Lorenzo Azzano

Power theorists are divided among those who think that a dispositionalist metaphysics imbues the physical world with a dynamic and active aspect, and those who deny that. So far there has been little success in clarifying the exact nature of the two positions and their disagreement beyond trading metaphors. In this paper we suggest that one way to elucidate the idea that powers are dynamic and active is to think that a robust conception of change must play a central role in power-based explanations. We use the grounding of modality as an example. We claim that friends of dynamic powers should embrace a specific version of Dispositionalism, one in which the modal facts change over time. We then argue that this view entails an especially strong version of Necessitism and Permanentism. In turn, according to an influential view in the philosophy of time, this amounts to adopting a Moving Spotlight Theory of time. We provide some details of this power-based moving spotlight theory, its features, and potential flaws.

Why is it that whenever a structural property (e.g., hydroxide) is instantiated, its constituent properties (e.g., hydrogen) are instantiated as well, by proper parts of the original object? By developing a suggestion from Lewis (Australas J Philos 64(1):25–46, 1986), Hawley (Australas J Philos 88(1):117–133, 2010) rises to this explanatory challenge by taking structural properties to be mereologically composed by their constituents, and by taking composition to be analogous to identity (Lewisian weak CAI). However, setting up a plausible framework for composition and CAI claims about properties, I will argue that structural properties are not identical to their constituents, at least not in any sense robust enough to warrant an Hawley-style argument—and perhaps not identical to them in any sense whatsoever. More generally, core principles of extensional mereology are in danger when applied to structural properties, which may force an extensionalist to either reconsider the application altogether, or reconsider mereological monism, thus granting the mereology of structural properties a peculiarly non-extensional status. Finally, although this debate has been traditionally framed as a debate about universals, an appeal to structural tropes can reconcile, at least to some extent, the mereology of structural properties with Lewisian extensional mereology—(weak) CAI included.

Power theorists are divided among those who think that a dispositionalist metaphysics imbues the physical world with a dynamic and active aspect, and those who deny that. So far there has been little success in clarifying the exact nature of the two positions and their disagreement beyond trading metaphors. In this paper we suggest that one way to elucidate the idea that powers are dynamic and active is to think that a robust conception of change must play a central role in power-based explanations. We use the grounding of modality as an example. We claim that friends of dynamic powers should embrace a specific version of Dispositionalism, one in which the modal facts change over time. We then argue that this view entails an especially strong version of Necessitism and Permanentism. In turn, according to an influential view in the philosophy of time, this amounts to adopting a Moving Spotlight Theory of time. We provide some details of this power-based moving spotlight theory, its features, and potential flaws.

Some philosophers claim that properties like sphericity and electric charge are powers. This is usually cashed out as a grounding or explanatory claim: properties are powers to the extent that they ground certain dispositions. But how is this explanation supposed to pan out? This paper presents a two-horned dilemma against the claim that properties are powers, based on a crucial distinction: whether these properties have a dispositional nature or not. In the former case we encounter dispositional essentialism, in the latter the so-called grounding theories of powers. Whereas dispositional essentialism suffers from insurmountable explanatory circularities, grounding theories of powers find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. By exploiting a recent distinction between transparent and opaque grounding, I argue that the grounding explanations usually provided either struggle with residual dispositionality, or simply do not provide enough information for any explanation to go through; a recent appeal to an abductive methodology in metaphysics vis-à-vis opaque grounding claims is shown to be ineffective in this context. Long story short: properties are not powers.

In this chapter I will present an epistemology for Dispositional Reality. According to the neo-Quinean methodology proposed in earlier chapters, and hereby expanded, to score a point in favour of Dispositional Reality one must argue that dispositional talk is preferable, or explanatorily indispensable in our best possible accounting of the nomic family, which requires a holistic evaluation of metaphysical theories as bodies of explanations. Furthermore, this chapter is dedicated to the arguments in favour of dispositions as they have been presented in the literature, such as those based on failures of the conditional analysis, the No Humility argument, and the Argument from Science. Most of them will be found to be inconclusive, a throughline of the chapter being that the discovery of Dispositional Reality is a philosopher’s job, as opposed to a scientist’s.

