Abstract
Recent accounts of dispositionalism have extended this stance from vases to quarks. Here I shall present an obstacle to such an extension in the form of the symmetry principles that play such a fundamental role in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. After considering certain ways the dispositionalist might get around this obstacle I shall argue that in its standard ‘Stimulus and Manifestation’ form, this stance should be abandoned. However, this does not mean one should give up on modal metaphysics entirely and adopt some form of Humeanism. Instead I shall suggest that current metaphysics presents certain ‘tools’ that might be deployed in this context, such as Vetter’s recently developed notion of ‘potentiality’. Thus there is still hope for a form of naturalised metaphysics that draws on extant metaphysical devices.
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Notes
- 1.
Although it almost goes without saying that the two analyses differ profoundly when it comes to causation!
- 2.
I’d like to thank Juha Saatsi for pointing this out.
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Acknowledgements
Earlier and different versions of this chapter were presented at the work-in-progress seminar of the Centre for Mind and Metaphysics of the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, at the Philosophy Seminar of Durham University, the XI International Ontology Congress, San Sebastián, Spain and also at the conference, ‘Real Possibilities, Real Absences’, organised by Kristina Engelhard and David Hommen at the University of Köln. I am grateful to all the participants but especially Nancy Cartwright, Anjan Chakravartty, Daniel Elstein, Andreas Hüttemann, Kerry McKenzie, Margie Morrison, Daniel Nolan, Juha Saatsi, Pete Vickers, Robbie Williams and Richard Woodward for all their helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, I would particularly like to thank Anne Sophie Meincke for her specific comments on my contribution and of course for the initial invitation.
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French, S. (2020). Doing Away with Dispositions: Powers in the Context of Modern Physics. In: Meincke, A.S. (eds) Dispositionalism. Synthese Library, vol 417. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28722-1_12
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