Projects per year
Abstract
Megarian Actualism is the denial of unmanifesting powers. Aristotle called such a view ‘buffoonery’ and dispositionalists have provided compelling reasons for the contrary platitude that powers need not manifest. Even so, drawing on extant treatments of quantitative powers I’ll suggest that many of the powers which feature in quantitative lawlike equations are plausibly interpreted as Megarian. This is because the powers described by such equations are best understood as being directed towards all the values of exhaustive manifestation variables. I’ll discuss the prospects for generalising these Megarian characteristics to powers not typically represented in strict quantitative terms. The result will be a strong basis for a scientifically informed and plausible dispositionalist account: Megarian Variable Actualism.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 10521-10541 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Synthese |
Volume | 199 |
Issue number | 3-4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 29 Jun 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:I would like to thank the editors for inviting me to submit, to the department at Bristol University for their questions to my presentation of these ideas and to Sam Kimpton-Nye, Andrea Raimondi, Francesca Bellazzi and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on various drafts. This work was carried out as part of the MetaScience project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 771509).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Research Groups and Themes
- Centre for Science and Philosophy
Keywords
- disposistions
- powers
- Megarian Actualism
- quantitative powers
- multi-track powers
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Megarian Variable Actualism'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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MetaScience: The Metaphysical Unity of Science
Tahko, T. (Principal Investigator), Seifert, V. A. (Researcher), Friend, T. T. (Researcher), Kimpton-Nye, S. (Researcher), Bellazzi, F. (Student), Franklin, A. (Other ) & Morgan, W. H. (Researcher)
1/09/18 → 31/08/23
Project: Research