Abstract
Proponents of the dispositional theory of properties typically claim that their view is not one that offers a realist, governing conception of laws. My first aim is to show that, contrary to this claim, if one commits to dispositionalism then one does not automatically give up on a robust, realist theory of laws. This is because dispositionalism can readily be developed within a Platonic framework of universals. Second, I argue that there are good reasons for realist dispositionalists to favour a Platonic view. This is because the alternative Aristotelian version of dispositionalism, on which universals are immanent entities, is unstable for various reasons. My final aim is to address a common criticism facing Platonic theories of laws, which is the problem of how external entities can play an explanatory role where the world’s law-like patterns of behaviour are concerned. I argue that the Platonists’ response to the one over many problem can help to shed light on this matter, and a possible solution is sketched, one which makes use of the notions of essence, constitution and ontological dependence.
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Notes
See e.g. Lewis (1973, pp. 72–76) and Beebee (2000) for examples of modern regularity theories. Note that Humean regularities can play explanatory roles insofar as fundamental regularities (i.e. the laws) can entail non-fundamental regularities. The main point in the comment above is just that laws cannot explain the fundamental regularities given that they are identical with them.
The main alternatives to the ‘pure’ version of the dispositional theory are the two-sided and identity views. The two sided view says that all natural properties have an inert qualitative (or ‘categorical’) side as well as a dispositional side, whereas the identity view says that the qualitative and dispositional ‘aspects’ of properties are one and the same. Interested readers should see Martin (2008) and Heil (2003).
Unfortunately, I do not have the space in this paper to discuss trope versions of dispositionalism. Incidentally, I think that the trope version of the dispositional theory is unworkable and I direct interested readers to my 2013, Sect. 2. For those who think that trope dispositionalism is a feasible alternative, the main conclusion of this paper may be considered a conditional thesis: that if dispositional properties are universals, then dispositionalism is best developed within a Platonic framework of laws.
To be fair to Dumsday, he does acknowledge that the argument from ceteris paribus laws may not be the only route to nomic Platonism (2012, p. 146). My main aim in this paper is to vindicate that remark.
I should mention that after noticing that Mumford (2004, p. 155) sometimes puts the explanatory problem in terms of supervenience, Alexander Bird questions the principle that something cannot determine that upon which it supervenes. Bird writes: ‘Let us imagine that F determines or governs G but does not supervene on G. Now consider the mereological sum of F and G. Clearly F supervenes on that sum but determines part of it’ (2007a, p. 196). This is a fair point, but I think all it shows is that Mumford should have framed the problem in terms of ontological dependence rather than supervenience. After all, Armstrong’s immanent realism is more accurately described as the view that universals ontologically depend on their instantiations. However, ontological dependence is not the same thing as supervenience. In Bird’s example, surely the sum of F and G is ontologically dependent on F rather than vice versa given that F determines G. And so, this is not a case in which something (in this case F) determines or explains something on which it is ontologically dependent. For it to be such a case, it would have to be that F is ontologically dependent on the sum of F and G rather than vice versa. In short, then, Bird’s case is not a counterexample to the claim that something cannot determine that upon which it is ontologically dependent. I therefore think Bird would have been better off using Platonism as a way of responding to Mumford’s worry, as I will. Incidentally, such an argument was available to Bird because he is open to a Platonic conception of universals (2007a, Ch. 3). But unfortunately, he does not make use of this in his discussion of the question about the reality of laws (2007a, Ch. 9).
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for urging this point.
To be fair to Tooley (1977), he is more open to the Platonic view than nomological realists like Armstrong.
See also my (2015), where the puzzling nature of alien possibilities is explored further.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
This is one way in which the set case differs from the property case. For, while a Platonic universal can exist without being instantiated, it is less plausible to think that Socrates can exist without his singleton also existing. Another point of difference, which a referee has rightly pointed out, is that although we want to say (on the current proposal) that Platonic universals in some sense govern the behaviour of the things that instantiate them, it seems wrong to say that Socrates in any sense governs singleton Socrates. As should be clear by now, I would not say that this is because the dependence involved is any different. Rather, I believe this difference reflects the fact that we reserve governance terminology for cases in which the thing being explained exhibits causal powers and patterns. This means that talk of governance is inappropriate in respect of singleton sets given that they, being abstract entities, do not engage in causal behaviour.
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I would like to thank Stephen Mumford and the anonymous journal referees.
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Tugby, M. Universals, laws, and governance. Philos Stud 173, 1147–1163 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0521-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0521-2