Abstract
Powers theorists frequently assert that their neo-Aristotelian frameworks are dynamic, and that this gives them a theoretical advantage over their neo-Humean rivals. But recently it’s been claimed that activity can also be used to divide powers theories themselves. Dynamism is here understood primarily in terms of activity: a metaphysic counts as dynamic according to the place activity is given within the system. Activists treat activity as fundamental or irreducible, and claim to have the philosophical high ground over those ‘passivist’ powers theories wherein activity is reducible or nonfundamental.
In this paper I take a closer look at dynamism within powers theories, with a particular focus on how the activism/passivism distinction might be made. I then consider the broader ontological impact that the various commitments to activity might carry, along with an assessment as to who appears to be better off. Despite what’s been claimed, I find no reason to think that activists have any serious theoretical advantage in this debate. In fact, as things presently stand, I am not convinced that powers and activity make for a good pairing at all, as there’s presently no good model for powers like this.
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Notes
Talk of worlds as “cold” and “dead” is used by Ellis (2001: 107) as a colourful criticism of neo-Humean metaphysics. He takes the phrase from Burtt (1932), who himself offered it as an unflattering description of seventeenth century mechanism. It has since been employed by dynamically-inclined powers theorists against their less dynamic neighbours, often with the explicit addition that they see the latter’s view of the world as resembling neo-Humeanism.
Groff (2021) contrasts passivism with “anti-passivism”. I much prefer the use of ‘activism’.
Part of the claim to the high ground seems to come from the suggestion that passivism is too close to neo-Humeanism to capture what is wanted or desirable about powers metaphysics in general. The degree to which a view is similar to those held by Humeans is not, in my estimation, any indicator of its truth or success.
Backmann (2019: 980)
Bird (2007) is accused of treating activities as merely metaphorical, but his text is littered with examples of processes about which he seems genuinely serious. I suspect they are more than just metaphorical, even if they are reducible.
Though Groff and Meincke give quite specific versions of the activist/passivist distinction, I have opted for a somewhat more flexible approach so as to cast a wider net.
Williams (2019: 13).
I am assuming that the desiderata include something along the lines of explaining causation and or modality by appeal to internal features of objects.
Pace Giannini (2022). Giannini distinguishes between what he calls ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ powers theories, denying that production is a feature of the former. However, I read him as understanding production in a production-cum-activity way, and so our disagreement might only be superficial.
Giannini (2022).
Roselli (2022).
Unless, of course, the claim isn’t that production-plus-eternalism isn’t incompatible, but merely less desirable than production-plus-substantial present.
As one referee notes, the suggestion that passivists treat activities as identical with flip-books is wildly uncharitable. Even if the temporal parts are the only fundamental material constituents of activities, the story doesn’t end there. As Epstein (2015) argues, there’s no more to the ontology of ant colonies than ants, but the right story can’t be given in terms of ants alone: they stand in complicated relations and roles that impose social structures, even if ants comprise all the stuff. On the powers theory, genuine activities require causal connections. Other passivist metaphysics will impose other rules, lest we lose the ability to distinguish causal processes from pseudo-processes. See Williams (2021).
Though largely about reduction, we need to include fundamentality in the distinction to rule out cases in which activities are reducible to collections of temporal parts but the parts are not ontologically prior to the activities. Furthermore, though parts alone are not sufficient for even passivist activities, if activists eschew them, that is distinction enough.
Giannini (2022: 2816) points to this dimension of activism.
Builes (2022).
Rosen (2010).
Composition is not restricted to parts of the same nature, so activities can be formed out of the entities that serve as the ersatz past and present, despite the peculiarity. By contrast, we can’t take that composite activity as fundamental and then abstract parts from it, as the activist would need to do to keep pace with the passivist.
Mumford and Anjum (2011: 116).
This is not an explanation of change, just an analysis. It’s so minimal I’d be hard pressed to make sense of anyone who rejected it.
Thinking about powers in the context of activism, Groff (2020: 29) states that “Powers, in so far as they are properties, are abstractions.”
Donati (2018).
If we assume that the change it undergoes is due to some power interaction at the start, then why would it not react with other powers over the process it spans? And if it does, aren’t we just back to the same problem again? A series of states handles this nicely.
For more on immanent and transuent causation within a powers framework, see Williams (2019: ch. 7).
Dupre (2021: 10,669).
Mumford and Anjum (2011). Though there are putatively other accounts in the literature, such as Heil (2012) and Dupre (2021), most never go beyond offering further examples of activities. The serious content is negative, largely objecting to neo-Humean accounts, and resorting to metaphors in which the interaction of processes is some sort of swirling, changing, thing, like the intertwined strands of DNA or the rainbow colours of an oil slick.
It’s worth repeating that I’m attempting to employ the vector model in ways for which it wasn’t intended. It’s thus no knock against it should it fail.
Marmodoro (2020: 63).
Special thanks to audiences at the Change and Change-Makers conference and the SoCal Metaphysics Workshop for discussion of earlier drafts of this paper, and to two anonymous referees for their comments.
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* The title makes use of the informal americanism ‘do-over’, which is akin to a second attempt at something, not the informal british ‘do over’, meaning to beat someone up.
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