Abstract
Talk of powers is muddled. Building upon (Groff, in: R. Groff & J. Greco (eds) Powers and capacities in philosophy: The new aristotelianism, Routledge, London, 2012a, pp 207–227), I disambiguate four senses of the term: powers construed as activity, as capacity/potentiality, as essence and as necessity, respectively, in an attempt to clarify what it is that realists about causal powers take themselves to be realists about.
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Notes
As I observe in Sect. 2, there are multiple ways to be an anti-Humean, even—and perhaps especially—in the context of debates over powers. It is difficult, therefore, to give a simple definition of the term in advance of the very analysis that I am about to put forward. The most general feature of anti-Humeanism in relation to powers is realism about the powers that Hume himself disavowed. (There are those who believe that Hume did no such thing, of course; such readings are obfuscatory at best, in my view.) However, as I show in the argument to come, those who disagree with Hume about the reality of powers conceptualize powers in importantly different ways, associating them with a variety of different phenomena—as Hume himself did. (See Sect. 2). Thus, for example, it is possible to be an anti-Humean in virtue of holding, contra Hume, that the world includes relations of necessity, but show up as Humean in nevertheless rejecting the idea that the world is intrinsically dynamic. Moreover, if one were to equate powers with relations of necessity, one might well consider oneself to be an anti-Humean realist with respect to powers—even if one were to follow Hume in denying the reality of powers construed in terms of activity. My aim in the discussion to come is to make it easy for those who are working on powers to draw these distinctions clearly and reliably. Contemporary Humeans generally defend hyper-technical versions of Hume’s positions. Heuristically, it is efficient to refer directly to Hume.
An anonymous reviewer expressed concern that some readers might not see the point of the analogy. It is meant to be an example of a dispute between (genteel) interlocutors who imagine that that they are engaged in conversation about the same object, when in reality they are not.
Of course, philosophers of language will be interested in distinguishing between verbs such as ‘is’—which, depending upon one’s metaphysics, one might regard as referring to something static—and verbs such as ‘joust,’ say. (Reid himself does not make much of the fact that he uses the term ‘active verb’ as opposed to just ‘verb.’) For that matter, depending again upon one’s metaphysics, one might regard the objects to which nouns refer as inherently active in some way too. Mention of the verb-from—and it was Reid’s strategy in responding critically to Hume, as I say—is here meant only to capture and to thereby communicate a basic sense of what is at stake in defending a metaphysics according to which there is no activity.
The other reason is that the terms ‘capacity’ and ‘capability’ are more commonly used as stand-ins for the concept of a power than is the broader notion of possibility or potentiality as such.
There are actually two different issues in play, when it comes to limit(s) in relation to possibility or potentiality. The first is the question of whether or not everything that is logically possible is metaphysically possible. I have ascribed to some if not all realists about powers the neo-Aristotelian version of the “No” answer: what is possible for a given thing (or kind of thing) is a function of its nature, and is thereby (and therefore) limited to real possibilities. The second issue is whether or not potentiality itself, we might say, is inherently determinate—e.g., in being “directed,” as Barbara Vetter puts it, drawing from George Molnar (2003) and others’ talk of the directedness of powers. Here the idea is that any given potential is a potential-for-x. (In this case, one might still think that anything that is logically possible is metaphysically possible, but no given potential would be a generic potential for anything and/or everything.) This said, thanks to an anonymous reviewer for noting that the concept of a capacity emphasizes possibilities that are as-yet-unrealized properties of a thing, and seems to leave out those potentialities-for x that at least appear to be unrelated to the nature of a thing. The reviewer’s example was of a teacup that could be, but is not, red. Perhaps it would be better, they thought, for the second category of my four-fold typology to just be that of potentiality, rather than getting to potentiality via the concept of a capacity, as I have done. In addition to what I have said in the preceding footnote, I will say, first, that even in the teacup case it is not clear that what is being talked about is not a real possibility (rather than a modal state unrelated to the nature of the object). Teacups are not able to spontaneously turn red, granted. But porcelain is such that it may be glazed red. Second, the modal fact that the teacup could have been glazed red but was not is as much a statement about the powers of (and real possibilities for) the potter as it is about the powers of tea cups. Finally, the categories that I have introduced are designed to lend clarity to the anti-Humean literature on powers, in particular. All of the categories, including this one, are tailored to that end. On balance, I think, it makes sense to address potentiality via the concept of a capacity, since the distinction between potential and actual that is pertinent is one that applies to the modal features that things have in virtue of their powers.
E.g., David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section VII, Part 1.
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IIII, Sect. 14.
Whether or not he was able to do so consistently is a different matter. See Groff (2012b: chapter 2).
Lowe (2005).
In private correspondence Lowe offered that he did indeed think of powers as being “oomphy,” as I had put it.
Note that Cartwright reserves the name ‘disposition’ for dispositional properties the manifestations of which are single rather than multi-track. ‘Capacities’ are multi-track.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to Andrea Raimondi and Lorenzo Azzano, whose unfaltering support in the midst of the pandemic was essential to this paper appearing in this volume. Their thoughtful feedback also helped to make the final draft of the paper be better than it would otherwise have been. Thank you also to two anonymous reviewers, whose feedback on that version helped me to further sharpen the discussion, thereby improving the paper appreciably. Finally, thank you to John Symons, who so generously offered to read the revised version for me, and did.
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This article is part of the topical collection “New Foundations of Dispositionalism,” edited by Andrea Raimondi and Lorenzo Azzano.
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Groff, R.P. Conceptualizing causal powers: activity, capacity, essence, necessitation. Synthese 199, 9881–9896 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03229-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03229-x