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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
1 3
Synthese (2022) 200:222
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03554-9
Abstract
Dispositional realism, as we shall use the term, is a non-reductive, anti-Humean
approach to dispositions which says that natural properties confer certain disposi-
tions as a matter of metaphysical necessity. A strong form of dispositional realism
is known as pan-dispositionalism, which is typically interpreted as the view that
all natural properties are identical with, or essentially dependent on, dispositions.
One of the most serious problems facing pan-dispositionalism is the conceivability
objection, and the solution commonly oered by essentialists employs the so-called
redescription strategy. In this paper I argue that this orthodox strategy fails in cer-
tain cases. This argument, in turn, shows that essentialist forms of dispositional
realism are implausible. The discussion points us towards an improved version of
dispositional realism. According to this new version, natural properties are not es-
sentially dispositional but necessarily ground dispositions.
Keywords Dispositional realism · Pan-dispositionalism · Essentialism ·
Conceivability · Grounding.
1 Introduction: the aims of this paper
Roughly speaking, natural properties determine how things are, while the disposi-
tions of things determine how those things could or would or must behave in certain
circumstances.1 According to dispositional realism, as we shall understand it, dispo-
1 For the purposes of this paper we adopt a liberal conception of naturalness, so as to include everyday
macroscopic properties as well as those posited in dierent branches of science. I shall not attempt to
oer an analysis of the concept of naturalness here. However, we can understand natural properties by
Received: 16 September 2020 / Accepted: 14 December 2021 / Published online: 13 May 2022
© The Author(s) 2022
Dispositional realism without dispositional essences
MatthewTugby1
Matthew Tugby
matthew.tugby@durham.ac.uk
1 Durham University, 50 Old Elvet, DH1 3HN Durham, UK
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Synthese (2022) 200:222
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sitions are irreducible features of reality and are necessarily connected (in a way to be
spelt out) to natural properties. Dispositional realism is thus an anti-Humean position
that opposes the sorts of categoricalist views held by Lewis (2009) and Armstrong
(1997). According to categoricalists, dispositions are reducible and contingent.
On some categoricalist views, dispositions are simply reducible to the contingent
Humean mosaic of non-dispositional (categorical) property instantiations, while on
Armstrong’s view dispositions are reducible to categorical properties plus the contin-
gent nomic relations in which they stand.
A strong form of dispositional realism is known as pan-dispositionalism. Pan-
dispositionalism is typically (though not always2) developed as an identity or essen-
tialist thesis, and says that all natural properties are identical with, or essentially
dependent on, some disposition or other.3 To use an example to which we will recur,
an example of a natural property is the property of being spherical, and an example
of a disposition associated with spherical objects is the disposition to roll down an
inclined plane. According to pan-dispositionalists, if this property confers this dis-
position, then it does so essentially. It is perhaps not surprising that dispositional
realism is often developed in this way, because since the work of Kripke (1980)
many philosophers have been convinced that metaphysically necessary connections
are rooted in the identities or essences of things. The aim of this paper, however, is
to resist this trend.
In order to assess this strong form of dispositional realism, we focus on the
conceivability objection, one of the most serious obstacles that dispositional real-
ism must surmount. This objection has been discussed by, for example, Shoemaker
(1998), Schaer (2005), Bird (2007, Ch. 8), and Schroer (2018), and is explored in
detail by Unger (2006) in his discussion of so-called spatial properties.4 The solution
typically proposed by pan-dispositionalists in response to the conceivability objec-
tion employs a redescription strategy. After providing an in-depth exploration of the
notion of conceivability, I argue that this redescription strategy fails in certain cases;
and my argument, in turn, reveals that essentialist forms of dispositional realism are
implausible. Yet the discussion also points the way towards an improved version of
dispositional realism, according to which natural properties are not essentially dis-
positional or identical with dispositions, but rather necessarily ground dispositions.
Various grounding-based theories of dispositions have been discussed in recent lit-
contrast with what Shoemaker calls ‘mere Cambridge’ properties, which are heavily relational and ger-
rymandered, such as Goodman’s property of ‘being grue’ (Shoemaker 2003, p. 208).
2 According to Bostock, pan-dispositionalism is the view that all natural properties are irreducible and
he characterises it as the view that properties ‘are themselves enough to ensure the truth of one or more
counterfactuals about how an object bearing it would behave’ (2008, pp. 141–42). This denition is neu-
tral on whether properties are identical with, or essentially dependent on, dispositions, and the grounding-
based version of dispositional realism that we explore later is compatible with Bostock’s rendering of
pan-dispositionalism. However, it is more common for philosophers to regard pan-dispositionalism as an
essentialist thesis on which all properties are pure powers (see e.g. Molnar 2003, p. 153).
