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Powers, Processes, and Time

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Abstract

In this paper I argue that even the most radical metaphysics of powers (such as that adopted by Mumford and Anjum, Cartwright, or Groff) are compatible with eternalism. I first offer a taxonomy of powers ontologies, and attempt to characterise the difference between moderate and radical powers ontologies—the latter are characterised by an emphasis on production and dynamicity. I consider an argument by C. Friebe to the effect that the productive character of powers is inconsistent with Eternalism and find it wanting. I then elucidate the notion of dynamicity that radical powers theorists employ by making apparent their link with an ontology of irreducible processes. Finally, I respond to an argument by Donatella Donati to the effect that eternalism entails a reductive account of change which is inconsistent with process ontologies, and show that the the two are compatible. I conclude that we have no reason to think that radical powers metaphysics (and, a fortiori, every powers ontology) are not compatible with eternalism.

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Notes

  1. See, inter alios, Bird (2007), Ellis (2001), Groff and Greco (2013), Jacobs (2017), Marmodoro (2010), Martin (2008), Molnar (2003), Mumford (2004), Mumford and Anjum (2011), Vetter (2015) and Williams (2019).

  2. By this I mean either offer a novel and more convincing account of these phenomena, or more modestly just adopt the existing theories.

  3. I have reached the conclusion that powers ontology is compatible with Eternalism independently although contemporaneously with Andrea Roselli. Unfortunately, I came across his work too late in the publication process and could not take his arguments into consideration.

  4. It would be best to distinguish between powers and dispositions, for a number of reasons: it seems that our usage of ‘dispositions’ only corresponds to powers with relatively high degree (Vetter 2015: §2–3), and that in general talk of dispositions is available to everyone, including the (Azzano 2019). However, since Friebe (2018) speaks of powers and dispositions interchangeably, it would be artificial to distinguish between these terms while discussing his argument. Nothing of substance depends on this lack of terminological fineness of grain, for the purposes of this paper.

  5. This does not need to be in the future. E.g. Vetter (2015) admits certain powers whose manifestation lies in the past, and Mumford and Anjum (2011) only admit of powers whose manifestation is simultaneous with the exercise of the power.

  6. Bird (2016) takes modal fixity to be the defining features of powers, but that is too weak. Also someone who accepts a governing conception of laws along the lines of the DTA account, but happens to think that the Necessitation second order relation (to give an example in terms of Armstrong 1997) is necessary as a brute fact will agree that properties have their nomic/modal profile modally fixed, but is not thereby a power theorist. See Azzano 2019 for an argument to the effect that realism about powers must be formulated in hyperintensional terms, such as essence or grounding.

  7. There is a long literature of attempts to such reduction or analysis, and an equally long literature of arguments for their failures. For some relatively recent discussion see Wasserman and Manley (2011) and Vetter (2015).

  8. This amounts to saying that the following principle holds essentially of powers qua powers:

    Independence: For every power X, for every manifestation Y, if X is directed to Y, it is possible that X obtains and Y does not obtain.

  9. It is not wholly clear to me that Friebe intends his argument to show the incompatibility of powers ontologies and eternalism, for he states that he is concerned with powers theories of laws and not of properties: ‘I should exclude the variant according to which the fundamental physical properties such as mass and charge—considered as dispositions—“generate” the regularities without any help of the laws which merely “flow” (Bird 2007, 2) from them’. I must confess that I have a hard time thinking of any example, within the powers literature, of somebody who takes the laws themselves to be powerful, as opposed to the properties themselves. The discussion among friends of powers is often whether we need laws at all (Mumford 2004; Bird 2007; Dumsday 2019). I will adapt Friebe’s argument to be targeted at ontologies of powerful properties, rather than powerful laws.

  10. This is the symbolism of Vetter (2015). Note that, by Vetter’s lights, POT[m](x) is not syntactically correct, since she takes POT to be a predicate modifier, and m is not a predicate. Strictly speaking, therefore, I should rather form a predicate along the lines ‘being such that m obtains’ using λ-calculus. However, since this would make the argument unnecessarily cumbersome, for the sake of readability I have preferred to simply use m as argument of POT.

