Relata

Relata is the plural of relatum, a term used in philosophy to denote the entities that participate in a relation. In the sentence “Alice is taller than Bob,” Alice and Bob are the relata, while “is taller than” is the relation that links them.

The distinction between a relation and its relata is central in the philosophy of relations. A single relation can hold among many different relata, and the same pair of relata can participate in more than one relation (for example, “is adjacent to” and “is at distance from”). Depending on the theory, relata can be concrete objects, events, or properties, and in some frameworks they may be abstract entities; in each case relata are the things that bear or stand in the relation.

In logic and formal ontology, a relation is often represented as a set of ordered n‑tuples. For a binary relation R, R consists of pairs (a, b) where a and b are the relata. The notion of relata helps distinguish the content of a claim (which entities are involved) from the form of the claim (the pattern of how they relate).

Philosophical debates about relata address questions such as whether relations exist independently of their relata, or whether what exists are the relata and the relation is simply a pattern among them. Some theories treat relatum as fundamental and relations as ways relata stand to each other; others treat relations as real structures that may exist beyond the individual relata.

See also: relatum, relation, and the metaphysics of relations.