt is probably a factor, as well as a desire to be liked and accepted, fit in, keep drawing his salary, and seem 'good' and bien-pensant. I suspect that the belief that we are all equal, not just formally, but materially and behaviorally, and in a way that would make it reasonable not to cross the street in my example, is a perverse secularization of the Christian notion that we are all equal in the eyes of God, just as the notion that we are collectively guilty for the sins of slavery is a perverse secularization of the Christian notion of original sin.
 
On top of that there is the widespread false belief that the only motive a Charles Murray could have for his researches is bigotry and hatred of the Other, never a genuine scientific interest. This comports well with the current assault by 'wokesters' on the concept and value of objectivity which is denigrated — if that is an acceptable word these days — as a 'white supremacist' concept and value.