  11. In what follows I largely adopt Correia and Rosenkranz (2018) tense logic. However, unlike them I introduce a dedicated variable t for times. This is just for the sake of readability. We can easily specify the domain over which these variables range, {times} by using their primitive ‘is a time’ predicate, T, as follows: {times} = {x|Tx}.

  12. This corresponds to the formulation of STA in Correia and Rosenkranz (2018).

  13. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for suggesting potential difficulties in thinking that there could be cross-temporal relations of ontological dependence.

  14. This would not be in contrast with the ‘no action at distance’ principle, because in their view a power acts by unfolding in a process—all action is local. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

  15. Correia and Rosenkranz (2018: 10) do not incorporate these in their logic, but note that they do so because these are metaphysically contentious, and they aim to provide a theory-neutral logic. However, both should be quite attractive to the Eternalist, so there is no reason for her to endorse them as substantial theses.

  16. Perhaps this could be understood as a case of collective grounding not too dissimilar to those discussed by Dasgupta (2014) with regard to qualitativism and spacetime relationalism.

  17. Wilson (2014), Bennett (2017) and Paolini-Paoletti (2019).

  18. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for rising this point.

  19. It might be objected that causation does not belong to the group. However, Bennett (2017) argues that causation is to be associated to other ‘building relations’ among which is most natural to look for the relation expressed by the ‘because’ in Friebe’s argument. The main element in her argument is that many building relations bear a diachronic or ‘causal taint’ (Bennett 2017: §4). It is quite clear that the notion of ontological dependence under exam here is tainted in this way: it concerns entities that do not need to exist at the same time. Thus, it would be hard to treat causation (and causal explanation) and ontological dependence as utterly alien in this dialectical situation.

  20. While most philosophers in the (mental) causation literature agree that systematic causal overdetermination is implausible, their reasons to do so differ (Kim 1998; Melnyk 2003; Yablo 2002), and it is neither obvious nor uncontroversial that they are right: see Sider (2003) or Lowe (2003).

  21. ‘We certainly should not demand that every universal should be instantiated now…The principle of instantiation should be interpreted as ranging over all time’ (Armstrong 2008: 65).

  22. See Berker (2018) for a recent argument in favour of grounding unity.

  23. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer of this journal for raising both these objections.

  24. Note that I do not include any thesis concerning the telic structure of processes—i.e. whether they have their “goal” in themselves or not. This means that the distinction between process and event does not map the Aristotelian distinction between kinesis (movement) and energeia (activity) that readers of Metaphysics 9.6, Nicomachean Ethics 10.4 will be familiar with, nor the classic distinction between processes and achievements (Vendler 1957), understood as the difference between activities that can go on indefinitely and activities that have an (instantaneous) endpoint. Most processes that power theorists are interested in would be achievements, in Vendler’s terms.

  25. The main difference between the two theories is that, according to the occurrent continuant views, there is such a thing as individual processes (e.g. this rotting as opposed to that rotting), whereas this is not the case when it comes to stuff views.

  26. E.g. from ‘Jones was pushing the cart for hours’ we obtain ‘There was pushing of the cart for hours by John’. I am not suggesting that we infer the existence of processes in virtue of the fact that certain languages, including English, have a progressive and imperfective verbal aspects. Radical powers theorists assume that there are mind and language independent processes; they do not read off their metaphysics from our language (Heil 2003). It is unclear to me what is the relationship between verbal aspect and A and B-theories of tense: it seems coherent to think that tense is not fundamental and yet aspect is, but I have no argument to support this.

  27. A somewhat similar worry can be detected in Mumford (2009a, b) and Mumford and Anjum (2011), but it is intermingled with worries about persistence and not spelled out in much detail, so I will stick to Donati’s argument.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for this journal for their insightful comments. I would also like to thank Donatella Donati for illuminating discussions over these matters, as well as Stephen Mumford, Jamie Taylor, and Chiara Martini for reading previous versions of the paper and for their helpful comments.

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    Giacomo Giannini

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Giannini, G. Powers, Processes, and Time. Erkenn 87, 2801–2825 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00327-z

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