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Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism

New York: Routledge (2013)

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  1. Aquinas and Buridan on the Substance of the Soul and its Powers: On the Intermediary Nature of Properties.Emma Emrich - 2022 - Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics 18:133-155.
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  • An Empirical Argument for Presentism.David Builes & Michele Odisseas Impagnatiello - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.
    According to orthodoxy, our best physical theories strongly support Eternalism over Presentism. Our goal is to argue against this consensus, by arguing that a certain overlooked aspect of our best physical theories strongly supports Presentism over Eternalism.
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  • Causality, determination and free will: towards an anscombean account of free action.Niels van Miltenburg - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-20.
    Anscombe’s “Causality and Determination” is often cited in the contemporary free will debate, but rarely discussed in much detail. It’s main contribution, it is thought, is the defense of an alternative to deterministic causation, thus clearing the way for an incompatibilist analysis of free actions in terms of probabilistic causation. However, in this paper I will show that the contemporary probabilistic analysis of free action actually stands in direct conflict with Anscombe’s lecture. Instead, I will argue, its true value for (...)
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  • (1 other version)Powers, Processes, and Time.Giacomo Giannini - 2021 - Erkenntnis (6):1-25.
    In this paper I argue that even the most radical metaphysics of powers (such as that adopted by Mumford & Anjum, Cartwright, or Groff) are compatible with eternalism. I first offer a taxonomy of powers ontologies, and attempt to characterise the difference between moderate and radical powers ontologies – the latter are characterised by an emphasis on production and dynamicity. I consider an argument by C. Friebe to the effect that the productive character of powers is inconsistent with Eternalism and (...)
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  • Kant on Essence and Nature.Michael Oberst - manuscript
    This paper investigates Kant’s account of “real essence” and of a thing’s “nature”. Notwithstanding their wide negligence in the literature, these concepts belong to the central ones of Kant’s metaphysics. I argue that, on the one hand, Kant is in continuity with the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition of essence. But, on the other hand, he also follows Locke in distinguishing between “logical” and “real” essence. Contrary to recent attempts of aligning real essence with contemporary approaches to essence, I will defend the thesis (...)
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  • Introduction: Mental Powers.Matteo Grasso & Anna Marmodoro - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1017-1020.
    The metaphysics of powers (Shoemaker, 1980; Mumford, 2004; Marmodoro, 2009; Heil, 2012 among many others) is a promising conceptual framework that has been successfully put to use in many philosophical and scientific domains, but surprisingly its potential applications in the contemporary philosophy of mind are still under-investigated. This thematic issue aims to show that power ontology has implications concerning major questions in the contemporary philosophy of mind, such as: what is the metaphysical relationship between consciousness and the physical? Are phenomenal (...)
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  • Dis-positioning Euthyphro.Ben Page - 2018 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 84 (1):31-55.
    The Euthyphro objection is often perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the king objection to theistic meta-ethics. This paper proposes a response that hasn’t been much explored within the contemporary literature, based on the metaphysics of dispositions and natural law theory. The paper will first contend that there is a parallel between ways theists conceptualise God’s role in creating laws of nature and the ways God creates goods. Drawing upon these parallels I propose a possible response to the dilemma, where this (...)
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  • Mechanisms and Method.Daniel Little - 2015 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 45 (4-5):462-480.
    Causal mechanisms theory has provided an important contribution to the theory of social explanation. This article considers whether CMT also makes a contribution to improvement of social science methodology. Methodology serves as a guide to the construction of research questions and explanatory hypotheses. Research is guided by background assumptions about the ontology of the domain of investigation. CMT provides a valuable ontology for social science research. Furthermore, it provides a valuable research heuristic: “seek out the causal mechanisms that underlie an (...)
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  • The dispositionalist deity: How God creates laws and why theists should care.Ben Page - 2015 - Zygon 50 (1):113-137.
