Relation of Ideas
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In philosophy, a relation is a type of fact that is true or false of two things. For instance, "being taller than" is a relation that is true of "Shaquille O'Neal and Ross Perot" and false of "the Empire State building and Mt. Everest." Substances or things have properties ("this spot is red"). Relations on the other hand obtain between two substances ("this spot is bigger than that spot") or two properties ("this red is a darker shade than that red").
There are two major kinds of relations:[1] ontological and epistemological. Ontological relations are entities like "father", which is a person considered in his relation to a child. Epistemological relations are often logical connections that obtain between two concepts or ideas, like "entailment." The fact that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man entails that Socrates is mortal—the relation between Socrates' mortality and the mortality of all men is an entailment relation.