•  410
    No laws and (thin) powers in, no (governing) laws out
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (1): 1-26. 2021.
    Non-Humean accounts of the metaphysics of nature posit either laws or powers in order to account for natural necessity and world-order. We argue that such monistic views face fundamental problems. On the one hand, neo-Aristotelians cannot give unproblematic power-based accounts of the functional laws among quantities offered by physical theories, as well as of the place of conservation laws and symmetries in a lawless ontology; in order to capture these characteristics, commitment to governing l…Read more
  •  170
    Exploring the Metaphysics of Nomic Relations
    Acta Analytica 27 (3): 247-264. 2012.
    After defending the ontologically genuine existence of at least some of the actual nomic relations, I discuss some issues concerning their metaphysical features. I firstly argue in favour of the metaphysical contingency of nomic relations and then I suggest that their relata-specificity is the most plausible metaphysical view that guarantees the unity of facts that the laws of nature are. Finally, I present a novel account according to which some of the actual nomic relations are neither externa…Read more
  •  140
    Symmetries, dispositions and essences
    Philosophical Studies 148 (2). 2010.
    Dispositional essentialists ultimately appeal to dispositional essences in order to provide (a) an explanation of the conservation of physical quantities and (b) identity conditions for fundamental physical properties. This paper aims to offer alternative suggestions based on symmetry considerations and exhibits their consequences for the thesis of dispositional essentialism.
  •  75
    Tropes, Particularity, and Space-Time
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 38 (2): 357-368. 2007.
    Several difficulties, concerning the individuation and the variation of tropes, beset the initial classic version of trope theory. K. Campbell (Abstract particulars, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990) presented a modified version that aims to avoid those difficulties. Unfortunately, the revised theory cannot make the case that one of the fundamental tropes, space-time, is a genuine particular.
  •  70
    Do Categorical Properties Confer Dispositions on Their Bearers?
    Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 32 (2): 61-82. 2018.
    Categorical Monism (that is, the view that all fundamental natural properties are purely categorical) has recently been challenged by a number of philosophers. In this paper, I examine a challenge which can be based on Gabriele Contessa’s [10] defence of the view that only powers can confer dispositions. In his paper Contessa argues against what he calls the Nomic Theory of Disposition Conferral (NTDC). According to NTDC, in each world in which they exist, (categorical) properties confer specifi…Read more
  •  63
    Bird and the Dispositional Essentialist Account of Spatiotemporal Relations
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 39 (2): 383-394. 2008.
    The basic principles of dispositional essentialism do not require that the fundamental spatiotemporal relations are dispositional in nature. Nevertheless, Bird (who defends dispositional monism) argues that they possess dispositional essences in virtue of the fact that the obtaining of these relations can be characterised by the satisfaction of a certain counterfactual. In this paper I argue that his suggestion fails, and so, despite his attempt, the case of the spatiotemporal relations remains …Read more
  •  58
    Vikingism as a Metametaphysical Thesis
    Metaphilosophy 50 (4): 516-535. 2019.
    This paper aims to be a contribution to the recent discussion on the science-metaphysics relationship. After drawing a distinction between two aspects of the relationship, it defends the theoretical importance of the proposed distinction and argues for the interconnectedness of the aspects in question. The paper then focuses on one of those aspects: that is, the methodological strategy of some metaphysicians to appeal to scientific findings and practice in the course of discussing various pure m…Read more
  •  55
    Radical non-dispositionalism is the view according to which the actual causal/nomic roles of natural properties are totally irrelevant to their de re modal representation. The major difficulty besetting all forms of radical non-dispositionalism is that the latter allegedly allows the metaphysical possibility of two natural properties swapping their actual causal/nomic roles. The aim of this paper is to provide a plausible solution to that problem. To this end, I describe the necessary steps that…Read more
  •  55
    Hamilton’s Principle and Dispositional Essentialism: Friends or Foes?
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (1): 59-71. 2018.
    Most recently Smart and Thébault revived an almost forgotten debate between Katzav and Ellis on the compatibility of Hamilton’s Principle with Dispositional Essentialism. Katzav’s arguments inter alia aim to show that HP presupposes a kind of metaphysical contingency which is at odds with the basic tenets of DE, and offers explanations of a different type and direction from those given by DE. In this paper I argue that though dispositional essentialists might adequately respond to these argument…Read more
  •  51
    Intrinsic Dispositional Properties and Immanent Realism
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 95 (4): 500-519. 2018.
    _ Source: _Page Count 20 Tugby and Yates have recently argued that immanent realism is incompatible with the existence of intrinsic but relationally constituted genuine dispositional properties. The success of Tugby’s and Yates’ arguments depends either on a strong or on a weak assumption about the interworld identity of dispositional properties. In this paper, the author evaluates the strength of the arguments in question under those two assumptions. He also offers an alternative metaphysical p…Read more
  •  51
    Challenging the identity theory of properties
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 5079-5105. 2021.