    How does God govern the world? For many theists “laws of nature” play a vital role. But what are these laws, metaphysically speaking? I shall argue that laws of nature are not external to the objects they govern, but instead should be thought of as reducible to internal features of properties. Recent work in metaphysics and philosophy of science has revived a dispositionalist conception of nature, according to which nature is not passive, but active and dynamic. Disposition theorists see particulars (...)
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  • Fake Barns and false dilemmas.Clayton Littlejohn - 2014 - Episteme 11 (4):369-389.
    The central thesis of robust virtue epistemology (RVE) is that the difference between knowledge and mere true belief is that knowledge involves success that is attributable to a subject's abilities. An influential objection to this approach is that RVE delivers the wrong verdicts in cases of environmental luck. Critics of RVE argue that the view needs to be supplemented with modal anti-luck condition. This particular criticism rests on a number of mistakes about the nature of ability that I shall try (...)
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  • Platonic Hylomorphism.Lloyd P. Gerson - 2022 - Rhizomata 10 (1):26-57.
    Hylomorphism is almost universally claimed to be a staple doctrine of Aristotle. In this paper, I discuss a wide range of texts from the dialogues of Plato that straightforwardly display hylomorphism. Both Plato and Aristotle rest their cognitive realism on their hylomorphism. The crucial difference between Aristotle’s hylomorphism and Plato’s is that Aristotle believes that hylomorphism supports and is supported by essentialism whereas Plato does not. Plotinus presents arguments against Aristotle’s essentialism at the same time as he defends Platonic hylomorphism (...)
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  • What Does it Mean to be Contrary to Nature?David Bradshaw - 2023 - Christian Bioethics 29 (1):58-76.
    St. Paul says that same-sex sexual acts are “contrary to nature.” Plainly this is intended as a condemnation, but beyond that its meaning is obscure. In particular, we are given no general account of what it means to be contrary to nature, including what other acts might fit this description. This article attempts to provide such an account. It relies for this purpose on the biblical and classical sources of this idiom as well as its subsequent use within the Greek (...)
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  • (1 other version)Toward a philosophy of technosciences.Bernadette Bensaude Vincent & Sacha Loeve - 2018 - In Bernadette Bensaude Vincent, Xavier Guchet & Sacha Loeve (eds.), French Philosophy of Technology: Classical Readings and Contemporary Approaches. Cham: Springer Verlag. pp. 169-186.
    The term " technoscience " gained philosophical significance in the 1970s but it aroused ambivalent views. On the one hand, several scholars have used it to shed light on specific features of recent scientific research, especially with regard to emerging technologies that blur boundaries (such as natural/artificial, machine/living being, knowing/making and so on); on the other hand, as a matter of fact " technoscience " did not prompt great interest among philosophers. In the French area, a depreciative meaning prevails: " (...)
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  • Varieties of Power.Jesse M. Mulder - 2021 - Axiomathes 31 (1):45-61.
    Power enthusiasts are engaged in two projects: developing a decent metaphysical account of powers, and applying that account in order to make progress on various other philosophical issues, ranging from narrowly related topics such as causality to further removed ones such as free will, reasoning, or perception. I argue that an intermediate step may be taken, one that explores ‘varieties of power’ while still staying within the realm of, of ‘pure’ powers metaphysics. Taking this intermediate step provides a much more (...)
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  • (1 other version)World Enough and Form: Why Cosmology Needs Hylomorphism.John G. Brungardt - 2019 - Synthese (Suppl 11):1-33.
    This essay proposes a comprehensive blueprint for the hylomorphic foundations of cosmology. The key philosophical explananda in cosmology are those dealing with global processes and structures, the regularity of global regularities, and the existence of the global as such. The possibility of elucidating these using alternatives to hylomorphism is outlined and difficulties with these alternatives are raised. Hylomorphism, by contrast, provides a sound philosophical ground for cosmology insofar as it leads to notions of cosmic essence, the unity of complex essences, (...)
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  • Free Will and Mental Powers.Niels van Miltenburg & Dawa Ometto - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1155-1165.
