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The question of realism for powers

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Whether or not this is what Hume thought, or whether Hume specifically intended it as an existence statement, is a different issue. The neo-Humean orthodoxy, more than David Hume, owes to the work of David Lewis, who was perhaps the first to positively enforce the ‘no necessary connection’ diktat in a systematic metaphysical picture.

  2. Esfeld (2010: pp. 121–122). The reader will note that Esfeld doesn’t just say that there are no powers, but that there are no powers over and above categorical properties. I will soon come back to this.

  3. Formally, one could offer a second-order regimentation of dispositional truths to existentially express commitment to powers. Yet it may be disputed that second-order quantification is quantification over properties or powers. Independently, it may also be disputed that predicates play a referring role.

  4. I will shortly say more on the ontological commitments of realists, and later on, in Sect. 3.3, I will tackle the relation between powers and properties.

  5. Neither the conditional analysis decides which side is metaphysically prior or apt to reduce the other. Manley and Wasserman (2012: pp. 1193–1194), in proposing their version of the analysis, immediately clarify this point. More on this in the next section.

  6. Since, at least, Harré and Madden (1975) and Ellis and Lierse (1994). For the conditional analysis as providing truth-conditions to dispositional truths, (Fara 2005).

  7. Armstrong (1968, 1969), but also Martin (1997; 2008: pp. 18–19). For an explicit defense of truth-making as a tool to discover one’s true commitments, Heil (2003, 2012), Armstrong (2004), and Cameron (2008). For a critique, Schaffer (2008). In what follows, I will speak about properties and powers being truth-makers; so that the existence of a property can be taken to be sufficient for some truth. This is standard terminology, however it might be suspicious on some accounts of properties and instantiation (e.g., the existence of the property red might not be sufficient for the truth of “the ball is red”). If I had to be more specific, I would say that truth-makers are property or power instances, or facts somehow composed of such properties or powers (and objects). Nothing crucial will hinge on this specification.

  8. There is of course a connection between this metaphysical question and the quest for truth-makers, or truth-conditions. Thus Fara (2005: p. 60) writes:

    I have been interested in the metaphysical question of what it takes for an object to have a disposition, and I have assumed that this question will be answered by giving an account of the truth conditions of disposition ascriptions.

    Something similar goes for truth-making: the quest for truth-makers for dispositional truths helps in discovering the deep story about powers.

  9. E.g., Esfeld (2010) and Jacobs (2011).

  10. Quite interestingly, Humean Supervenience can be entirely understood as the existence claim that there are no irreducible external relations, or emergent properties or something of that sort. Introducing the contingency of this thesis, Lewis (1986: p. x) writes that “is not, alas, unintelligible that there might be suchlike rubbish”. This already suggests the point (see Sect. 5.2) that grounding/supervenience questions can be reformulated into existence questions.

  11. Is QRP an internal dispute between property realists, viz., those who believe that there are properties? Does it presuppose some stance on what kind of things properties are? A great number of participants in the literature, on both sides, appear to be property realists. However, Armstrong (2005: p. 309) reasonably claims that whether properties are dispositional or non-dispositional in nature, and whether they are universals or particulars, are issues “largely independent of each other”—though Tugby (2013a) suggests an interesting intersection. As for the possibility of combining nominalism with powers, there is a strongly reductionist nuance to Shoemaker’s (1980) claim that properties are exhausted by powers—a nuance he himself rejected later on (Shoemaker 1998: p. 64). Mumford (2004) follows in his footsteps keeping properties, while Whittle (2009) walks down the road of a nominalist account of powers.

    In what follows I will keep on referring to and quantifying over properties, without specifying whether they are particular or universals. It’s possible that the discussion about the dispositional nature of properties can somehow be restated in nominalistically kosher terms, as Mellor (1974: p. 157) claims. If not, this might be another line of thought to pursue.

  12. With some differences, Shoemaker (1980), Swoyer (1982), and Hawthorne (2002).

  13. This is where the lexicon generates an unfortunate merry-go-round. The properties posited by the realist essentially confer powers or dispositions to their bearers; but such properties are themselves also called “dispositional properties”, or sometimes just “powers”, and taken to be identical to them. So we get different claims, which are supposed to be equivalent, as:

    • “powers essentially confer dispositions” (e.g., as in Contessa 2014)

    • “dispositional properties essentially confer powers” (e.g., in Taylor 2013: p. 94)

    The problem lies in the fact that if the relation of “conferring” or “being responsible for” is, as it presumably is, asymmetric, there are two cases available. Either “powers”, “dispositions” and “dispositional properties” stand for the same items, thus both claims are false; or they do not, and the two claims cannot be equivalent expressions of the realist’s thesis. This confusion is, I take, merely verbal, and I will offer a cure for it (in Sect. 4).

  14. I have already expressed just how difficult it may be to extract ontological commitments to dispositions from dispositional truths; the anti-realist has space to manoeuvre. An ever more problematic issue, and one specific to powers (whose source I am still uncertain about) is that even if one admits that dispositional truths are committing to something, it is a point of contention what the commitment is about; and even if dispositional terms are referential in nature, it is still a point of contention what they are referring to. This is an anomaly. No one would claim that “the number of planets is 9” is true, and that “the number of planets” is a referring term, but that it does not refer to a number; similarly, no one would claim that “there is a number of planets” is true, but that the domain of quantification does not range over numbers. On the contrary, there is a great deal of discussion as to whether dispositional terms actually stand for dispositions (and something similar goes for quantification).

