•  12
    Power and activity: a dynamic do-over
    Philosophical Studies 1-19. forthcoming.
    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 philo…Read more
  •  35
    The Powers Metaphysic
    Oxford University Press. 2019.
    Neil E. Williams develops a systematic metaphysics centred on the idea of powers, as a rival to neo-Humeanism, the dominant systematic metaphysics in philosophy today. Williams takes powers to be inherently causal properties and uses them as the foundation of his explanations of causation, persistence, laws, and modality.
  •  30
    Dispositional Pluralism By Jennifer McKitrick (review)
    Analysis 79 (4): 803-805. 2019.
    Dispositional Pluralism By McKitrickJenniferOxford University Press, 2018. iv + 262 pp.
  •  27
    Amorphic kinds: Cluster’s last stand?
    Biology and Philosophy 33 (1 - 2): 1-19. 2018.
    I raise a puzzle case for “cluster” accounts of natural kinds—the homeostatic property cluster and stable property cluster accounts, especially—on the basis of their expected treatment of the metaphysics of certain disease kinds. Some kinds, I argue, fail to exhibit the co-instantiated property clusters these cluster views take to be constitutive of natural kinds. Some genetic diseases, for example, have archetypical instances with few or none of the pathological processes or symptoms associated…Read more
  •  133
    Arguing against the claim that every dispositional property is grounded in some property other than itself, Stephen Mumford presents what he calls the ‘Ungrounded Argument’. If successful, the Ungrounded Argument would represent a major victory for anti-Humean metaphysics over its Humean rivals, as it would allow for the existence of primitive modality. Unfortunately, Humeans need not yet be worried, as the Ungrounded Argument is itself lacking in grounding. I indicate where Mumford’s argument f…Read more
  •  113
    Static And Dynamic Dispositions
    Synthese 146 (3): 303-324. 2005.
    When it comes to scientific explanation, our parsimonious tendencies mean that we focus almost exclusively on those dispositions whose manifestations result in some sort of change – changes in properties, locations, velocities and so on. Following this tendency, our notion of causation is one that is inherently dynamic, as if the maintenance of the status quo were merely a given. Contrary to this position, I argue that a complete concept of causation must also account for dispositions whose mani…Read more
  •  39
    Powers: Necessity and Neighborhoods
    American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (4): 357-372. 2014.
    It is commonplace among friends of irreducible causal powers to depict powers as producing their characteristic manifestations as a matter of metaphysical necessity. That is to say that when a power finds itself in those circumstances that stimulate it, it cannot help but be exercised: its effects must occur. The result is a metaphysic that depicts the world not as loose and separate but as united by the strongest glue; this is but one way in which the world as understood by friends of powers di…Read more
  •  87
    Do zombies Hunger for Humean brains?
    SWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 6 (2): 62-72. 2007.
    John Heil’s From an Ontological Point of View (Heil 2003) is a tremendous philosophical work. The neo-Lockean ontology the reader finds within its 267 pages is a sensible and refreshing alternative to the neo-Humean ontologies which presently occupy the vast majority of the metaphysical literature. What Heil offers is a much needed change in perspective. Nor are the strengths of the book limited to Heil’s willingness to approach central metaphysical problems in largely untried and unpopular way;…Read more
  •  200
    Putnam's traditional neo-essentialism
    Philosophical Quarterly 61 (242). 2011.
    Recently, several philosophers have defended what might be called `neo-essentialism' about natural kinds. Their views purport to improve upon the traditional essentialism of Kripke and Putnam by rejecting the claim that essences must be comprised of intrinsic properties. I argue that this so-called break from traditional essentialism is not a break at all, because the widespread interpretation of Putnam according to which he takes essences to be intrinsic is mistaken. Putnam makes no claim to th…Read more
  •  291
    A dispositional theory of possibility
    Dialectica 62 (1). 2008.
    – The paper defends a naturalistic version of modal actualism according to which what is metaphysically possible is determined by dispositions found in the actual world. We argue that there is just one world—this one—and that all genuine possibilities are anchored by the dispositions exemplified in this world. This is the case regardless of whether or not those dispositions are manifested. As long as the possibility is one that would obtain were the relevant disposition manifested, it is a genui…Read more
  • – Common to most realist accounts of powers is the claim that they are intrinsic properties. Most arguments presented in defence of the intrinsicality thesis have as their targets reductive treatments of powers that conceive of powers as relations between the object described as possessing the power and either some previous manifestation event or the laws of nature. However, even if these arguments are successful, they fail to establish that powers are intrinsic properties; at best they demonstr…Read more
  •  25
    Review of Peter Unger, Philosophical Papers: Volumes 1 & 2 (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (2). 2007.
  •  99
    Arthritis and Nature's Joints
    In Michael O'Rourke, Joseph Keim Campbell & Matthew H. Slater (eds.), Carving Nature at its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science, Mit Press. 2011.
    This chapter focuses on the view that diseases comprise natural kinds and how this view is in conflict with the essentialist picture of natural kinds as championed by Kripke and Putnam. This essentialist depiction of natural kinds contends that in order for a class of entities to be a natural kind, it is required that all and only members of the class instantiate very specific properties that explain the presence of any other properties typically associated with being a member of the kind; these…Read more
  •  126
    Putting Powers Back on Multi-Track
    Philosophia 39 (3): 581-595. 2011.
    Power theorists are divided on the question of whether individual powers are single-track (for a single manifestation type) or are multi-track (capable of producing distinct manifestation types for distinct stimuli). EJ Lowe has recently defended single-tracking, arguing that the multi-tracker can provide no adequate reason for treating powers as capable of having multiple manifestation types, and claiming that putative instances of multi-track powers are either single-track powers in need of un…Read more
  •  182
    The Factory Model of Disease
    The Monist 90 (4): 555-584. 2007.
    The aim of the paper is to give an ontologically informed account of disease that can aid in the construction of disease ontologies. The paper begins by distinguishing cases of diseases from what are purely structural abnormalities, referred to as ‘disorders’. The paper then presents a causal model apt for the understanding of disease that distinguishes diseases from both their causes and their potential effects. The analysis of disease defended treats disease in terms of distortions of standard…Read more
  •  164
    Dispositions and the Argument from Science
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (1). 2011.
    Central to the debate between Humean and anti-Humean metaphysics is the question of whether dispositions can exist in the absence of categorical properties that ground them (that is, where the causal burden is shifted on to categorical properties on which the dispositions would therefore supervene). Dispositional essentialists claim that they can; categoricalists reject the possibility of such ?baseless? dispositions, requiring that all dispositions must ultimately have categorical bases. One po…Read more
  •  101
    – The conjunction of three plausible theses about the nature of causal powers—that they are intrinsic, that their effects are produced mutually, and that the manifestations they are for are essential to them—leads to a problem concerning the ability of causal powers to work together to produce manifestations. I call this problem the problem of fit. Fortunately for proponents of a power-based metaphysic, the problem of fit is not insurmountable. Fit can be engineered if powers are properties whos…Read more