Event Detail

Many philosophers of physics and philosophers of mathematics have been attracted to some form of ‘structuralism’. The idea, roughly, is that the structure in which objects are embedded is somehow prior to the objects themselves, so that physical or mathematical reality fundamentally consists in a pattern of ‘relations without relata’, and objects are just ‘positions in the structure’. It is notoriously difficult to make sense of this view. I will raise a dilemma for existing approaches, concerning the role of numerical identity. I will then propose a new approach, aimed at resolving the dilemma. On the view I outline, the fundamental facts are purely qualitative –– consisting in ‘intersections’ between qualitative relations –– and involve no ‘quantitative’ structure pertaining either to objects or to identity.