    It is an open option for many anti-realists to claim that even if dispositional terms and predicates are referential in nature, and stand for something we are committed to in dispositional truths, they do not specify a genuine domain of dispositions. Something similar goes for quantification; the truth of “the ability to dance is unique to humans” commits us to something—the referent of “the ability to dance”—which is unique to humans—but this peculiar feature may have no business being called a disposition. This allows anti-realists to accept dispositional truths, without shying away from their ontological commitments.

  15. Recent developments of QRP, mostly the emphasis on truth-makers, rather than paraphrases and analyses, is in line with similar developments in other realism/anti-realism debates. According to Cameron (2008), the mereological nihilist and her opponent can agree on truths like “there’s a tree in my backyard”, yet crucially disagree on their truth-makers. Similarly, many nominalists do not feel compelled anymore to offer paraphrases for property-committing sentences, but rather try to offer nominalistic-friendly truth-makers for them.

  16. A similar version of realism, called “minimal realism” about dispositions is presented in the beginning of Contessa (2014). For this section, I am also drawing overall inspiration from Cameron’s (2008: pp. 6–7) stance on existence and disquotation.

  17. Cameron (2008: pp. 6–7). But also Azzouni (2012) and Heil (2012, 2016) for similar considerations.

  18. I would like to thank an anonymous referee for helping me focus on the subject of this subsection.

  19. Since Armstrong (1997), Molnar (2003) and Bird (2007a).

  20. For example, Mumford (2004) and Bird (2007a, b).

  21. For more on the PQer’s view, Martin (1993, 1997, 2008), Heil (2003, 2005, 2012), and Martin and Heil (1999). Also, Strawson (2008), Schroer (2013), Jacobs (2011), Ingthorsson (2013) and Taylor (2013).

  22. A contemporary reader may associate the notion of a quiddity with that a property that only contingently occupies its position in the causal–nomic structure of the world, and, as such, it only contingently confers the correspondent powers to its bearer; as its counterpart for individuals (haecceitism) quidditism is nowadays associated with the possibility of partial or total “swaps”, when two properties completely swap their causal and nomic features while retaining their respective identities.

    As I will highlight later on, this is not my idea of a quiddity, nor, as far as I call tell, that of any supporter of PQ. As I use the word, “quiddity” stands for a property with a primitive identity, which may be connected to its powers and causal–nomic roles either contingently or necessarily.

  23. Jacobs (2011) and Ingthorsson (2015).

  24. How exactly a powerful quality is paired to a stimulus S and manifestation M is a problematic detail that I am not going to discuss—for instance, Martin (1997, 2008) usually claims that such selection if an internal affair of a property, whereas Heil (2003: p. 94) states that dispositionality is “built into the property”, and it is not just “a contingent add-on”.

  25. PQers do not usually frame their positions in terms of laws of nature—which on their theory, if anything at all, are highly derivative entities. But for this specific claim, Heil (2003: p. 92ff, 2005: p. 345ff).

  26. Recently Schroer (2013: p. 64, fn. 3), and Tugby (2013b: p. 4). Although he isn’t directly interested in QRP, Schaffer (2005) differentiates various ways for properties and powers to be necessarily correlated.

  27. A slightly different position would be Hawthorne’s (2002) “dual aspect” view, where W-powers and laws are not only necessary, but essential of quiddities. Similarly Fales (1993) would take second-order causal relations to be essential of first-order properties. Unlike Q-NEC, in both such positions W-powers and natural laws obtain solely in virtue of properties. As I will explain shortly after, this is a clear indicator that, unlike Q-NEC, we are dealing in both cases with power ontologies.

  28. Although this is seldom stated, it seems implicit, at least for the PQers with a strong emphasis on truth-making, as in Heil (2003, 2012) and Jacobs (2011).

  29. One could claim that usually power realists like to equip their theories with dispositional primitives, whereas anti-realists would not. I will be cheeky enough to notice that something being primitive is not an intrinsic or essence-related characterization, but a relational one.

  30. Cartwright (1983, 1989, 2009), Lipton (1999), Ellis (2001), Molnar (2003), and Bird (2007a) all subscribe to a dispositional account of laws. Only a subset of them would explicitly claim that powers constitute a grounding base for laws.

  31. For a similar take on grounding and truth-making, Heil (2016).

  32. Ellis (2001: p. 128). Something similar is stated in Molnar (2003: p. 199).

  33. This is not to say, of course, that the acceptance of powers is all you need to understand how properties account for laws and modality. The acceptance of powers is a beginning, not an end, to the discussion.

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    Lorenzo Azzano

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Correspondence to Lorenzo Azzano.

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I would like to thank Stephen Mumford and two anonymous referees for useful comments and discussions on various drafts of this paper.

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Azzano, L. The question of realism for powers. Synthese 196, 329–354 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1478-9

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