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16732
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17th C qualities are either microphysical, or phenomenal, or powers [Pasnau]
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Full Idea:
The seventeenth century is often said to have bequeathed us three ways of thinking about sensible qualities: either in reductive microphysical terms, or as internal phenomenal states, or else as powers or dispositions.
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From:
Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.1)
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A reaction:
Pasnau goes on to claim that no one in the 17th century believed the third one. I take it to be a very new, and totally wonderful and correct, view.
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16767
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There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau]
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Full Idea:
One could empirically reject a centralised power within a substance - and still think a genuine substance requires a form of some more abstract kind, not for a physical explanation, but for a full metaphysical understanding of how things are.
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From:
Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.2)
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A reaction:
This divorce of the 'metaphysical' from the physical is a running theme in Pasnau, and he cites support from Leibniz. I'm not sure I understand 'metaphysical' understanding, if it is actually contrary to physics. I take it to be 'psychological'.
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16788
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Instead of adding Aristotelian forms to physical stuff, one could add dispositions [Pasnau]
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Full Idea:
Someone who wants to enrich a strict corpuscularian account with other metaphysical entities has alternatives other than Aristotelian hylomorphism. One can, for instance, introduce dispositions.
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From:
Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 28.2)
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A reaction:
This slightly throws me, because I have been flirting with a dispositional account of hylomorphism. The implication is that the form is abstract and structural, where the disposition is real and physical. But dispositions can do the job of forms.
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16738
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Scholastics reject dispositions, because they are not actual, as forms require [Pasnau]
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Full Idea:
Scholastics reject anything like bare dispositions, on Aristotelian principles. Powers are forms, and forms actualise their subject, and are causally efficacious. Therefore no powers can be bare dispositions.
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From:
Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5)
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A reaction:
The point seems to be that a mere disposition is not actual, as a form is required to be. I would have thought that a power does not have to be operational to be actual. A live electric wire is a real phenomenon. It isn't waiting to be live.
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