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Full Idea
In the 'dispositional essentialist' account (the main view) …what it is to be a power is to be a property whose essence is exhaustively constituted by dispositions.
Gist of Idea
A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions
Source
Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.4)
Book Ref
Friend/Kimpton-Nye: 'Dispositions and Powers' [CUP 2023], p.55
A Reaction
[compressed] Sounds wrong to me. A very complex property (such as 'stormy' weather) could be nothing more than a large bundle of dispositions, but that wouldn't make it a 'power', which has to be simpler and more basic.
Related Ideas
Idea 23712 Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye]
Idea 23714 Dispositional essentialism (unlike the grounding view) says only fundamental properties are powers [Friend/Kimpton-Nye]
| 23698 | Dispositions have directed behaviour which occurs if triggered [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23699 | 'Masked' dispositions fail to react because something intervenes [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23700 | A disposition is 'altered' when the stimulus reverses the disposition [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23701 | A disposition is 'mimicked' if a different cause produces that effect from that stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23702 | A 'trick' can look like a stimulus for a disposition which will happen without it [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23703 | Some dispositions manifest themselves without a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23704 | We could analyse dispositions as 'possibilities', with no mention of a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23707 | Powers are properties which necessitate dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23706 | Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23708 | Humeans see properties as having no more essential features and relations than their distinctness [Friend/Kimpton-Nye, by PG] |
| 23709 | Dispositions are what individuate properties, and they constitute their essence [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23710 | Dispositionalism says modality is in the powers of this world, not outsourced to possible worlds [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23711 | A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23712 | Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23714 | Dispositional essentialism (unlike the grounding view) says only fundamental properties are powers [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |