Exemplify
Focus on one of your attributes, like your being
content. I surmise that there are at least these four things presently within
your field of awareness: the property, being content, you, the relation of exemplification, and the fact that you
exemplify contentness. The fact, I
say, is an arrangement that has you and the
property of being content as its parts (and it exists if and only if you stand
in the relation of exemplification to the property of being content). Anyway, by
being aware of the fact that you are content, I surmise that you become aware
of the relation of exemplification. By ‘exemplify’ I mean to pick out that very
relation. I can only hope that you know what relation I’m trying to point your
mind’s eye to.
There is the famous Bradley’s regress associated with
treating exemplification as a relation. The idea is that if x exemplifies F by
virtue of the exemplification relation, E, connecting x to F, then x exemplifies
being connected to F by E will only be
true by virtue of E connecting x to the property of being connected to F by E. You see the regress: for now we will
want to know by virtue of what does x exemplify the property of being connected to the property of being connected
to F by E by E? And so on.
I reply that the regress is not vicious. (Or more
modestly, I do not see that it is vicious.) I would say this. The proposition
that x exemplifies F is true by
virtue of corresponding to the fact that x exemplifies F (see A Theory of Correspondence). This fact is itself an arrangement that contains x and F as parts. Now it’s
true that for each proposition P, there is a further proposition about P. For
example, there is the proposition that x
and F jointly exemplify the relation of exemplification. So there is an
infinite regress here. But I do not see why it is vicious. I don’t see why either
the truth or the existence of a first-order proposition should depend upon the truth or the existence
of a higher-order proposition. So I don’t see viciousness stemming from
ungrounded dependence. But where else would it stem from?