The phrase "a mere relation of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is simply a connection or reference to another thing, often implying that it lacks depth or significance.
Example: "The report is a mere relation of the events that transpired, without any analysis or insight."
Alternatives: "a simple account of" or "just a reference to".
For example, by the end of thirteenth century, most philosophers use it to explain the doctrine of creation, saying that creatures are related to God by a real relation, whereas God is related to them by a mere relation of reason (cf. Henninger 1989).
claims straightforwardly that "probable things are truth-like" (probabilia … sunt verisimilia).[7] Other scholastic uses of these words suggest instead a mere relation of frequent mutual implication.
Thus, when a substance acquires a new relation without undergoing any real change this is often explained by saying that the substance acquired a mere relation of reason.[37] Finally, some medieval philosophers use relations of reason to identify a sense in which God can have accidents after all.
This impulse is due to the pessimist's conviction that "evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any superficial arrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural remedy".
This effort, as we shall see, helps to explain the pervasiveness in late medieval philosophy of the distinction between so-called real relations (relationes reales) and mere relations of reason (relationes rationis).
One can ask whether space is (a) a real thing a substance a thing that exists independently of its inhabitants, or (b) a mere system of relations among those inhabitants.
For example, consider the problem of incongruent counterparts: those who think space is a mere system of relations struggled to explain our intuition that we could distinguish a world containing only a left hand from a world containing only a right hand.
This means that they added other orthogonal dimensions to the mere subordination relation of a hierarchy, which helped them to improve the indexing of literature.
"Without prompt action, the pledges Qatar made last year are at serious risk of being dismissed as a mere public relations stunt to ensure the Gulf state can cling on to the 2022 World Cup".
Drawing on this idea, Lukács sketches a theory of social rationalization that goes beyond a mere description of economic relations and towards a theory of cultural change.
Yet, while the factory and building owners at Rana face charges of negligence, the Western companies that reap the profits face a mere public-relations embarrassment.
