New powers for Dispositionalism
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New powers for Dispositionalism Giacomo Giannini1 Received: 25 February 2020 / Accepted: 8 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: (i) showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and (ii) offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de re truths about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness (all powers are “for” their manifestation) and Independence (some powers might fail to bring about their manifestation) has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech’s objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. Keywords Powers · Dispositionalism · Essence · Hardcore actualism · Unmanifested manifestations · Mere logical existents · Vetter · Williamson · Leech
1 Introduction Dispositionalism is the theory of modality according to which the truth of alethic modal claims is grounded in the irreducibly dispositional properties of actual entities. It is a ‘hardcore actualist’ (Contessa 2009) or ‘new actualist’ (Vetter 2011) theory of modality, in so far as possible worlds, however conceived, do not play any role
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Giacomo Giannini [email protected] Philosophy Department, Durham University, 50 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK
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Synthese
in fixing the modal facts and in making modal claims true or false. The idea of the theory is that the way something is fully grounds the ways things could behave, and in general how things could be. These special properties include tendencies, capacities, dispositions, abilities, potentialities, and so on; for the purposes of this paper, I will not be concerned with fine-grained distinctions between them, and will refer to this class of properties with the umbrella term ‘powers’. Very roughly, a first characterisation of the view1 can be given by the conjunction of the following: DPoss: ‘possibly p’ is true iff and because there is some power whose manifestations, if manifested, would make ‘p’ true.2 DNec: ‘necessarily p’ is true iff and because there is no power whose manifestation, if manifested, would make ‘not-p’ true. I for
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