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8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 5. Powers and Properties

[relation between powers and our view of properties]

29 ideas
Potentiality in geometry is metaphorical [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Potentiality in geometry is spoken of metaphorically.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019b31)
     A reaction: The point here is that if one wanted to give an account of properties in an active way (perhaps in accord with causation, as Shoemaker suggests), then the properties of mathematics could also be included in this Aristotelian way.
The active powers which are not essential to the substance are the 'real qualities' [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Powers which are not essential to substance, and which include not merely an aptitude but also a certain endeavour, are exactly what are or should be meant by 'real qualities'.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.23)
     A reaction: An important part of Leibniz's account. There are thus essential powers, in the 'depth' of the substance, and more peripheral powers, which also initiate action, and give rise to the qualities. The second must derive from the first?
A thing has no properties if it has no effect on other 'things' [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The properties of a thing are effects on other 'things'; if one removes other 'things', then a thing has no properties.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §557)
     A reaction: This is a causal theory of properties. A counterexample is a potential property, like a bomb which never explodes.
Properties endow a ball with qualities, and with powers or dispositions [Martin,CB]
     Full Idea: Each property endows a ball with a distinctive qualitative character and a distinctive range of powers or dispositionalities.
     From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6)
     A reaction: I think this is the wrong way round. Do properties support powers, or powers support properties? I favour the latter. Properties are much vaguer than powers. Powers generate the required causation and activity.
Qualities and dispositions are aspects of properties - what it exhibits, and what it does [Martin,CB]
     Full Idea: For any intrinsic and irreducible property, what is qualitative and what is dispositional are one and the same property considered as what that property exhibits of its nature and what that property is directive and selective for in its manifestation.
     From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 06.6)
     A reaction: This is supposed to support qualities and dispositions as equal partners, but I don't see how 'what a property exhibits' can have any role in fundamental ontology. What it exhibits may be very misleading about its nature.
Properties are not powers - they just have powers [Armstrong]
     Full Idea: Properties are not powers. But properties have powers. They bestow powers.
     From: David M. Armstrong (Truth and Truthmakers [2004], 10.4)
     A reaction: I think this is the wrong way round. In this view, powers become extremely vague things, ranging from the fine-grained to the hugely broad. It seems to me that powers are precise and real, but properties are the vague unhelpful things.
Categoricals exist to influence powers. Such as structures, orientations and magnitudes [Ellis, by Williams,NE]
     Full Idea: Ellis allows categoricals alongside powers, …to influence the sort of manifestations produced by powers. He lists structures, arrangements, distances, orientations, and magnitudes.
     From: report of Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009]) by Neil E. Williams - The Powers Metaphysics 05.2
     A reaction: I would have thought that all of these could be understood as manifestations of powers. The odd one out is distances, but then space and time are commonly overlooked in every attempt to produce a complete ontology. [also Molnar 2003:164].
Properties have powers; they aren't just ways for logicians to classify objects [Ellis]
     Full Idea: One cannot think of a property as just a set of objects in a domain (as Fregean logicians do), as though the property has no powers, but is just a way of classifying objects.
     From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7)
     A reaction: I agree. It is sometimes suggested that properties are what 'individuate' objects, but how could they do that if they didn't have some power? If properties are known by their causal role, why do they have that causal role?
Shoemaker says all genuine properties are dispositional [Shoemaker, by Ellis]
     Full Idea: I am against Shoemaker's strong dispositionalism, according to which all genuine properties are dispositional.
     From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980]) by Brian Ellis - The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism 3
     A reaction: This is because Ellis argues that some properties are categorical, and are needed to underly the active dispositional ones. I think I side with Shoemaker, but this needs more thought.
A causal theory of properties focuses on change, not (say) on abstract properties of numbers [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: My account of properties concerns those with respect to which change is possible; it is not intended to apply to such properties of numbers as being even and being prime.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02)
     A reaction: You could argue that while these properties may not cause change, they are abstract powers. Being even allows division by 2, and being prime blocks it. I say patterns are the basis, and dividing groups of physical objects is involved.
'Square', 'round' and 'made of copper' show that not all properties are dispositional [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Surely we make a distinction beween dispositional and nondispositional properties, and can mention paradigms of both sorts. ....It seems plain that predicates like 'square', 'round' and 'made of copper' are not dispositional.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03)
     A reaction: It might be possible to account for squareness and roundness in dispositional ways, and it is certainly plausible to say that 'made of copper' is not a property (even when it is a true predicate).
The identity of a property concerns its causal powers [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: What makes a property the property it is, what determines its identity, is its potential for contributing to the causal powers of the things that have it.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04)
     A reaction: Does this mean that the 'potential' to act is the essence of the property, or is a property of the property, or is wholly identical with the property? Or is this just epistemological - whatever individuates the property for observers?
Properties are clusters of conditional powers [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: A thing has a 'conditional power' when it has a power conditionally upon the possession of certain properties. ...We can then express my view by saying that properties are clusters of conditional powers.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04)
     A reaction: His example is a knife-shaped thing, which conditionally cuts wood if it is made of steel. Shoemaker rejected this in 1998. Mumford/Anjum prefer the earlier view. Which is fundamental? Powers are simple and primitive. Properties are complex.
Could properties change without the powers changing, or powers change without the properties changing? [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Could a thing undergo radical change with respect to its properties without undergoing any change in its causal powers, or undergo radical change in its causal powers without undergoing any change in the properties that underlie these powers?
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05)
     A reaction: I don't accept properties underlying powers, but these two questions at least force us to see how closely the two are linked.
