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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter June 30, 2015

Power Individuation: A New Version of the Single-Tracking View

  • Michał Głowala EMAIL logo
From the journal Metaphysica

Abstract

The paper answers three questions concerning power individuation: Can one power have various manifestations? If so, do they have to be unified in some way? If so, how exactly do they have to be unified? After a review of contemporary standpoints (Molnar, Lowe, Williams) I present a version of single-tracking view (inspired by Aquinas’s views on the individuation of powers) which is significantly different from contemporary single-tracking proposals of Molnar and Lowe. The main idea is that different sorts of powers have distinct ways of producing their manifestations, so a pair of different manifestations may require distinct powers of one kind, but just one and the same power of another kind. This suggests the form of the unifying description specific for powers. I argue (taking into account some alleged counterexamples) that all the manifestations of one power of some kind must fall under this sort of unifying description.

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Published Online: 2015-6-30
Published in Print: 2015-9-18

©2015 by De Gruyter

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