3 Not all pan-dispositionalists employ essentialist language. For example, Heil (2003), Mumford (2004)
and Martin (2008) say instead that all properties are identical with dispositions.
4 The debate about whether, and in what sense, spatial properties are dispositional has cropped up in vari-
ous guises over recent decades. See, for example, Mellor 1982, Prior 1982, Molnar 2003 Ch. 9 and 10,
and Bird 2003.
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erature (e.g. Coates 2021, Kimpton-Nye 2021, and Tugby 2021), which build on the
work of Jacobs (2011), Audi (2012), and Tugby (2012)5. In the nal part of the paper,
I outline the main features of this new approach to dispositional realism and show
how it oers a dierent response to the conceivability objections. This approach is in
its infancy and as far as I know, no-one has yet explored in any detail its implications
for the conceivability objection. By discussing this issue, this paper allows us to not
only get clearer on the commitments of the grounding theory of dispositions, but also
puts us in a better position to assess its viability.
The paper is structured as follows. In section two we discuss the conceivability
objections facing pan-dispositionalism and the commonly employed redescription
solution. In section three we explore the concept of conceivability in more detail, and
section four contains a critical discussion of Unger’s conceivability objection against
pan-dispositionalism. In section ve we develop a new and improved conceivability
objection on Unger’s behalf. In section six it is argued that the new conceivability
objection poses a serious problem for pan-dispositionalism. In sections seven to nine,
we discuss a grounding-based version of dispositional realism and explain why the
conceivability objection does not pose a threat to it: it does not pose a threat because
the grounding-based dispositional realists can accept the conceivability of the rel-
evant scenarios while denying that conceivability is a good guide to metaphysical
possibility. In section ten we briey explore how the grounding theory of dispositions
compares with rival theories of dispositions.
2 Conceivability objections and the kripkean redescription solution
In response to pan-dispositionalism, Unger has objected that we can ‘clearly and
fully’ conceive of a ‘spatial property’ such as being spherical as failing to confer
certain dispositions (2006, pp. 268–77). If one then takes conceivability to be a good
guide to metaphysical possibility, it follows that the relation between sphericality and
its associated dispositions is a contingent one. Hence, spatial properties like being
spherical seem to pose a counterexample to pan-dispositionalism.
The obvious option for the pan-dispositionalists is to follow in the footsteps of
Kripke. As students of Kripke are well aware, conceivability objections are a com-
mon form of resistance against theories which posit metaphysical necessities; Kripke
(1980, pp. 129–35), for instance, considers a case in which someone objects that heat
is not identical with molecular motion because we can clearly conceive of a situation
in which there is heat but not molecular motion. In response, Kripke oers a gen-
eral essentialist recipe for dealing with such objections, often called the ‘redescrip-
tion strategy’ (see e.g. Shoemaker 1998, p. 62 and Lanao 2018, p. 2827). The idea
behind the redescription strategy is to insist that, strictly speaking, the critics are not
imagining what they think they are imagining; some kind of confusion or illusion is
imported when the counterexamples are described (see also Bird 2007, Ch. 8). In the
case of heat, for example, it is alleged that critics mistakenly assume that heat is just
5 Jacobs (2011) formulates the view mainly in terms of truthmaking, while I (2012) used both grounding
and truthmaking language.
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whatever causes heat sensations. The situation being imagined might well be epis-
temically indistinguishable from a case which really involves heat, but metaphysi-
cally speaking not really involve heat at all but only something that is supercially
similar to it (i.e. in respect of causing certain sensations; Kripke 1980, pp. 131–32 ).
Once we redescribe the situation in the correct way (metaphysically speaking), we
see that the thought experiment is not a genuine counterexample to the identity claim.
An obvious route for the pan-dispositionalist, then, is to argue that the conceiv-
ability objection rests on a confusion or illusion. Although it might appear that we
can imagine a spatial property like sphericality failing to confer, say, the power to
roll down an incline, on closer inspection this is not the case. Once we redescribe the
alleged scenario in the correct way, we nd that it does not pose a counterexample to
the pan-dispositionalist thesis.