    In this paper, we investigate how contemporary metaphysics of powers can further an understanding of agent-causal theories of free will. The recent upsurge of such ontologies of powers and the understanding of causation it affords promises to demystify the notion of an agent-causal power. However, as we argue pace, the very ubiquity of powers also poses a challenge to understanding in what sense exercises of an agent’s power to act could still be free—neither determined by external circumstances, nor random, but (...)
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  • Adorno, Freedom and Criminal Law: The ‘Determinist Challenge’ Revitalised.Craig Reeves - 2016 - Law and Critique 27 (3):323-348.
    This article argues—against the present compatibilist orthodoxy in the philosophy of criminal law—for the contemporary relevance of a kind of critique of criminal law known as the ‘determinist challenge’, through a reconstruction of Theodor Adorno’s thought on freedom and determinism. The article begins by considering traditional forms of the determinist challenge, which expressed a widespread intuition that it is irrational or inappropriate for the criminal law to hold people responsible for actions that are causally determined by social and psychological forces (...)
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  • I—Fundamental Powers, Evolved Powers, and Mental Powers.Alexander Bird - 2018 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 92 (1):247-275.
    Powers have in recent years become a central component of many philosophers’ ontology of properties. While I have argued that powers exist at the fundamental level of properties, many other theorists of powers hold that there are also non-fundamental powers. In this paper I articulate my reasons for being sceptical about the existing reasons for holding that there are non-fundamental powers. However, I also want to promote a different argument for the existence of a certain class of non-fundamental powers: properties (...)
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  • II—Evolved Powers, Artefact Powers, and Dispositional Explanations.Barbara Vetter - 2018 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 92 (1):277-297.
    Alexander Bird puts forward a modest version of anti-Humeanism about the non-fundamental, by providing an argument for the existence of a certain select class of non-fundamental but sparse dispositions: those that have an evolutionary function. I argue that his argument over-generates, so much so that the sparse–abundant distinction, and with it the tenet of his anti-Humean view, becomes obsolete. I suggest an alternative way of understanding anti-Humeanism in the non-fundamental realm, one which is not concerned with the existence of sparse (...)
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  • Powers, Non‐Consent and Freedom.Stephen Mumford & Rani Lill Anjum - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (1):136-152.
    There are a number of dispositionalist solutions to the free will problem based on freedom consisting in the agent's exercise of a power. But if a subject a is free when they exercise their power P, there is an objection to be overcome from the possibility of power implantation. A brainwasher, rather than directly manipulating a subject's movements, can instead implant in them a desire, to be understood as a disposition to act, and allow the subject to exercise such a (...)
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  • Seeing the Potential of Realism in Economics.Jamie Morgan - 2015 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 45 (2):176-201.
    In this article, I clarify some of the key concepts and commitments of realist social ontology in economics. To do so, I make use of a recent critique of Lawson’s Reorienting Economics by Mohun and Veneziani. Their article provides a useful foil because responding to their critique allows us to emphasize that realism’s claims are more conditional and less controversial than one might otherwise anticipate. The basic claim is that ontology matters and that explicit recognition and consideration of ontological issues (...)
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  • (1 other version)Causally Redundant Social Objects: Rejoinder to Elder-Vass.Tobias Hansson Wahlberg - 2014 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (6):798-809.
    In Elder-Vass’s response to my critical discussion of his social ontology, it is maintained (1) that a social object is not identical with but is merely composed of its suitably interrelated parts, (2) that a social object is necessarily indistinguishable in terms of its causal capacities from its interrelated parts, and (3) that ontological individualism lacks an adequate ontological justification. In this reply, I argue that in view of (1) the so-called redescription principle defended by Elder-Vass ought to be reformulated (...)
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  • Good Reasons for Acting: Towards Human Flourishing.Giulia Codognato - forthcoming - Argumenta.
