Bradley’s Regress
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Bradley's regress is a family of arguments at the center of debates about the ontology of properties and relations. In Appearance and Reality, the British idealist F. H. Bradley advanced three distinct regress arguments against relational unity: if a thing is merely a bundle of qualities bound together by some relation, that binding itself requires a new relation, and so on without end. Any position treating objects as composed of several constituents faces the same demand.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Test unity claims: ask whether combining constituents requires yet another relation to hold them together. - Force a stopping condition: demand an account of why some level needs no new connecting relation. - Pressure bundle theories: check whether treating objects as bundles of properties can be made coherent.
Anchor fast decisions
The regress bites because relations are themselves things that need connecting: if a thing is a complex of properties, a relation must hold them together, but that relation and those properties form a new complex, requiring another relation, endlessly. Stopping the regress requires explaining why some level no longer needs a new relation, or unity remains unexplained.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
account_treeGenealogyexpand_more
menu_bookReferencesexpand_more
Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bradley-regress/verified
PRIVATE NOTES · Only visible to you
SAVED Q&A
ENTRY Q&A · Private saving available
Ask with a clear boundary
thinkingmodels answers from published entry context only.
Your question is sent to thinkingmodels. The answer uses public entry context only.
RELATED MODELS