My goal in this paper is to provide characterizations of matter, form and constituency in a way that avoids what I take to be the three main drawbacks of other hylomorphic theories: (i) commitment to the universal-particular distinction; (ii) commitment to a primitive or problematic notion of inherence or constituency; (iii) inability to identify viable candidates for matter and form in nature, or to characterize them in terms of primitives widely regarded to be intelligible.

There is a puzzle concerning the essences of fundamental entities that arises from considerations about essence, on one hand, and fundamentality, on the other. The Essence-Dependence Link (EDL) says that if x figures in the essence of y, then y is dependent upon x. EDL is prima facie plausible in many cases, especially those involving derivative entities. But consider the property negative charge. A negatively charged object exhibits certain behaviors that a positively charged object does not: it moves away from (...) other negatively charged objects, towards positively charged objects, etc. It is commonly thought that negative charge disposes its bearer to move away from other negatively charged objects, towards positively charged objects, etc. But if negative charge is fundamental, then no other entities—including the property positive charge—can figure in its essence. We thus have a prima facie puzzle: How can we say anything interesting about the essences of fundamental entities without running afoul of EDL? In this paper, I present and discuss the consequences of EDL for the debate between causal essentialists and quidditists about properties, and propose solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

Dispositional Essentialism, as commonly conceived, consists in the claims that at least some of the fundamental properties essentially confer certain causal-nomological roles on their bearers, and that these properties give rise to the natural modalities. As such, the view is generally taken to be committed to a realist conception of properties as either universals or tropes, and to be thus incompatible with nominalism as understood in the strict sense. Pace this common assumption of the ontological import of Dispositional Essentialism, the (...) aim of this paper is to explore a nominalist version of the view, Austere Nominalist Dispositional Essentialism. The core features of the proposed account are that it eschews all kinds of properties, takes certain predicative truths as fundamental, and employs the so-called generic notion of essence. As I will argue, the account is significantly closer to the core idea behind Dispositional Essentialism than the only nominalist account in the vicinity of Dispositional Essentialism that has been offered so far—Ann Whittle’s Causal Nominalism—and is immune to crucial problems that affect this view. (shrink)

Inspired both by our ordinary understanding of the world and by reflection on science, anti-Humeanism is a growing trend in metaphysics. Anti-Humeans reject the Lewisian doctrine of Humean supervenience that the world is “just one little thing and then another”, and argue instead that dispositions, powers, or capacities provide connection and activity in nature. But how exactly are we to understand the shared commitment of this anti-Humean movement? I argue that this kind of anti-Humeanism, at its most general level, is (...) to be understood neither as a view about ontology nor about fundamentality, but rather as a specific claim about what explains what. (shrink)

Necessitarianism, as we shall use the term, is the view that natural properties and causal powers are necessarily connected in some way. In recent decades the most popular forms of necessitarianism have been the anti-Humean powers-based theories of properties, such as dispositional essentialism and the identity theory. These versions of necessitarianism have come under fire in recent years and I believe it is time for necessitarians to develop a new approach. In this paper I identify unexplored ways of positing metaphysically (...) necessary connections in nature, using the concepts of grounding and essential dependence. For example, I show that one could be a necessitarian by insisting that the properties of things necessarily ground their powers, and that one can maintain this while rejecting dispositional essentialism. Using different combinations of claims about grounding and essential dependence, I map out a spectrum of new positions and compare them to previous theories of natural modality. Some of these positions are compatible with Humean metaphysics while others are not. The overall aim of the paper is to provide a new metaphysical framework for understanding theories of powers and thereby launch a new necessitarian research programme. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that if one subscribes to dispositionalism — the view that natural properties are irreducibly dispositional in character — then one ought to favour a Platonic view of properties. That is, dispositionalists ought to view properties as transcendent universals. I argue for this on the grounds that only with transcendent universals in play can two central dispositionalist platitudes be accounted for in a satisfactory way. Given that dispositionalism is becoming an increasingly influential view in the metaphysics (...) of science, my argument, if successful, suggests that Platonism will see something of a revival in contemporary metaphysics. This new kind of Platonism is shown to have some striking metaphysical and epistemological consequences. (shrink)

Traditionally, many arguments for realism about properties rely on a priori claims. The author argues that if we make use of an abductive principle that is commonly employed by scientific realists, a new argument for property realism can be formulated which is based firmly in scientific practice. The abductive principle says that we should believe in the existence of certain theoretical entities if they figure in the best explanation for what scientists observe. The scientific argument for property realism then says (...) that the best explanation for various behavioural patterns that physical scientists observe is that microscopic entities instantiate stable, causally efficacious properties. After presenting the argument, the author defends it against possible objections. More generally, the article provides a case study for how science and metaphysics can work together to generate ontological claims. (shrink)

