A new solution to the regress of pure powers

Henry Taylor

doi:10.1093/analys/anab039

Abstract

Abstract I offer a new response to the regress argument against pure powers ontologies. This involves rejecting an overlooked premiss, which is that a power’s manifestation is exhaustively accounted for by the powers involved in it. Rejection of this premiss not only answers the regress argument, but also brings with it wider metaphysical consequences, including a shift away from one-category ontologies.

Highlights

Masses has been written about the regress argument, (3) has gone without scrutiny. (3) is necessary for the argument because it ensures that the advocate of PP cannot use any resources other than pure powers to explain how powers’ identities are fixed
Note that PP is by no means the only ontology that is committed to the claim that properties have their identities fixed partially by their relations to other properties
An opponent may argue that rejecting (i) is in contradiction with the pure powers ontology itself, because it involves the claim that powers are not individuated just by more powers

Summary

The pure powers view

On this view, properties have a dispositional essence. (PP) All properties have an exhaustively dispositional essence. On this view, for all properties, there is nothing more to their nature than their dispositional characteristics.. PP has long been objected to on the grounds that it implies a vicious regress, or vicious circularity. I argue that this response implies that advocates of PP should reject onecategory ontologies (§5). According to PP, the dispositional characteristics of a property are what fix its identity (what make it the particular property that it is). I am concerned with the view that all properties’ essences are exhaustively dispositional. A property’s stimulus is what is required in order to actualize this manifestation (in fragility’s case, the stimulus is the force applied to the object)

The regress argument

The solution

Partial individuation by powers

Reducibility to powers?

Conclusion