 This remark has suggested to some philosophers that we can do away with relations generally because we need only posit the composites upon whose intrinsic nature the relation supervenes (Parsons 2009: 223–5). But Lewis’s view and the more general form of reductionism inspired by it encounter a dilemma. Either (1) the composite is just the proton and electron taken together. But then the distance between them fails to supervene upon the intrinsic character of the composite, because there are duplicates of the proton and duplicates of the electron that vary in distance. Or (2) the composite is more than just the proton and electron, i.e., the proton and electron related together in some (external) way. But then we haven’t gotten rid of external relations in favour of internal ones but only presupposed them.