Dispositional essentialism and the possibility of a law-abiding miracle

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 51, Issue 205, 2001, Pages 484-494

  Handfield, Toby ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

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EID: 42449132844     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00242     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. See S. Shoemaker, 'Causality and Properties', repr. in his Identity, Cause, and Mind (Cambridge UP, 1984), pp. 206-33
2. B.D. Ellis and C. Lierse, 'Dispositional Essentialism', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1994), pp. 27-45
3. B.D. Ellis, 'Causal Powers and Laws of Nature', in H. Sankey (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), pp. 19-34
4. There is some disagreement among dispositional essentialists as to which dispositions are essential and which not. C.B. Martin and John Heil are also dispositional essentialists of sorts: see their 'The Ontological Turn', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23 (1999), pp. 34-60, and references therein
5. Only some natural laws will fall under this sort of 'summarized disposition' conception. Ellis proposes to call these the 'causal laws', excluding such laws as principles of symmetry, relativity and conservation laws: 'Causal Powers and Laws of Nature', p. 21
6. Shoemaker, 'Causality and Properties', §8
7. Ellis and Lierse, 'Dispositional Essentialism', p. 40
8. Ellis, 'Causal Powers and Laws of Nature', p. 42
9. J. Bigelow, 'Scientific Ellisianism', in Sankey (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature, pp. 45-59, §6
10. The objection also appears in D.M. Armstrong, 'The Causal Theory of Properties', Philosophical Topics, 26 (1999), pp. 25-37, §5
11. Ellis, Rational Belief Systems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979)
12. See also his 'Bigelow's Worries About Scientific Essentialism', in Sankey (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature, pp. 61-75
13. D. Lewis, Counterfactuals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), §3.3
14. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point
15. See Martin, 'Dispositions and Conditionals', The Philosophical Quarterly, 44 (1994), pp. 1-8
16. and Lewis, 'Finkish Dispositions', The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (1997), pp. 143-58
17. See A. Bird, 'Dispositions and Antidotes', The Philosophical Quarterly, 48 (1998), pp. 227-34
18. This was pointed out to me by an anonymous referee
19. The inclusion of negative or totality facts in one's ontology is frequently a symptom of holding the thesis which Josh Parsons, in 'There is No "Truth-maker" Argument against Nominalism', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1999), pp. 325-34, has described as 'truth-maker essentialism'
20. Shoemaker has recently dissented from this view, in that he does place restrictions upon the means by which a property-instance is brought about, in 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 79 (1998), pp. 59-77, at p. 64. For the purposes of this paper I am ignoring Shoemaker's later position
21. G. Schlesinger, Method in the Physical Sciences (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities Press, 1963), p. 73
22. Presumably Ellis could give an account in terms of a 'world essence'. See J. Bigelow, B.D. Ellis and C. Lierse, 'The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 43 (1992), pp. 371-88. But this world-essence theory of laws is an optional extra which not all dispositional essentialists need purchase
23. I am grateful to an anonymous referee of this journal for this point
24. Martin, 'Dispositions and Conditionals', p. 6
25. S. Mumford, Dispositions (Oxford UP, 1998), ch. 4
26. Bird, 'Dispositions and Antidotes'
27. As Ellis and Lierse do: see their 'Dispositional Essentialism', §7.2
28. Shoemaker, 'Causality and Properties', §5. Ellis and Lierse's reasons for adopting dispositional essentialism appear to be different
29. This line of objection was raised by Stephen Barker