In the following four sections I argue that although the redescription strategy has
some plausibility in the cases that Kripke discusses, the strategy is not plausible as a
general recipe for dealing with the conceivability objections facing pan-disposition-
alism. Shoemaker 1998 contains an early dispositionalist defence of the Kripkean
strategy; however, I shall focus mainly on arguments advanced by Heil (2010) and
Mumford (2010), who I interpret as employing the redescription strategy in their
responses to Unger (2006).6 For example, in response to the alleged sphere coun-
terexample, Heil insists that he nds it dicult to conceive of a billiard ball which
fails to roll down an inclined plane (in ideal conditions), the implication being that
Unger is not genuinely conceiving the scenarios that he thinks he is conceiving: ‘We
can easily imagine a ball closely resembling a billiard ball that does not roll … It is
however, rather more of a challenge to imagine a ball intrinsically indiscernible from
this regulation billiard ball that does not roll’ (Heil 2010, p. 69).
To be fair to Heil and Mumford, they are right in thinking that the conceivability
counterexamples formulated by Unger are inconclusive. However, as we shall see,
Unger could have played a stronger hand and employed a sphere thought experiment
in which the redescription strategy cannot plausibly be employed. If I am right, then
essentialist forms of pan-dispositionalism face a serious problem. However, all is not
lost for the dispositional realists. According to the version of dispositional realism
that I prefer, properties are not identical with or essentially dependent on disposi-
tions, but rather they ground those dispositions. Crucially, the grounding theory of
dispositions allows that we can fully conceive of properties failing to confer the rel-
evant dispositions. Nonetheless, the grounding theorist can (and should) insist that
conceivability is not a good guide to metaphysical possibility and thereby block the
conceivability objection at its nal stage.
6 See also Carruth (2016) who, in the context of defending physicalism, argues that if we accept the Mar-
tin-style powerful qualities theory of properties, then we can resist Chalmers’s claim that the co-variance
of qualities and powers is conceivable.
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3 Dening conceivability
Before proceeding, it is important to settle what it means to conceive something.
Unger’s criticisms of pan-dispositionalism often rely on the claim that this or that
scenario is ‘clearly and fully’ conceivable (2006, p. 77), or conceivable ‘fully and
well’ (2010, p. 485); more clarity might well be sought regarding what it means to
conceive of something ‘clearly and fully’, however, if disputes about what is and is
not conceivable are not to founder on equivocation. As Chalmers (2002), among oth-
ers, has shown, a scenario can be conceivable in some senses but not in others. There
is more than one dimension along which something can be more or less conceivable.
Although as far as I know Unger does not appeal to the distinctions framed by
Chalmers (2002), much of what Unger says about conceivability can be interpreted
using the distinctions Chalmers employs. What is clear is that Unger does not think
the alleged sphere cases that he describes are conceivable only in the ‘negative’ or
‘prima facie’ sense; rather, he believes that the sphere scenarios are conceivable in a
stronger sense. This is important, because if the scenarios were conceivable in only
a weak sense, one would expect it to be easier for pan-dispositionalist opponents to
deploy the redescription strategy.
Using Chalmers’s terminology, Unger’s claim appears to be that the relevant
sphere scenarios are positively conceivable on sustained rational reection—what
Chalmers would call secunda facie positive conceivability (2002, Sects. 1 and 2).
Unger’s 2006 discussion of conceivability on pp. 179–80 supports this interpretation.
In the rst place, Unger is clear that a necessary condition for fully conceiving some-
thing is that there is an experiential aspect to our thinking. He writes: ‘we most fully
conceive a concrete object only when we engage in some thinking that’s experiential
thinking, whatever other aspect, or aspects, our thoughtful conceiving may also fea-
ture’ (2006, p. 180). As Mumford points out, Unger’s cases place a lot of weight on
visualization (2010, p. 479), and this shows that ‘full’ conceivability in Unger’s sense
requires what Chalmers calls positive rather than negative conceivability. Negative
conceivability requires only that a given scenario does not harbour a contradiction;
this is largely an a priori matter and does not typically involve an experiential dimen-
sion. Positive conceivability, in contrast, involves what Chalmers calls imagination:
‘To positively conceive of a situation is to imagine (in some sense) a specic congu-
ration of objects and properties’ (Chalmers 2002, p. 150). To succeed in imagining S,
the scenario in question must be coherent and such that the object of one’s imagina-
tion veries S (2002, p. 150). In other words, the content of the imagined scenario has
to be such that it provides good evidence that S is the case in that scenario.
As will prove important later, we should note that to say that S is veried in a men-
tal image is not yet to say that S is metaphysically possible. As Chalmers points out
(2002, p. 156), we should not dene the positive conceivability of S in a way that triv-
ialises the link between conceivability and possibility. Whatever our view about con-
ceivability, the debate about whether conceivability entails possibility appears to be a
substantive one. Fortunately, a mental image of S can positively verify the obtaining
of S without entailing that S is metaphysically possible; as Chalmers emphasises, the
notions of coherence and verication are epistemic rather than metaphysical.
