Relational metaphysics
What something is — and even that it is — is constituted by its relations to other things, not by an intrinsic nature it would have in isolation
Substance lives in relations and differences, not in things-in-themselves.Negation: substantialism / intrinsicism, where things have their identity (and existence) on their own, and relations are extra layers added on top.
Link to originalEverything is a differential battle between perspectives.
Examples (both idealist and materialist): Hegel (the Absolute is the totality of mediations; nothing has determinate identity except through its relations and contradictions) , dialectical materialism
Negative examples: Plato’s forms, Berkely, Leibniz’ monads; atomist materialism
Taking seriously the perspective of intelligence as relational implies something far more mind-bending than merely acknowledging the social origins of consciousness. It implies that relationships themselves are the building blocks of reality. There is no God’s-eye “view from nowhere” in a relationship graph. In fact there isn’t even a God’s-eye view of what the nodes in the graph are.
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