Abstract
Pan-Dispositionalism – the view that all properties (and relations) are irreducibly dispositional – currently appears to have no takers amongst major analytic metaphysicians. There are those, such as Mumford, who are open to the idea but remain uncommitted. And there are those, such as Ellis and Molnar, who accept that some properties are irreducibly dispositional but argue that not all are. In this paper, I defend Pan-Dispositionalism against this ‘Moderate’ Dispositionalism.
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Notes
Of course, as theories about the nature of properties, they must also cohere with certain general facts about properties. Here, I shall take it for granted that Moderate Dispositionalism and Pan-Dispositionalism are equally equipped.
Heil’s ‘Identity Theory’ of properties is also simpler than Moderate Dispositionalism: properties are all of the categorical-and-dispositional kind. But it faces an important explanatory problem. Heil claims that all properties are both categorical (he prefers the term ‘qualitative’) and dispositional (2003: 114). Take the Necker Cube. We need not think that this has distinct properties to which we separately attend when we see it as though from one perspective or the other. Similarly, we need not think that each property has different properties, or parts, to which we attend when we discern its dispositionality or its qualitativity. Each aspect can be taken as simply “the selfsame property differently considered” (2003: 112). This description strikes me as misleading. It would be more accurate to say that Heil’s properties are neither dispositional nor qualitative. With the Necker Cube that Heil takes as his model, one is tempted to conclude that the cube drawing is of neither perspective in itself. But then if a property, in itself, is not dispositional, why does it lead its bearer to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances? The Dispositionalist can answer this: properties are dispositional in nature – dispositionality ‘resides’ with the property. Someone taking all properties to be qualitative can also answer this: relations of nomic necessitation link the property with others. Heil is unable to answer either way without his position collapsing into it, and it’s unclear what else he can do apart from take as inexplicable the connection between any property of an object and that object’s behaviour. This strikes me as the wrong place to accept brute fact, and a powerful reason to prefer Dispositionalism to Heil’s theory.
Though (as we shall see) Molnar rejects such a characterisation, I argue against this rejection in Section 4.
There is an important issue here about whether one also requires the instantiation of a natural kind for there to be laws concerning it. From what I have said, it would seem that all we need, ontologically, is some irreducibly dispositional property essential to natural kind K for all laws involving K to hold. I am happy with this consequence, but some may insist on there being members of K as well. Ontologically, this would require there being some restriction on the conditional counterfactuals a power can ground.
From here onwards, I shall (for the most part) swap talk of ‘irreducibly dispositional properties/relations’ for the less cumbersome locution ‘powers’ and take the two terms to be equivalent unless stated otherwise.
For further analysis of how the regress argument is meant to work, in which several options are considered in detail, see Molnar (2003: 173–181).
Armstrong asks “where does potentiality get cashed out as act? Where do we arrive at some concrete nature, something that is other than mere power? Surely the world is not a matter of particulars that have nothing but pure powers, powers that are then shuffled around the particulars. That is unbelievable” (Ellis 2002: 169). Armstrong runs this ‘Act’ objection and the ontological regress objection together, as though they raise the same difficulty. But they actually seem separate. In the ‘Act’ objection, Armstrong appears to beg the question against Pan-Dispositionalism by taking ‘act’ to essentially involve categorical properties, and one can address this objection by construing act differently. One cannot counter the regress objection in the same way. The conclusion to Armstrong’s ‘Act’ objection might well follow if properties were nothing in themselves, but it certainly does not follow if powers are non-categorical entities. Change (i.e. act) can be taken as simply the shifting around of these entities – universals – in accordance with their nature. Change is really not much different for Armstrong: it is still the shifting around of various universals in accordance with the laws of nature.
It is sufficient for structural property S to be categorical that there be no one set of counterfactuals true of all objects with structure S. However, as becomes clear in the methane example below, it is not necessary. All objects with structure S may have one set of counterfactuals in common and structural property S still be categorical – because something other than S makes true those counterfactuals.
Molnar also raises the problem of ‘masking’ for the conditional analysis and by extension for the claim that powers entail conditionals. An example he gives (Molnar 2003: 93) involves the powers being disposed to turn everything to gold and being able to nourish oneself. King Midas’s disposition to turn everything to gold ‘masks’ his ability to nourish himself. Molnar’s thought is this: if Midas has both, what conditionals does each entail? But again, while we may not be able to state these conditionals, we can certainly see what they might be like in outline. Given that the counterfactuals entailed will often be conditional, we can say, for example, that some of the latter power’s entailed conditionals will specify that if x also has the former power, and is in certain circumstances (e.g. picking up a sandwich, etc.), then x will do B (e.g. turn the sandwich into gold).
Mellor (1995: 157) takes facts to be entities defined by linguistic expressions, as opposed to entities, like properties, which exist independently of linguistic expressions. I would prefer to restrict the use of the term ‘entity’ for that which exists independently of linguistic expressions. However, if we do need to take facts to be entities – perhaps for us to take truthmaking to be a genuine relation – they are clearly not entities of any real ontological interest.
Molnar has very little to say about relations. He seems to argue that we should admit positional properties as ‘genuine properties’ instantiated by objects because the spatial/temporal truths about an object change when it is moved in space and time. But he does not say why the truthmakers here cannot be objects bearing spatial and temporal relations, rather than these relational properties.
Analogous claims can be made for the corresponding relations (here, the relation of spatial occupation, and the relation of being a certain distance from something).
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Bostock, S. In Defence of Pan-Dispositionalism. Int Ontology Metaphysics 9, 139–157 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-008-0028-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-008-0028-9