Abstract
Necessitarianism, as we shall use the term, is the view that natural properties and causal powers are necessarily connected in some way. In recent decades the most popular forms of necessitarianism have been the anti-Humean powers-based theories of properties, such as dispositional essentialism and the identity theory. These versions of necessitarianism have come under fire in recent years and I believe it is time for necessitarians to develop a new approach. In this paper I identify unexplored ways of positing metaphysically necessary connections in nature, using the concepts of grounding and essential dependence. For example, I show that one could be a necessitarian by insisting that the properties of things necessarily ground their powers, and that one can maintain this while rejecting dispositional essentialism. Using different combinations of claims about grounding and essential dependence (or lack thereof), I map out a spectrum of new positions and compare them to previous theories of natural modality. Some of these positions are compatible with Humean metaphysics (given certain readings of Hume’s Dictum) while others are not. The overall aim of the paper is to provide a new metaphysical framework for understanding theories of powers and thereby launch a new necessitarian research programme.
Highlights
Necessitarianism, as we shall use the term, is the view that there are metaphysically necessary connections of some sort between a thing’s natural properties and its pow
One of the reasons for being flexible on these matters is that most versions of necessitarianism are in the property realist camp, some are conducive to certain forms of nominalism
If we accept the grounding version of necessitarianism discussed in the previous section, a certain claim about essential dependence might seem plausible, which is that it is part of the essence of a power that it is grounded in a certain type of qualitative property rather than some other
Summary
Let us start with dispositional essentialism, the view that natural property types have a dispositional essence—an essence that is modal and relational. Even Heil, himself an identity theorist, concedes that powers are identified relationally because it is this fact that generates an alleged regress problem facing Bird’s version of dispositional essentialism (Heil 2003, Ch. 10) It seems that qualities have a self-contained, non-modal essence; an intrinsic suchness. Ingthorrson (2013) has offered one of the most detailed responses to the worry just outlined, and his response is that these different modes of identification of qualities and powers merely reflect an epistemological or conceptual difference, rather than a metaphysical difference On his view, the best thing for an identity theorist to say is that we can single out a property in thought in one of two ways: either directly, as when we, say, directly perceive a shape, or indirectly via the effects that the property instance produces in other things. That we have briefly considered problems with orthodox forms of necessitarianism—the dispositional essentialist and identity theories—let us begin to explore some different options
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