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Chalmers also adds that in most cases of positive conceivability, the imagination
will be perceptual, or what Unger calls experiential: ‘A subject perceptually imagines
that S when the subject has a perceptual mental image that represents S as being the
case. This happens when the image is relevantly related to a perceptual experience
that represents S as being the case’ (Chalmers 2002, p. 150).
We may conclude, therefore, that when Unger speaks of ‘full conceivability’ he
must mean something like positive conceivability in Chalmers’s sense. This is not
all that can be said of Unger’s notion of conceivability, however. In several places
Unger acknowledges that ‘full’ conceivability involves an intellectual as well as an
experiential dimension. For example, Unger asks hypothetically how we can be sure
that a given mental image really does represent a sphere rather than something else
(2006, p. 180). One possible answer here would be that we somehow ll in every last
perceptual detail of the mental image, so that we have ‘an extraordinarily complete,
or precise, mental image’ (2006, p. 181), but Unger argues that this is neither psycho-
logically plausible nor necessary. Instead, our perceptual image is accompanied by
an intellectual aspect, which helps us to determine what our mental images can (or
cannot) reasonably be said to represent. Unger claims that the experiential and intel-
lectual dimensions are mutually complementary (2006, p. 181).
Unger’s discussions of the role of the intellect in our acts of conceiving are
sometimes sketchy (as he readily admits: 2006, p. 181). However, the idea seems to
resemble Chalmers’s notions of secunda facie (or ideal) conceivability. Both of these
notions contrast with prima facie conceivability, which requires only that something
appears to be conceivable (in the relevant sense) upon rst inspection. Scenario S is
secunda facie conceivable in the relevant sense if the conceivability claim stands up
to some intellectual rational scrutiny (see Chalmers 2010, pp. 143–44 for more on
this distinction).
Given that Unger has something like positive conceivability in mind when
employing his conceivability objection, and given the role that intellectual reection
is also supposed to play, I think we may interpret Unger as claiming that the sphere
counterexamples are conceivable in at least the secunda facie positive sense.7 With
this notion of conceivability in play, we shall see in the next section that it is debate-
able whether Unger’s sphere cases are indeed conceivable, and this opens the door to
the redescription strategy employed by dispositionalists such as Heil and Mumford.
However, in sections ve and six we shall discuss an improved thought experiment
in which it is arguably secunda facie positively conceivable that there is a sphere
which lacks the power to roll. It is far from clear that the redescription strategy can be
applied in this new case, which leaves pan-dispositionalists with a serious problem.
7 I set aside a further distinction that Chalmers (2002, Sect. 3) draws between primary (epistemic) and
secondary conceivability. Whether a scenario is primarily or secondarily conceivable rests on the amount
of empirical scientic information that the conceiver has about the scenario in question (see e.g. Vahid
2006, pp. 247–50). The reason I do not discuss this distinction is that it is unlikely that our assessments
about the conceivability of the sphere cases we discuss are aected by a switch from primary to second-
ary conceivability. Since the sphericality of a billiard ball is a macro phenomenon, it is a property that
one can know about without being acquainted with scientic theory. For example, it would be odd to sup-
pose that there is a group of experts who are better at identifying ball-shaped objects than everyone else.
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Before proceeding, though, it is important to note that the pan-dispositionalist
redescription strategy can be expressed in more than one way depending on what one
means by the term ‘conceivability’.8 Again, ‘conceivability’ is a slippery term and
care is needed. For example, some pan-dispositionalists who employ the redescrip-
tion strategy might be willing to accept that Unger is conceiving of a sphere in some
sense, even if not in the stronger sense just discussed; that is to say, one might be will-
ing to accept that Unger is conceiving of his sphere cases in the sense of prima facie
conceivability. Alternatively, one might think that Unger is not conceiving of a sphere
at all, on the basis that prima facie conceivability is not worthy of the name ‘conceiv-
ability’. I mention this issue so that the reader should not be confused by some of the
dispositionalist literature to which I shall refer. For instance, when discussing worlds
in which spatial properties and powers allegedly come apart, Mumford is happy to
say ‘that there is some sense of “conceivable” in which these worlds are indeed con-
ceivable’ (2007, p. 426). In contrast, Heil is less willing to make this concession,
as far as I can tell (see Heil 2010, p. 69). In any case, what is important for current
purposes is that Unger appears to take his sphere cases to be conceivable in a strong
sense, along the lines of what Chalmers calls secunda facie positive conceivability.
