Abstract
According to a well-known argument against dispositional essentialism, the nature of unmanifested token powers leaves dispositional essentialists with an objectionable commitment to the reality of non-existent entities. The idea is that, because unmanifested token powers are directed at their non-existent token manifestations, they require the reality of those manifestations. Arguably the most promising response to this argument works by claiming that, if properties are universals, dispositional directedness need only entail the reality of actually existing manifestation types. I argue that this response fails, because no version of the response can adequately accommodate dispositions of the sort that follow from Coulomb’s law. This result both defeats an important argument that dispositional essentialists ought to be realists about universals and appears to leave dispositional essentialists with a problematic commitment to either non-relational connections or a Meinongian ontology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
By a ‘token power’ I mean any state of affairs in which an object has a power, irrespective of whether powers are understood to be tropes or universals. For reasons that I clarify in Sect. 4, I think that, strictly speaking, it would be more accurate to say that token powers involve particulars being directed towards manifestations than to say that token powers are directed towards manifestations. For ease of exposition, though, I will generally talk of token powers being directed at manifestations.
I take token manifestations, like token powers, to be states of affairs in which particulars have properties irrespective of whether the properties are thought to be tropes or universals.
Both Armstrong (Armstrong et al., 1996: 16) and Barker (2013: 649) object to physical intentionality on these sorts of grounds. It is, moreover, controversial whether it is actually possible to assimilate dispositional directedness to intentionality. Bird (2007: 118–126), in particular, has argued in some detail that the characteristics of directedness differ significantly from those of intentionality.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
Bird (2007: 100–101) gives a list of various philosophers raising the ‘too little actuality’ objection to DE, which Bird identifies as ‘the common view that potencies [powers] do not have enough reality on their own to be all there is to the properties of things in the world’ (2007: 100). Handfield (2005) considers the objection that DE leads to a kind of ‘modal inversion’ in which the actual is constituted by mere possibilities, while Psillos (2006) in a well-known discussion asks what powers do when they aren’t manifesting.
This approach is most clearly endorsed and defended by Mumford (2004: 194–195).
This version of the response is most clearly endorsed and defended in Tugby (2013: 461–462). Bird (2007: 106–108) also seems to work with this sort of interpretation of the response. However, he ultimately rejects it, in effect, because he denies that explaining dispositional directedness in terms of a second-order fact renders dispositional directedness ontologically innocent.
I’d like to thank an anonymous referee for suggesting this sort of taxonomy of positions.
I think the most promising way for the dispositional essentialist to respond to this difficulty is to claim that each property occurring in Coulomb’s law – charge, force and distance – is a determinable property, where each determinate of the property corresponds to a value of that property. The dispositional essentialist could, then, claim that the nature of the determinable charge consists in the directedness of each of its determinates at standing in a determinate of force, when standing in a determinate of distance with a determinate of charge. While this suggestion is similar to Armstrong’s (1997: 242–248) response to this sort of difficulty, Bird (2007: 21–24) gives an alternative response to the problem by appealing to ‘multi-track dispositions’. Vetter (2009: 324–327), however, raises seemingly serious problems with this approach. She (Vetter, 2009: 327) also notes that ‘the apparatus of determinate and determinable may enter in some way or other’ into solving the problem.
To be consistent with the type-level response, C standing in F with C and C standing in D with C must be states of affairs in which universals stand in relations with universals and not token-level states of affairs in which bearers of universals stand in relations. So, C standing in F with C would be the state of affairs in which the universal, C, stands in F with itself and not a state of affairs in which a bearer of C stands in F with a bearer of C. I am not sure that it is possible to make good sense of the universal, C, standing in F with itself, but I am going to argue that, even if it does, SR cannot do the necessary grounding work.
As a referee for Synthese has pointed out, this label might be a bit misleading as, in one sense, Disposition’ plays the same role as SR rather than the same role as Disposition or Disposition*. Specifically, Disposition’ is supposed to provide the ontological grounds or replacement for Disposition*. On the other hand, Disposition’, unlike SR but like Disposition*, is supposed to provide an account of the sort of token dispositions that exist when a particular is charged. To avoid confusion, then, it should be noted that, while Disposition’ is supposed to provide an account of the sort of disposition that exists when a particular is charged, it is also supposed to act like SR in constituting the ontological grounds or replacement for Disposition*.
