Dispositional Essentialism in the Eternalist Block

Abstract

AbstractThe connection between the metaphysics of time and the metaphysics of powers is a relatively new debate in the philosophical literature. Friebe (Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 33, 77–89, 2017, Backmann (Inquiry, 62, 979–1007, 2018), Donati (No time for powers, Phd Dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2018) have argued that dispositional essentialism may encounter some problems when combined with (in their words) ‘static’ views of time, such as Eternalism. I believe this is a challenge that it is important to address. I will first briefly present (the standard version of) the four main metaphysics of time; I will then present and discuss the main objections moved to the combination of powers ontologies and the metaphysics of time; finally, I will argue that these objections fail, and that the alleged incompatibility results merely from a misconception of the staticity of Eternalism, on the one hand, and of the productiveness of powers on the other; in particular, I will show how the ‘incompatibility argument’ is either false or trivial.KeywordsPowers ontologyEternalismMetaphysics of timeDispositional essentialism