    The Identity Theory of properties (IDT) is an increasingly popular metaphysical view that aims to be a middle way between pure powerism and pure categoricalism. This paper’s goal is to highlight three major difficulties that IDT should address in order to be a plausible account of the nature of properties. First, although IDT needs a clear definition of the notion of qualitativity which is both adequate and compatible with the tenets of the theory, all the extant proposals fail to provide such a…Read more
  •  49
    The vast majority of metaphysicians agree that powers (in contrast to categorical properties) can exist unmanifested. This paper focuses on the ontological distinction between unmanifested and manifested powers underpinning that fact and has two main aims. First, to determine the proper relata of the distinction and second, to show that an unrestricted version of dispositional monism faces serious difficulties to accommodate it. As far as the first aim is concerned, it is argued that the distinc…Read more
  •  48
    In his book Powers (2003), George Molnar argues against Dispositional Monism by presenting a posteriori reasons to believe in the existence of actual categorical features. In this paper I argue that either Molnar’s project is misdirected, since the properties he concentrates on are most possibly irrelevant for the debate between Dispositional Monism and Property Dualism, or, granted that the properties he chooses are indeed relevant, his arguments cannot prove that they are categorical without b…Read more
  •  44
    This book explores the dispositional and categorical debates on the metaphysics of properties. It defends the view that all fundamental properties and relations are contingently categorical, while also examining alternative accounts of the nature of properties. Drawing upon both established research and the author's own investigation into the broader discipline of the metaphysics of science, this book provides a comprehensive study of the many views and opinions regarding a most debatable topic …Read more
  •  42
    Powerful Qualities Beyond Identity Theory
    Metaphysica 21 (2): 279-295. 2020.
    Until recently, the powerful qualities view about properties has been effectively identified with the so-called identity theory. Yet, the difficulties that the latter faces (especially concerning the interpretation of its core claim that dispositionality and qualitativity are identical) have led some metaphysicians to propose (at least provisionally) new versions of the powerful qualities view. This paper discusses the prospects of three such versions: the compound view, the higher-order propert…Read more
  •  41
    Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford have recently defended a new kind of modality, which they call ‘dispositional modality’. The key reason to adopt dispositional modality, according to them, is that causes never necessitate their effects. Anjum and Mumford’s chief argument against causal necessitation makes use of what they call the ‘antecedent-strengthening test’ : C causally necessitates E iff C & φ causes E, for any possible φ. This test, they claim, fails in all cases of alleged causal nece…Read more
  •  38
    Review of James Franklin: An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the Science of Quantity and Structure, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, x + 308 pp
  •  37
    Dispositionality and Symmetry Structures
    Metaphysica 19 (2): 201-217. 2018.
    A number of metaphysicians and philosophers of science have raised the issue of themodalityof the fundamental structures of the world. Although the debate so far has been largely focused on the (alleged) inherent causal character of fundamental structures, one aspect of it has naturally taken its place as part of the dispositional/categorical debate. In this paper, I focus on the latter in the case of the fundamentalsymmetrystructures. After putting forward the necessary metaphysical presupposit…Read more
  •  35
    According to the dispositional essentialist account of laws of nature, the latter express the dispositional nature of fundamental natural properties. In this paper I discuss the difficulty that the existence of fundamental constants of nature raises for that account. To this end, I examine a relevant argument against the account and describe how an advocate of the dispositionalist conception may try to undermine it by raising objections to its premises. Then I discuss those objections and show t…Read more
  •  33
    In this paper I critically examine the most recent gauge-theoretic argument against the intrinsicality of fundamental properties formulated by French and McKenzie (2012). I show that it cannot achieve its intended goal (which is to undermine Lewis’s neo-Humean metaphysical project) but it can have a signifi cant infl uence to dispositional essentialists that hold that the fundamental physical properties are intrinsic features of their bearers.
  •  32
    Governing Laws and the Inference Problem
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 98 (3): 395-411. 2021.
    How do non-Humean laws govern regularities in nature? According to the Inference Problem, non-Humean accounts of governing face a central problem: it is not clear how such laws do perform their governing function. Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that the introduction of a law-to-regularity axiom is sufficient to solve the Inference Problem. The authors argue that Schaffer’s solution faces a devastating dilemma: either the required axiom cannot, on its own, differentiate the non-Humean acc…Read more
  •  31
    The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science (review)
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 34 (4): 249-252. 2022.
    In a sense, Ted Sider’s latest book bridges the gap between analytic metaphysics and metaphysics of science. On the one hand, the whole discussion seems to fall under the scope of analytic metaphys...
  •  25
    Manifestation and Unrestricted Dispositional Monism
    Acta Analytica 37 (2): 179-196. 2022.
    Most metaphysicians agree that powers can exist without being manifested. The main goal of this paper is to show that adherents of an unrestricted version of Dispositional Monism cannot provide a plausible metaphysical account of the difference between a situation in which a power-instance is not manifested and a situation in which a manifestation of that power-instance actually occurs unless they undermine their own view. To this end, two kinds of manifestation-relation are introduced and it is…Read more
  •  25
    The bulk of the literature concerning the governing role of non-Humean laws has been concentrated on the alleged incapability of higher order nomic facts to determine the regularities in the behaviour of actual objects, the so-called Inference Problem. Most recently Ioannidis, Livanios and Psillos (2021) argue that an adequate solution to the Inference Problem requires an answer to the question of how nomic relations manage to ‘tell’ properties what to do. Ioannidis et al. dub the difficulty tha…Read more
  •  18
    Challenging the identity theory of properties
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 5079-5105. 2021.
    The Identity Theory of properties is an increasingly popular metaphysical view that aims to be a middle way between pure powerism and pure categoricalism. This paper’s goal is to highlight three major difficulties that IDT should address in order to be a plausible account of the nature of properties. First, although IDT needs a clear definition of the notion of qualitativity which is both adequate and compatible with the tenets of the theory, all the extant proposals fail to provide such a defin…Read more
  •  16
    Categorical Monism, Laws, and the Inference Problem
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 54 (4): 599-619. 2023.
    A well-known difficulty that affects all accounts of laws of nature according to which the latter are higher-order facts involving relations between universals (the so-called DTA accounts, from Dretske in Philosophy of Science 44:248–268, 1977; Tooley in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7:667–698, 1977 and Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983)) is the Inference Problem: how can laws construed in that way determine the first-order regularities that we fin…Read more