Abstract

Parts and wholes come in an infinite variety, but in each instance something, namely relations, joins the parts together to make them into a whole rather than an Aristotelian "heap." The ontological status of relations is the subject of this dissertation. ;The question of whether relations are real presupposes some method of determining what is real. A modified version of Whitehead's ontological principle, or the idea that only real things can have effects on other things, serves as the test of the reality. If any effects result from a whole but not from a collection of parts, then a whole differs from its parts and relations are real. Such effects can manifest themselves in two ways: parts themselves may somehow be affected by being joined into a whole or some new property may emerge with a whole that cannot be attributed to the parts taken separately. If one discovers either type of effect, then relations are real. ;The first section of the dissertation is an historical examination on the question of the reality of the relations. In the first chapter, the positions of Hume, Parmenides and Whitehead are considered but ultimately rejected. The second chapter examines the positions of Aristotle and Wittgenstein, thinkers for whom relations are in some cases real, while the third examines Plato's idea on relations. ;In the fourth chapter, a distinction between two types of relations is drawn. The difference between these relations is found in whether or not the parts joined are affected by being in a whole. Static relations are those which join parts into a whole without affecting those parts, while parts joined by dynamic relations are affected by being in a whole. Both static and dynamic wholes possess emergent properties which come into being only when parts are joined into wholes. ;The second section focuses on the consequences of the reality of relations in philosophy, specifically in ethics, logic and the philosophy of space and time