If properties are separated from causal powers, this invites total elimination [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The disassociation of property identity from causal potentiality is an invitation to eliminate reference to properties from our explanatory hypotheses altogether.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05)
     A reaction: Just as epiphenomenalism about consciousness is a step towards eliminativism. This seems to describe Quine's reaction to Goodman, in moving from predicate nominalism to elimination of properties. I agree with Shoemaker.
The notions of property and of causal power are parts of a single system of related concepts [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The notion of a property and the notion of a causal power belong to a system of internally related concepts, no one of which can be explicated without the use of the other.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07)
     A reaction: Sounds good. It is hard to conceive of a property which has no causal powers, or a causal power that doesn't arise from a property.
Actually, properties are individuated by causes as well as effects [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: I should probably modify my view, and say that properties are individuated by their possible causes as well as by their possible effects.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §11)
     A reaction: (This is in an afterword responding to criticism by Richard Boyd) He doesn't use the word 'individuate' in the essay. That term always strikes me as smacking too much of epistemology, and not enough of ontology. Who cares how you individuate something?
Shoemaker moved from properties as powers to properties bestowing powers [Shoemaker, by Mumford/Anjum]
     Full Idea: Shoemaker ventured the theory in 1980 that properties just are clusters of powers, but he has subsequently abandoned this, and now thinks properties bestow their bearers with causal powers.
     From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Self, Body and Coincidence [1999], p.297) by S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum - Getting Causes from Powers 1.1
     A reaction: Like Mumford and Anjum, I prefer the earlier theory. I think taking powers as basic is the only story that really makes sense. A power is intrinsic and primitive, whereas properties are complex, messy, partly subjective, and higher level.
Should properties be individuated by their causal powers? [Kim]
     Full Idea: Arguably, properties must be individuated in terms of their causal powers.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.230)
Properties are causes [Crane]
     Full Idea: Properties are causes.
     From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.17)
     A reaction: We can't detect properties if they lack causal powers. This may be a deep confusion. Properties are what make causal powers possible, but that isn't what properties are?
Are all properties powers, or are there also qualities, or do qualities have the powers? [Heil]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers who embrace properties as powers hold that every property is a power (Bird), or that some properties are qualities and some are powers (Ellis; Molnar). The latter include powers which are 'grounded in' qualities (Mumford).
     From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 04.4)
     A reaction: I don't like Heil's emphasis on 'qualities', which seems to imply their phenomenal rather than their real aspect. I'm inclined to favour the all-powers view, but can't answer the question 'but what HAS these powers?' Stuff is intrinsically powerful.
Properties are both qualitative and dispositional - they are powerful qualities [Heil]
     Full Idea: In my account of properties they are at once qualitative and dispositional: properties are powerful qualities.
     From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 05.1)
     A reaction: I have never managed to understand what Heil means by 'qualities'. Is he talking about the phenomenal aspects of powers? Does he mean categorical properties. I can't find an ontological space for his things to slot into.
All properties must be causal powers (since they wouldn't exist otherwise) [Mumford]
     Full Idea: It seems that every property must be a causal power, since every property must be causally potent (as a necessary condition of its very existence).
     From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7)
     A reaction: Mumford cautiously endorses this idea, which seems to rest on the thesis that 'to exist is to have causal powers'. I think I am even keener on it than Mumford is. Powers and properties need to be disentangled, however.
Intrinsic properties are just causal powers, and identifying a property as causal is then analytic [Mumford]
     Full Idea: Understanding intrinsic properties as being causal powers is likely to be most profitable, and, if true, renders the causal criterion of property existence true analytically.
     From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.2)
     A reaction: [He cites E.Fales on this] I'm inclined to think that in the ultimate ontology the notion of a 'property' drops out. There are true causal powers, and then conventional human ways of grouping such powers together and naming them.
Is the causal profile of a property its essence? [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: We might say that the causal profile of a property is its essence.
     From: John Hawthorne (Causal Structuralism [2001], Intro)
     A reaction: I associate this view with Shoemaker, and find it sympathetic. We always want to know more. What gives rise to these causal powers? Where does explanation end? He notes that you might say some of the powers are non-essential.
Could two different properties have the same causal profile? [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: If there is more to the nature of a property than the causal powers that it confers, then two different internal natures of properties might necessitate the same causal profile.
     From: John Hawthorne (Causal Structuralism [2001], Intro)
     A reaction: If the causal profiles were identical, it is hard to see how we could even propose, let alone test, their intrinsic difference. ...Unless, perhaps, we knew that the properties arose from different substrata.
If properties are more than their powers, we could have two properties with the same power [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: If a property is something over and above its causal profile, we seem to have conceptual space for an electron to have negative charge 1 and negative charge 2, that have exactly the same causal powers.
     From: John Hawthorne (Causal Structuralism [2001], 1.3)
Rather than pure powers or pure categoricals, I favour basics which are both at once [Williams,NE]
     Full Idea: Power Monism: all properties are powers. Categoricalism: all fundamentals are categorical. Dualism allows both types. I defend Mixed Monism - that there is a single class of fundamental properties that are at once powerful and categorical.
     From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3)
     A reaction: This is the main dilemma for the powers ontology - of how powers can be basic, if there needs to be some entity which possesses the power. But what possesses the powers of an electron? I like Williams's idea, without being clear about it.
Powers are more complicated than properties which are always on display [Williams,NE]
     Full Idea: The mode in which a power presents itself is more complicated than those properties that have (strictly) nothing more to them than that which is always on display.
     From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3)
     A reaction: This is the key idea that nature is dynamic, and so must consist of potentials as well as actuals. Interesting distinction. A basic division between those properties 'always on display', and those that are not?