    The aim of this paper is to show that if and only if agents are motivated to act by good reasons for acting, they flourish, since, in so doing, they consciously act in accordance with their nature through virtuous actions. I offer an account of what good reasons for acting consist of reconsidering Aquinas’ natural inclinations. Based on a critical analysis of Anjum and Mumford’s work on dispositions in analytic metaphysics, I argue, contra Hume’s law, that Aquinas’ natural inclinations show (...)
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  • Disposiciones y puntos de vista causales.Sebastián Álvarez Toledo - 2018 - Daimon: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 75.
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  • Czy współczesne nauki przyrodnicze mogą inspirować filozoficzny i teologiczny namysł nad przyczynowością?Mariusz Tabaczek - 2018 - Scientia et Fides 6 (2):147-180.
    Can Contemporary Science Inspire Philosophical and Theological Reflection on Causality? The cooperation between natural science, philosophy, and theology in an analysis of the causal structure and co-dependency of entities in the universe seems to be both legitimate and expected. It turns out, however, that in practice it oftentimes raises some tensions, questions and difficulties, leading to the development of alternative and in a sense competitive models of causality and of God’s action in the world. What is more, the attitude of (...)
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  • Causality and “the mental”.Jennifer Hornsby - 2015 - Humana Mente 8 (29).
    Many analytic philosophers of mind take for granted a certain conception of causality. Assumptions deriving from that conception are in place when they problematize what they call mental causation or argue for physicalism in respect of the mental. I claim that a different conception of causality is needed for understanding many ordinary causal truths about things which act, including truths about human, minded beings — sc. rational beings who lead lives.
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  • (1 other version)Sublating the free will problematic: powers, agency and causal determination.Ruth Groff - 2019 - Synthese 196 (1):179-200.
    I argue that realism about causal powers sublates the passivist, Humean-inflected free will problematic. In the first part of the paper I show that adopting what I call ‘powers-non-determinism’ reconfigures the conceptual terrain with respect to the causation component of the contemporary problematic. In part two I show how adopting ‘powers-non-determinism’ significantly alters the nature of the discussion with respect to the agency component of the problematic. In part three I compare ‘powers-non-determinism’ to an otherwise- Humean agent causal position.
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  • Louis XIV and the metaphysics of a juridical christology.Michaël Bauwens - 2018 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 84 (3):289-305.
    This paper provides a metaphysical framework which enables the possibility of the hypostatic union. More specifically, social ontology will be used to philosophically ground the distinction between nature or substance on the one hand, and person on the other hand, which is crucial to that debate. There are some historical precedents for a juridical approach in christological debates, but the main sections develop a systematic metaphysical account. Relying on a generic version of dispositional realism, and the distinction between the ability (...)
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  • O estatuto metafísico das leis naturais: uma crítica ao Antirrealismo Nomológico de Stephen Mumford.Bruno Borge - 2015 - Filosofia Unisinos 16 (3):256-269.
    As questões das leis da natureza e da modalidade subjacente à regularidade natural muitas vezes têm sido tratadas como uma só. No entanto, a análise metafísica mostra que só as posições que assumem um compromisso ontológico com as leis da natureza podem ser consideradas dentro do Realismo Nomológico. Mumford propõe uma alternativa ao RN compatível com os compromissos modais comumente associados a posições realistas. Neste ponto de vista, o peso da modalidade não está posto nas leis, mas sim em propriedades (...)
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  • Can Analytical Sociology Do without Methodological Individualism?Nathalie Bulle & Denis Phan - 2017 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47 (6):379-409.
    The explanatory power of structures in analytical sociologists’ agent-based models brings into question methodological individualism. We defend that from an explanatory point of view, the syntactic properties of models require semantic conditions of interpretation drawn from a conceptual research framework; in such a framework, social/relational structures have only partial, explanatory power ; and taking the explanation further through generative mechanism modeling necessitates calling upon methodological individualism’s generic framework of interpretation that relies on social actors’ rational capacity. According to this interpretive (...)
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