In this chapter, I will attempt some non-causal explanations in terms of dispositions: the (non-constitutive) explanation of non-accidental regularities, sometimes called governance, and the (constitutive) explanation of laws of nature. This will also be an opportunity to present and discuss a taxonomy of the kinds non-causal explanations required. These explanations are pursued with a deflationary spirit in mind, discharging property-talk, essence-talk, and similar conceptual resources usually deployed for this job. The explanans are comparatively simpler, to lay the foundation of a theory of Dispositional Reality with some winning theoretical virtues. Therefore, the chapter functions as partial corroboration for Dispositional Reality as an explanatory hypothesis.

This chapter introduces and discusses the concept of Dispositional Reality. To believe that there is Dispositional Reality is to believe that (at least some) dispositional talk is not merely true, but metaphysically perspicuous. Based on the metaphysical backdrop of the previous chapters, I will show that this dispositional aspect of reality is not a thing, and thus not a property of any kind. An explicitly nominalist version of the position is tentatively introduced. Furthermore, through the distinction between mere truths and perspicuous truths, the recent and much-discussed distinction between metaphysically innocent and metaphysically loaded dispositional talk will be deflated. More generally, this resulting power metaphysics without powers promises to deflate many problematic issues in recent literature, or reframe them in a more manageable fashion. This goes to show that at least some of these may be the result of an unduly reification of Dispositional Reality.

The metaphysical backdrop of my proposal revolves around the notions of appearance and reality. In this chapter I discuss reality. The key idea is to deploy the notions of metaphysical structure and metaphysical perspicuity to draw the distinction between reality (what is really the case) and appearances (what is merely the case). Amongst all truths, only metaphysically perspicuous sentences reveal the structure of reality. Two different ways are presented to understand these concepts, the Wittgenstein-Russell and the Lewis-Sider way to structure and perspicuity. The latter will be shown to be preferable. A crucial desideratum for an account is that the account does not fall for what I will call the Ontological Temptation.

This chapter deals with meta-explanatory questions concerning the many dispositional explanations attempted so far. Ultimately, what is it about Dispositional Reality that makes it suitable to be an explanans? By drawing (with appropriate distinctions) on the recent debate on meta-grounding, I favour a brutely connectivist stance which functions by adding primitive meta-explanatory links as postulational posits concerning the introduction of a metaphysically informed notion of dispositionality into the theory. There’s no reductive definition or constitutive explanation that will clarify, in simpler terms, what is it for something to be so-and-so disposed, and why that would make for a good explanation for, say, laws of nature. While this makes dispositionality a primitive of the theory, I will argue that the account is non-trivial. Finally, I argue against essence-based (meta-)explanations, which are somewhat popular in the literature.

The second half of my metaphysical backdrop concerns the nature of appearances, which is the topic of this chapter. I argue on metasemantic grounds for a factive conception of appearances (according to which if it appears to be the case that p, then p), but I also argue against a layered conception of reality that would stratify such appearances as a less-than-fully-real portion of the world. The distinction between mere truths and perspicuous truths, sketched in the previous chapter, will lead to a less inflationary characterization of the realm of appearances. After some observations on the notion of truth itself, the relation between reality and appearances will be discussed, primarily in the form of the explanatory relations that philosophers can posit to explain appearances in terms of reality. Some inkling of the methodology of metaphysics will be offered.

In this chapter I will address two interconnected questions concerning the extent of Dispositional Reality vis-à-vis the overall structure of reality: firstly, what kind of dispositional predicates ought to be taken as joint-carving? While some candidates are excluded, the case for others is left open, and a tentative case for pluralism is made. Secondly, which true ascriptions of non-dispositional predicates are ultimately underpinned by Dispositional Reality? This is the distillate, within the context of my account, of the question: are all properties dispositional? My answer will be: no. While some non-dispositional ascriptions can be explained dispositionally, other ascriptions are resistant to this kind of treatment. On the present account there is no robust divide between dispositional and categorical properties, but the result still qualifies as a form of dualism: Dispositional Reality may be a vast region of metaphysical structure, but there is little reason to think that it exhausts it.

In this paper, we embark on the complicated discussion about the nature of vice in Virtue Ethics through a twofold approach: first, by taking seriously the claim that virtues (and certain flavours of vices) are genuinely dispositional features possessed by agents, and secondly, by employing a pluralistic attitude borrowed from Battaly’s pluralism (2008). Through these lenses, we identify three varieties of viciousness: incontinence, indifference, and malevolence. The upshot is that the notion of vice is not as categorically homogeneous as that of virtue: some states of viciousness consist in interference of present virtuous dispositions, or mimicking of absent vicious ones, whereas others can be considered genuine dispositions themselves. Furthermore, this set-up can provide an interesting, albeit highly idealized story as to how, through the interference in one’s environment, one gets acquainted with vice in various degrees. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-à-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-a-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct.