The causal nominalist theory of properties appears at first glance to offer a novel nominalist approach and one that can provide an illuminating response to the one over many problem. I argue, however, that on closer inspection causal ‘nominalism’ collapses into either a version of realism or a mere variant of one of the traditional nominalist approaches. In the case of Whittle’s specific brand of causal nominalism, I suggest it is best thought of as a version of what Armstrong calls (...) ‘ostrich’ nominalism, a view which ultimately refuses to acknowledge the one over many problem rather than provide a solution to it. (shrink)

As Price (2009) famously mused, if a philosopher were to be magically transported, perhaps through means of time travel, from the 1950s to the modern day, they would indeed be shocked by the resurgence of metaphysics in the analytic tradition. Most of all, perhaps, they would be shocked by the popularity of power metaphysics. What a strange item to have in a philosopher’s curriculum, they might think: after all, didn’t David Hume claim that “[t]here are no ideas which can occur (...) in metaphysics more obscure and uncertain than those of power, force, energy, or necessary connection”? Indeed, much has changed since then. At the pain of using overly vague terminology, we can call “power metaphysics” the subdiscipline of metaphysics interested in the development and evaluation of a family of positions which we will refer to under the umbrella term of “dispositionalism”. According to dispositionalists, the world we inhabit is also populated by genuine and irreducible powers, dispositions, and capacities of objects. (shrink)

An important task for metaphysicians and philosophers of science is to account for laws of nature – in particular, how they distinguish themselves from ‘mere’ regularities, and the modal force they are endowed with, ‘natural necessity’. Dispositional essentialism about laws is roughly the view that laws distinguish themselves by being grounded in the essences of natural entities. This paper does not primarily concern how essentialism compares to its main rivals – Humeanism and Armstrongeanism. Rather, it distinguishes and comparatively assesses various (...) brands of essentialism – which mainly differ as to where exactly they take laws to find their essentialist sources, and what they take to be the targets of laws, namely what they apply to. Yet, this internal comparison is not unrelated to the more general debate about laws: the main criteria with which I compare these essentialist views concern how they can deal with some of the main objections faced by essentialism in general, and how they can keep what is arguably the main intuitive advantage of essentialism over its rivals. Thus, the paper also concerns the relative position of essentialism in the larger debate about laws – ultimately bringing support to it. (shrink)

According to the Nomological Argument, observed regularities in nature are best explained by an appeal to a supernatural being. A successful explanation must avoid two perils. Some explanations provide too little structure, predicting a universe without regularities. Others provide too much structure, thereby precluding an explanation of certain types of lawlike regularities featured in modern scientific theories. We argue that an explanation based in the creative, intentional action of a supernatural being avoids these two perils whereas leading competitors do not. (...) Although our argument falls short of a full defense, it does suggest that the Nomological Argument is worthy of philosophical attention. (shrink)

Non‐Humean theories of natural necessity invoke modally‐laden primitives to explain why nature exhibits lawlike regularities. However, they vary in the primitives they posit and in their subsequent accounts of laws of nature and related phenomena (including natural properties, natural kinds, causation, counterfactuals, and the like). This article provides a taxonomy of non‐Humean theories, discusses influential arguments for and against them, and describes some ways in which differences in goals and methods can motivate different versions of non‐Humeanism (and, for that matter, (...) Humeanism). In short, this article provides an introduction to non‐Humeanism concerning the metaphysics of laws of nature and natural necessity. (shrink)

This paper aims to defend that the best framework for characterizing dispositions is a Rylean, non-factualist dispositionalism. I follow Tugby, 451–480, 2013) in explaining which are the main candidates for characterizing the ontology of dispositions. Tugby, 451–480, 2013) concludes that the best metaphysical framework for characterizing dispositions is Platonism, because it is the only theory that can account for the central and the intrinsic platitudes. Following this I show that Platonism is not desirable because it is difficult to reconcile with (...) ontological naturalism and because it is not parsimonious. Thus, I offer a different candidate: Rylean non-factualist dispositionalism. This approach retains the explanatory power of our dispositional vocabulary without appealing to facts, entities, or properties. In conclusion, non-factualist dispositionalism is preferable over naturalism and Platonism for characterizing dispositions. (shrink)

