Abstract
In this paper, we examine what is to be said in defence of Machamer, Darden and Craver’s (MDC) controversial dualism about activities and entities (Machamer, Darden and Craver’s in Philos Sci 67:1–25, 2000). We explain why we believe the notion of an activity to be a novel, valuable one, and set about clearing away some initial objections that can lead to its being brushed aside unexamined. We argue that substantive debate about ontology can only be effective when desiderata for an ontology are explicitly articulated. We distinguish three such desiderata. The first is a more permissive descriptive ontology of science, the second a more reductive ontology prioritising understanding, and the third a more reductive ontology prioritising minimalism. We compare MDC’s entities-activities ontology to its closest rival, the entities-capacities ontology, and argue that the entities-activities ontology does better on all three desiderata.
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Notes
We shall not discuss more distant rival ontologies in this paper—e.g., an ontology based on entities and laws.
We reject MDC’s claim that activities are the producers of change for reasons we have discussed in more detail elsewhere. In a nutshell, the reason is that some activities may not produce change, but maintain stability. For example, the activity of the homeostatic mechanism that maintains body temperature is to maintain a steady 37 °C, in the face of environmental variation.
Note: chemists use the word ‘mechanism’ to refer to activities or processes, and the word ‘activity’ itself to mean an effective concentration—the molar concentration of a substance adjusted for the presence of other substances in the solution that make it less able to react. See for example: ‘At very great dilution the hydrogen ion activity is equivalent to the hydrogen ion concentration [H+]’ (Dowes 1980, 39). However, the conceptual division of entity-like things from activity-like things is clear in chemistry despite the confusing difference in language.
Psillos originally phrases this as a conceivability argument: ‘First, it’s conceivable that there are entities without activities’ (Psillos 2004, 312). We set this aside since conceivability is a notoriously unreliable guide to possibility.
It might be argued that a perfect vacuum can engage in activities—e.g., sucking in matter. However, a perfect vacuum is arguably not entirely empty of entities, containing virtual particles (vacuum fluctuations) as well as dark energy.
In Illari and Williamson (2011) we argue that the fact that a mechanism is intended to offer a local explanation of its resulting phenomenon makes the objects-laws ontology, which renders mechanisms non-local, undesirable.
Use of ‘capacity’ rather than ‘disposition’, ‘propensity’ or ‘power’ makes the point very clear, but this is not underhand. Any disposition or power is a disposition or power to do something in certain circumstances. The thing done is conceptually prior to the disposition or power to do that thing. Note that our argument here is not that activities are actual and capacities merely potential, so we should have activities not capacities. Capacities and activities both have modal implications. Activities must be modal because an adequate ontology needs ways of describing not just how things do act but how they will act or would have acted under different circumstances. Psillos (2004, 314) can be interpreted as making this point.
As are dispositions and powers, of course.
The powers literature now recognises this problem, along with the need for other cooperating entities, calling them ‘mutual manifestation partners’. See for example Mumford and Anjum (2011).
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. This research was supported by The Leverhulme Trust and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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Illari, P., Williamson, J. In Defence of Activities. J Gen Philos Sci 44, 69–83 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-013-9217-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-013-9217-5