According to dispositionalism, objects possess genuine powers. This paper argues that the signature claim of dispositionalism can only be articulated with the help of intensionally opaque linguistic resources. This bears a twofold consequence. Firstly, standard non-humility arguments against modal quidditism support too weak of a conclusion to be of use for the dispositionalist. Secondly, if the dispositionalist wishes their position about the powerful nature of properties to be a metaphysically substantive one, they will have to endorse the claim that at least some hyperintensionality has a non-representational source. This adds a new layer of complexity to the discussion: for the legitimacy of the dispositionalism vs. categoricalism debate, as a substantive debate about which kind of property is instantiated in the physical world, rests on the assumption that reality itself is finer-grained than modality. Interestingly, dispositionalism is also able to provide a compelling solution to the unique issues raised by a hyperintensional account of properties, and one in line with their philosophical sensibilities.

Dispositionalism, perhaps the most popular variant of non-Humean metaphysics, submits that dispositions, powers, or capacities, are part of the furniture of the world. In this book I advance an original approach to dispositionalism revolving around the notion of Dispositional Reality; the novelty lies in the fact that the account, unlike most alternatives on the market, does not require the reification of objects, facts, properties, nor their dispositional essences – and is in fact compatible with a far more deflationary approach to dispositions, while still being true to the non-Humean spirit of the proposal. This power metaphysics without powers allows one to dispel several puzzles in recent literature, or recast them under a new light. Albeit with its own peculiarities, this proposal constitutes a variant of explanatory dispositionalism, according to which realism about dispositions ought not to be understood as an ontological inflation, but as an explanatory inversion within the nomic and modal family. Some of these explanations are hereby attempted, and a study of various types of non-causal explanation will be provided.

According to Bird’s Naïve Dispositional Monism, all properties are powers, and are individuated by their manifestations. Lowe has famously challenged the position with an individuation regress or circularity argument. Bird has then offered a structuralist side-step in the form of Structuralist Dispositional Monism, according to which powers are individuated through the unique position they occupy in an asymmetric power-structure. However, Structuralist Dispositional Monism has been argued to be just as problematic as Naïve Dispositional Monism, if not more so.I argue that the debate is severely flawed to the extent that it relies on Lowe’s standard characterization of metaphysical individuation as a binary relation between objects. I will argue against this characterization in favor of a different one, either as a standard or sui generis explanatory relation of individuality facts. In the former case, Naïve Dispositional Monism is clear of all charges previously raised against it; whereas in the latter case, Structuralist Dispositional Monism works just fine; Structuralist Dispositional Monism may ultimately be argued to the be the superior option. Either way, the status of Dispositional Monism, vis à vis individuation circularities, is not as compromised as some have claimed—and Lowe’s intended way out (viz., allow for some non-power to eventually break the circularity) loses much of its appeal.

As Price (2009) famously mused, if a philosopher were to be magically transported, perhaps through means of time travel, from the 1950s to the modern day, they would indeed be shocked by the resurgence of metaphysics in the analytic tradition. Most of all, perhaps, they would be shocked by the popularity of power metaphysics. What a strange item to have in a philosopher’s curriculum, they might think: after all, didn’t David Hume claim that “[t]here are no ideas which can occur in metaphysics more obscure and uncertain than those of power, force, energy, or necessary connection”? Indeed, much has changed since then. At the pain of using overly vague terminology, we can call “power metaphysics” the subdiscipline of metaphysics interested in the development and evaluation of a family of positions which we will refer to under the umbrella term of “dispositionalism”. According to dispositionalists, the world we inhabit is also populated by genuine and irreducible powers, dispositions, and capacities of objects.

A popular stance amongst philosophers is one according to which, in Lewis’ words, “identity is utterly simple and unproblematic”. Building from Lewis’ famous passage on the matter, we reconstruct, and then criticize, an argument to the conclusion that identities cannot be grounded. With the help of relatively uncontroversial assumption concerning identity facts, we show that not all identities are equi-fundamental, and, on the contrary, some appear to be provided potential grounding bases using two-level identity criteria. Further potential grounding bases for identities are presented. Identity might be utterly simple and unproblematic, but this is not sufficient to conclude that identities are ungrounded, or fundamental.