It also seems possible to extend the argument I have given here for charge to other paradigmatic examples of powers. Most obviously, a directly analogous argument could be given using the idea that gravitational mass is the power to exert gravitational force.
Armstrong actually appeals to truthmaking and supervenience rather than grounding to produce his deflationary account of dispositions. This difference, though, is not significant in this context. The key idea remains that dispositions are ontologically innocent, because they are nothing over and above the conjunction of the relevant second-order facts and facts of property instantiation.
This is true irrespective of whether facts are understood as true propositions or as objects having properties. In the latter case, [Ca] just is a’s having charge, while, in the former case, [Ca] is made true by a’s having charge.
References
Armstrong, D. M. (1997). A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Armstrong, D. M. (1999). The causal theory of properties: Properties according to Shoemaker, Ellis, and others. Philosophical Topics, 26, 25–37
Armstrong, D. M. (2002). Two problems for essentialism. The Philosophy of Nature: A guide to the new essentialism (pp. 167–171). Chesham: Acumen. B. Ellis
Armstrong, D. M. (2005). Four disputes about properties. Synthese, 144, 309–320
Armstrong, D. M., Martin, C. B., & Place, U. T. (1996). In T. Crane (Ed.), Dispositions: A debate. London: Routledge
Azzano, L. (2020). Dispositionality, categoricity, and where to find them. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02917-4
Barker, S. (2013). The emperor’s new metaphysics of powers. Mind, 122, 605–653
Barker, S., & Smart, B. (2012). The ultimate argument against dispositional monist accounts of laws. Analysis, 72, 714–722
Bird, A. (2007). Nature’s Metaphysics: Laws and Properties. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Coates, A. (2020a). Tropes, unmanifested dispositions and powerful qualities. Erkenntnis. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00295-4
Coates, A. (2020b). Making sense of powerful qualities. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02576-5
Handfield, T. (2005). Armstrong and the modal inversion of dispositions. Philosophical Quarterly, 55, 452–461
Handfield, T. (2008). Humean dispositionalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 86, 113–126
Heil, J. (2003). From an Ontological Point of View. New York: Oxford University Press
Jacobs, J. D. (2011). Powerful qualities, not pure powers. The Monist, 94, 81–102
Kimpton-Nye, S. (2021). Reconsidering the Dispositional Essentialist Canon. Philosophical Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01607-2
Linsky, B., & Zalta, E. (1994). In defense of the simplest quantified modal logic. In J. Tomberlin (Ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 8: Logic and Language (pp. 431–458). Atascadero: Ridgeview
Linsky, B., & Zalta, E. (1996). In defense of the contingently concrete. Philosophical Studies, 84, 283–294
Molnar, G. (2003). Powers: A Study in Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Mumford, S. (2004). Laws in Nature. London: Routledge
Place, U. T. (1996). Intentionality as the mark of the dispositional. Dialectica, 50, 91–120
Psillos, S. (2006). What do powers do when they are not manifested? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 72, 137–156
Tugby, M. (2012). Rescuing dispositionalism from the ultimate problem: Reply to Barker and Smart. Analysis, 72, 723–731
Tugby, M. (2013). Platonic dispositionalism. Mind, 122, 451–480
Tugby, M. (2020). Grounding theories of powers. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02781-2
Vetter, B. (2009). Nature’s metaphysics: Laws and properties. Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy, 12, 320–328
Whittle, A. (2008). A functionalist theory of properties. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 77, 59–82
Williamson, T. (1998). Bare possibilia. Erkenntnis, 48, 257–273
Williamson, T. (1999). Existence and contingency. The Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume, 73, 181–203
Williamson, T. (2013). Modal Logic as Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Yates, D. (2018). Inverse functionalism and the individuation of powers. Synthese, 195, 4525–4550
Acknowledgements
This article is partly based on work that I did for my PhD thesis at the University of the Witwatersrand. I would like to thank the philosophy department and my supervisor, David Martens, for their assistance and support while writing the thesis. I would also like to thank referees for Synthese for their charitable, extensive and very helpful comments that substantially improved the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Coates, A. Unmanifested powers and universals. Synthese 200, 105 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03476-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03476-6