Università di Firenze, November, 30, 2021, h. 9.00-10.00 CET

Those who admit relations in their ontology, usually task them with multiple metaphysical functions: i) relating their relata (e.g. mother to daughter), ii) qualifying their relata (as ‘mother’ and as ‘daughter’), and iii) unifying their relata (as subjects to their properties, of being mother, or daughter). In this paper, I raise problems for the multi-tasking that relations supposedly do; and focus in particular on their role as unifiers of the relata. I show that relations cannot unify their relata (and why not), by drawing on arguments by Aristotle and Bradley. I contend that a unifier is not a relation but a qualification; however, a special type of qualification, namely, a plural qualification of the relata. From this, I argue that the unification does not require a new type of property, namely, polyadic properties; rather, unification requires a different type of subjecthood, plural subjecthood.

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