Discussions about dispositional and categorical properties have become commonplace in metaphysics. Unfortunately, dispositionality and categoricity are disputed notions: usual characterizations are piecemeal and not widely applicable, thus threatening to make agreements and disagreements on the matter merely verbal—and also making it arduous to map a logical space of positions about dispositional and categorical properties in which all parties can comfortably fit. This paper offers a prescription for this important difficulty, or at least an inkling thereof. This will be achieved by comparing pairs of positions and exploring their background metaphysics to discover where alleged agreements and disagreements concerning dispositionality and categoricity really lie; more specifically, the Pure Powers view and the Powerful Qualities view will be under scrutiny. Over this background, the prescription functions by isolating a successful identity-based characterization of categoricity, while abandoning the correspondent identity-based characterization of dispositionality. On the contrary, according to this prescription a property is dispositional if and only if it is solely in virtue of possessing that property that its bearer is assigned a certain dispositional profile. A crucial consequence of this prescription is that, while supporters of the Pure Powers view often characterize their position as an essentialist one, the dispositionality of properties needn’t always be a matter of essence.

Can an identity be the proper subject of an explanation? A popular stance, albeit not one often argued for, gives a negative answer to this question. Building from a contentious passage from Jaegwon Kim in this direction, we reconstruct an argument to the conclusion that identities, to the extent in which they are necessary, cannot be explained. The notion of contrastive explanation, characterized as difference-seeking, will be crucial for this argument; however, we will eventually find the argument to be unsatisfactory. On the contrary, the discussion provides enough resource to sketch a very simple framework for a non-causal contrastive explanation of identities. Many instances will be provided, with different varieties of explanans, ultimately suggesting that certain entailment or biconditional principles involving identities (first and foremost, so-called two-level identity criteria) may indeed be taken to have an inherent explanatory value.

Why is it that whenever a structural property is instantiated, its constituent properties are instantiated as well, by proper parts of the original object? By developing a suggestion from Lewis :25–46, 1986), Hawley :117–133, 2010) rises to this explanatory challenge by taking structural properties to be mereologically composed by their constituents, and by taking composition to be analogous to identity. However, setting up a plausible framework for composition and CAI claims about properties, I will argue that structural properties are not identical to their constituents, at least not in any sense robust enough to warrant an Hawley-style argument—and perhaps not identical to them in any sense whatsoever. More generally, core principles of extensional mereology are in danger when applied to structural properties, which may force an extensionalist to either reconsider the application altogether, or reconsider mereological monism, thus granting the mereology of structural properties a peculiarly non-extensional status. Finally, although this debate has been traditionally framed as a debate about universals, an appeal to structural tropes can reconcile, at least to some extent, the mereology of structural properties with Lewisian extensional mereology— CAI included.

In recent years, a new dispute has risen to prominence: the dispute between realists and anti-realists about causal powers. Albeit sometimes overlooked, the meta-ontological features of this “question of realism for powers” are quite peculiar. For friends and foes of causal powers have characterized their contrasting views in a variety of different ways; as existence claims, as semantic or truth-making claims, as fundamentality claims, as claims about the nature of certain properties. Not only does this multiplicity of interpretations make it unclear what the genuine bone of contention is, if there is one; some of them appear to be mutually exclusive. Some light can be shed on this apparent yet widespread confusion by distinguishing three degrees of ontological involvement in dispositional truths; viz., three ways, of increasing robustness, to read ontological commitments from dispositional truths. Relatedly, by exploring the literature, and focusing on some selected examples of power realism and anti-realism, we can observe that power realists vastly disagree over the intrinsic nature ad make-up of dispositional properties. Such examples furthermore invite the thought that the question of realism for powers is best understood not as the debate around the existence of properties with a distinctive identity, but rather as a debate about metaphysical hierarchy. Finally, some anti-realists positions are indistinguishable from realist ones, using merely intensional resources: power realism is best appreciated by going hyperintensional.

In the recent debate about the nature of properties, dispositional essentialism, which claims that a property possesses its powers essentially, seems to provide an interesting alternative to the quite simple and problematic view that properties are to be identified through primitive qualities, quidditates. However, it is not easy to characterize explicitly and uncontroversially dispositional essentialism, in particular when it comes to the treatment of powers. A further reference to primitive qualities may prove to be unavoidable, thus suggesting a medium between quidditism and dispositional essentialism. Whatever means are used in the explanation of a property’s nature, the resort to a rock-bottom entity like a quidditas seems to be the only way to avoid a regress.