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de re truths (...) about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness and Independence has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to motivate a view on dispositions according to which dispositions and their manifestations are partially identical, the DM identity theory. It sets out by extrapolating the desiderata of a dispositionalist account of properties. It then shows that the previous theories are burdened with different problems, whose common cause, so the argument goes, is the separation assumption, which almost all share. It states that dispositions and their manifestations are numerically distinct. The paper then explores whether (...) the separation assumption can be abandoned and shows that there are precursors of a DM identity theory. The DM identity theory is then outlined in its central features and it is outlined how they can fulfil the desiderata of dispositionalism. (shrink)

Pan-dispositionalism is one of the major theories in current analytic metaphysics concerning dispositional properties and how they relate to categorical properties. According to pan-dispositionalists, all fundamental properties are dispositional in nature, such that any supposed categorical properties are either unreal or reducible in some way to the dispositional. I argue that if pan-dispositionalism is true then metaphysical naturalism is false. To the extent that one finds pan-dispositionalism a plausible theory, one ought to question the truth of metaphysical naturalism. On the (...) other hand, if one is a committed metaphysical naturalist, one ought to question the truth of pan-dispositionalism. Either way we get a significant result, of interest both to those working in metaphysics and to those working in philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In a recent volume ofZygon: Journal of Religion and Science, Flavius Raslau proposes a new and intriguing integration of Palamite theology with key currents of thought in analytic philosophy of science. The aim of this comment is to provide a concise summary and assessment of Raslau's proposal, along the way making suggestions as to how it might be profitably amended.

There are four main theories concerning the ultimate constitution of matter: atomism version 1, atomism version 2, the theory of gunk, and the theory of extended simples. These four theories are usually seen as diametrically opposed. Here I take a stab at ecumenism, and argue that atomism version 1 and the theory of extended simples can be reconciled and rendered compatible by reference to the reality of dispositions.

There is one character too many in the triad sound, event source, thing source. As there are neither phenomenological nor metaphysical grounds for distinguishing sounds and sound sources, we propose to identify them.

Many powers-realists assume that the powers of objects are identical with the dispositions of objects and, hence, that ‘power’ and ‘disposition’ are interchangeable. In this article, I aim to disentangle dispositions from powers with the goal of getting a better sense of how powers and dispositions relate to one another. I present and defend a modest realism about dispositions built upon a standard strong realism about powers. I argue that each correct disposition-ascription we can make of an object is made (...) true by the manifestations towards which a given power or collection of powers of the object is directed.RésuméDe nombreux réalistes des pouvoirs supposent que les pouvoirs des objets sont identiques aux dispositions des objets et, par conséquent, que le « pouvoir » et la « disposition » sont interchangeables. Dans cet article, j'ai pour objectif de démêler les dispositions des pouvoirs dans le but d'avoir une meilleure idée de la façon dont les pouvoirs et les dispositions se rapportent les uns aux autres. Je présente et défends un réalisme des dispositions modeste fondées sur un réalisme des pouvoirs standard fort. Je soutiens que chaque disposition-ascription correcte que nous pouvons faire d'un objet est rendue vraie par les manifestations vers lesquelles un pouvoir donné ou une collection de pouvoirs de l'objet est dirigé. (shrink)

In recent years, a new dispute has risen to prominence: the dispute between realists and anti-realists about causal powers. Albeit sometimes overlooked, the meta-ontological features of this “question of realism for powers” are quite peculiar. For friends and foes of causal powers have characterized their contrasting views in a variety of different ways; as existence claims, as semantic or truth-making claims, as fundamentality claims, as claims about the nature of certain properties. Not only does this multiplicity of interpretations make it (...) unclear what the genuine bone of contention is, if there is one; some of them appear to be mutually exclusive. Some light can be shed on this apparent yet widespread confusion by distinguishing three degrees of ontological involvement in dispositional truths; viz., three ways, of increasing robustness, to read ontological commitments from dispositional truths. Relatedly, by exploring the literature, and focusing on some selected examples of power realism and anti-realism, we can observe that power realists vastly disagree over the intrinsic nature ad make-up of dispositional properties. Such examples furthermore invite the thought that the question of realism for powers is best understood not as the debate around the existence of properties with a distinctive identity, but rather as a debate about metaphysical hierarchy. Finally, some anti-realists positions are indistinguishable from realist ones, using merely intensional resources: power realism is best appreciated by going hyperintensional. (shrink)

Dispositional essentialism is a non-Humean view about the essences of certain fundamental or natural properties that looms large in recent metaphysics , not least because it promises to explain neatly the natural modalities such as laws of nature, counterfactuals, causation and chance. In the current paper, however, several considerations are presented that indicate a serious tension between its essentialist core thesis and natural “metaphysical” interpretations of its central explanatory claims.