The doctrine of internal relations is the philosophical doctrine that all relations are internal to their bearers, in the sense that they are essential to them and the bearers would not be what they are without them. It was a term used in

British philosophy British philosophy refers to the philosophical tradition of the British people. "The native characteristics of British philosophy are these: common sense, dislike of complication, a strong preference for the concrete over the abstract and a certa ...

around in the early 1900s.Russell ‘Pragmatism’ (1909) and ‘The Monistic Theory of Truth’ (1906–07)

Overview

Some relations are clearly internal in the sense that, for example, four would not be four unless it were related to two in the way it is. Some relations are internal to their bearers under one description but not under another, for example, a wife would not be a wife unless suitably related to a husband, but Mary would still be Mary had she not married. Or take the internal relation where Jack is taller than his wife, Joan. Here the relation is internal to both of them together; in symbolic form, it can be given as ''Jack(R)Joan'', where R is the ordered relation of "taller than". The doctrine that all relations are internal implies that everything has some relation, however distant, to everything else. Such a doctrine is ascribed by

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

and

G. E. Moore George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the initiators of analytic philosophy. He and Russell began de-emphasizing ...

to certain ideas by

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy and t ...

and the American philosopher, C. S. Peirce. Russell associates it with

pragmatism Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics� ...

, objective idealism and the

absolute idealism Absolute idealism is chiefly associated with Friedrich Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, both of whom were German idealist philosophers in the 19th century. The label has also been attached to others such as Josiah Royce, an American philosopher wh ...

of Hegel. It also refers to

coherentism In philosophical epistemology, there are two types of coherentism: the coherence theory of truth, and the coherence theory of justification (also known as epistemic coherentism). Coherent truth is divided between an anthropological approach, w ...

, a holist approach to truth. A contemporary of Russell, the English philosopher,

Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, inclu ...

, maintained the necessity of a doctrine of internal relations for the theory of

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

References

{{reflist Metaphysical principles Idealism

Overview

See also

References