The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

The Regress of Pure Powers Revisited

På svenska

Author

  • Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson

Summary, in English

The paper aims to elucidate in better detail than before the dispute about whether or not dispositional monism—the view that all basic properties are pure powers—entails a vicious infinite regress. Particular focus is on Alexander Bird’s and George Molnar’s attempts to show that the arguments professing to demonstrate a vicious regress are inconclusive because they presuppose what they aim to prove, notably that powers are for their nature dependent on something else. I argue that Bird and Molnar are mistaken. It is true that dispositional monism is popularly assumed to characterise powers as dependent entities, but this is not what the arguments aim to prove. They merely aim to demonstrate that it would be absurd to assume that all properties are dependent in this way. Finally, it is argued that there is an unresolved tension in Bird’s and Molnar’s account of powers. They characterise them as being for their nature dependent on the manifestations that they are for, and yet ontologically independent of those same manifestations. Until that tension is resolved, their accounts are not equipped to remove the threat of vicious regress.

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

529-541

Publication/Series

European Journal of Philosophy

Volume

23

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Philosophy

Keywords

  • Metaphysics
  • Regress of Pure Powers
  • Molnar
  • Bird

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0966-8373