Event Detail

Relationist views in metaphysics (about, for example, things like space, the direction of time, and physical quantities like mass) tend to be leaner in ontology and ideology than their absolutist counterparts. But this leaner metaphysics generates a certain problem in semantics, a problem we call the problem of incomplete intensions. Focusing on relationalism about orientation, we draw out and clarify this problem. We then explore responses to the problem. Finding error-theoretic and descriptivist approaches wanting, we explore a certain kind of nonfactualist, expressivist understanding of orientational discourse, and tentatively suggest it has promise as a response to the problem. We conclude with a discussion of some ways that our treatment of orientational relationism might extend to other relationist views in metaphysics.