Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter February 1, 2024

Power, Capacity, Disposition and Categorical Properties: A Roughly Aristotelian Proposal

  • Angus Brook EMAIL logo
From the journal Metaphysica

Abstract

This paper proposes a roughly Aristotelian account of powers ontology. In doing so, the paper uses the distinction found in Aristotle between four analogous senses of potency to explain causation and the existence-essence distinction in substances. On this basis, the paper offers some justification in support of the claims that powers and dispositions are the truth-makers of categorical properties and that categorical properties are ontologically dependent upon powers and dispositions.


Corresponding author: Angus Brook, School of Philosophy and Theology, The University of Notre Dame Australia – Sydney Campus Broadway, 19 Buckland St, Chippendale, New South Wales, 2008, Australia, E-mail:

References

Aquinas, Thomas. 1994. Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. Notre Dame: Dumb Ox Books.Search in Google Scholar

Aquinas, Thomas. 1995. Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Notre Dame: Dumb Ox Books.Search in Google Scholar

Aristotle. 1934. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Aristotle. 1957. Physics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Aristotle. 2003. Metaphysics. Translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Armstrong, David. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511487552Search in Google Scholar

Blair, George. 1967. “The Meaning of Energeia and Entelecheia in Aristotle.” International Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1): 101–17, https://doi.org/10.5840/ipq19677110.Search in Google Scholar

Blair, George A. 1995. “Unfortunately, It is a Bit More Complex: Reflections on Energeia.” Ancient Philosophy 15 (2): 565–80, https://doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil199515211.Search in Google Scholar

Charlton, William. 1987. “Aristotelian Powers.” Phronesis 32 (3): 277–89, https://doi.org/10.1163/156852887x00163.Search in Google Scholar

Chung-Hwan, Chen. 1956. “Different Meanings of the Term Energeia in the Philosophy of Aristotle.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 17 (1): 56–65. https://doi.org/10.2307/2104687.Search in Google Scholar

Cleary, John J. 1998. “Powers that Be: The Concept of Potency in Plato and Aristotle.” Methexis 11 (1): 19–64, https://doi.org/10.1163/24680974-90000299.Search in Google Scholar

Einstein, Albert. 2010. Relativity: The Special & The General Theory. Mansfield: Martino Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Ellis, George F. R. 2012. “Top-Down Causation and Emergence: Some Comments on Mechanisms.” Interface Focus 2: 126–40. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2011.0062.Search in Google Scholar

Engelhard, Kristina. 2010. Categories and the Ontology of Powers, Metaphysics of Powers. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Friebe, Cord. 2014. “Categoricalism Versus Dispositionalism: A Case Study in Metametaphysics.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 45 (1): 5–15, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-014-9265-5.Search in Google Scholar

Gill, Mary Louise. 2004. “Aristotle’s Distinction Between Change and Activity.” Axiomathes 14: 3–22https://doi.org/10.1023/b:axio.0000006786.83104.eb.10.1023/B:AXIO.0000006786.83104.ebSearch in Google Scholar

Graham, Daniel W. 1989. “The Etymology of Enteaexeia.” American Journal of Philology 110 (1): 73, https://doi.org/10.2307/294953.Search in Google Scholar

Graham, Daniel W. 1995. “The Development of Aristotle’s Concept of Actuality: Comments on a Reconstruction by Stephen Menn.” Ancient Philosophy 15 (2): 551–64, https://doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil199515210.Search in Google Scholar

Heisenberg, Werner. 2007. Physics and Philosophy. New York: HarperCollins.Search in Google Scholar

Ide, Harry A. 1992. “Dunamis in Metaphysics IX.” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 25 (1): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1515/apeiron.1992.25.1.1.Search in Google Scholar

Koons, Robert C., and Timothy H. Pickavance. 2014. “Causation and Powers.” In Metaphysics: The Fundamentals, 1st ed. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.Search in Google Scholar

Kosman, Aryeh. 1969. “Aristotle’s Definition of Motion.” Phronesis 14 (1): 40–62, https://doi.org/10.1163/156852869x00037.Search in Google Scholar

Kosman, Aryeh. 2013. The Activity of Being: An Essay on Aristotle’s Ontology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674075023Search in Google Scholar

Kosman, Aryeh. 2018. “The Activity of Being: A Reply to My Critics, Mary Louise Gill, Jonathan Beere, and David Charles.” European Journal of Philosophy 26 (2): 881–8, https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12354.Search in Google Scholar

Kretzmann, Norman. 1999. The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lapointe, Sandra, ed. 2018. Logic from Kant to Russell: Laying the Foundations for Analytic Philosophy. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.10.4324/9781351182249Search in Google Scholar

Makin, Stephen. 2012. “Energeia and Dunamis.” In The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Manicas, Peter T. 1965. “Aristotle, Dispositions and Occult Powers.” The Review of Metaphysics 18 (4): 678–89.Search in Google Scholar

Marmadoro, Anna. 2010a. “Do Powers Need Powers to Make Them Powerful? From Pandispositionalism to Aristotle.” In Metaphysics of Powers. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Marmadoro, Anna. 2010b. “Introduction.” In The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestation. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Marmadoro, Anna. 2014. Aristotle on Perceiving Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199326006.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Marmadoro, Anna. 2018. “Potentiality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics.” In The Handbook of Potentiality, edited by K. Engelhard, and M. Quante. Dordrecht: Springer.Search in Google Scholar

Martin, C. B. 2008. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Martin, C. B., and Karl Pfeifer. 1986. “Intentionality and the Non-Psychological.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (4): 531–54, https://doi.org/10.2307/2107668.Search in Google Scholar

McKitrick, Jennifer. 2003. “The Bare Metaphysical Possibility of Bare Dispositions.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (2): 349–69, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00265.x.Search in Google Scholar

Menn, Stephen. 1994. “The Origins of Aristotle’s Concept of Energeia: Energeia and Dunamis.” Ancient Philosophy 14 (1): 73–114, https://doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil199414150.Search in Google Scholar

Molnar, George. 1999. “Are Dispositions Reducible?” The Philosophical Quarterly 49 (194): 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.00125.Search in Google Scholar

Oderberg, David. 2007. Real Essentialism. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203356753Search in Google Scholar

Oderberg, David S. 2022. “Is Prime Matter Energy?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (3): 534–50, https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2021.2010222.Search in Google Scholar

Olshewsky. 2018. “Dynamics of Dunamis.” The Review of Metaphysics 71 (3): 515–6.Search in Google Scholar

Psillos, Stathis. 2006. “What Do Powers Do when They Are Not Manifested.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (1): 137–56.10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00494.xSearch in Google Scholar

Tugby, Matthew. 2014. “Categoricalism, Dispositionalism, and the Epistemology of Properties.” Synthese 191 (6): 1147–62, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0316-y.Search in Google Scholar

White, Michael J. 1980. “Aristotle’s Concept of Theoria and the Energeia-Kinesis Distinction.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 18 (3): 253–63, https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2008.0701.Search in Google Scholar

Williams, Neil. 2010. “Puzzling Powers: The Problem of Fit.” In Metaphysics of Powers. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Witt, Charlotte. 2003. “Power and Potentiality.” In Ways of Being. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501711503Search in Google Scholar

Younan, Andrew. 2023. Matter and Mathematics. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2023-06-22
Accepted: 2023-12-22
Published Online: 2024-02-01
Published in Print: 2024-04-25

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 14.5.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/mp-2023-0030/html
Scroll to top button