Let us now examine Unger’s thought experiment in more detail.
4 Unger’s conceivability objection to pan-dispositionalism: the
sphere cases
To recap, Unger’s aim is (among other things) to undermine the claim that there is
a necessary connection between a thing’s properties and its dispositions (or what
Unger prefers to call ‘propensities’). His main argument, as we have seen, is that we
can employ thought experiments in which it is positively conceivable that there is
a spherical object which lacks the power to roll. The nal important premise is that
conceivability is a good guide to metaphysical possibility.
As we shall see below, there is a case to be made that the scenarios that Unger
describes are conceivable only in the sense of prima facie positive conceivability.
Although Mumford (2010) does not put his response to Unger in quite these terms,
the response we shall consider is consistent with what Mumford says. The strategy
would be to say that upon rational (secunda facie) reection, what Unger is conceiv-
ing is not really a spherical object that lacks the power to roll—in other words, that
upon close rational inspection, Unger’s imagined scenarios can be redescribed in a
way that is consistent with the pan-dispositionalist thesis.
Unger’s sphere thought experiments (presented in his 2006, Chap. 5, Sect. 16) all
have a core feature in common, which is that some change occurs in a way that pre-
vents a spherical object from rolling down an inclined plane. Because the spherical
object cannot be made to roll in such cases, Unger infers that in these cases the sphere
cannot be said to have the disposition to roll. This is the crucial inference, which crit-
ics like Mumford have rejected (2010). We shall examine Mumford’s criticisms in a
moment.
8 Shoemaker makes a similar point: 1998, Sect. 2.
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Unger’s cases can be divided between two categories. The rst kind of conceiv-
able case is one in which a spherical object has the propensity to change its shape just
as it is about to roll, so that the rolling is prevented. For example, Unger considers
a case in which a small sphere is resting on a large cube that is subsequently tilted.
Although we might expect the sphere to roll down the tilted cube’s surface, Unger
asks ‘why didn’t the Small Sphere turn into a Small Cube—and then slide down the
tilted surface?’ (2006, p. 269). Unger’s point here is that we can easily (positively)
conceive of changes taking place that would result in dierent behaviours. Hence, the
fact that the sphere was spherical does not by itself determine that it will roll.9
The second kind of conceivable case that Unger appeals to is one in which the
sphere has the disposition to retain its shape (contrary to the cases above) but has
additional dispositions to move in unusual ways. For example, Unger considers a
case in which the small sphere ies away like a rocket when the surface on which it is
sat is tilted. This leads Unger to conclude that sphericality is not sucient for the dis-
position to roll, because in order to have such a disposition, other dispositions—such
as the disposition to y away—must be absent; and since it is contingent whether
these further dispositions are present, it is contingent whether a spherical object has
the power to roll.
The key assumption behind Unger’s arguments is that if the spheres in these
thought experiments can never be made to roll, then they are not cases in which
the disposition to roll is present. But is this assumption correct? To recall, if Ung-
er’s cases are to be secunda facie positively conceivable, then this assumption must
remain reasonable upon rational reection. Is this the case? A pan-dispositionalist is
likely to reply that it is plausible on rational reection to think that dispositions can
exist even if, due to interfering factors, they never get to manifest. Indeed, realists
about dispositions have often responded to reductive analyses of dispositions pre-
cisely on the basis that dispositions can be ‘nked’ or ‘masked’ (see e.g. Martin 1994
and Bird 1998). Mumford dismisses Unger’s arguments on the basis of precisely this
kind of reason. Considering Unger’s examples of shape-changing spheres, Mumford
writes: ‘this is a bad argument. If the particular changes from being spherical to being
at, then naturally it no longer has the power to roll. But while ever it is spherical it
will indeed have that aforementioned Propensity’ (2007, p. 426). As a realist about
dispositions, Mumford is prepared to insist that the sphere really does have the power
to roll, even though we could never get the sphere to roll in the imagined scenario.
The crucial point here is that it is reasonable to believe in dispositions that make
merely a counterfactual dierence. Although a piece of salt in the desert may never
actually dissolve, we can still say that it has the disposition to dissolve because the
following counterfactual is true: if the salt were to be submerged in (non-saturated)
water in certain conditions, then it would dissolve.
At rst glance, the Mumford-style response seems compelling: upon close rational
scrutiny, we cannot really conceive of Unger’s spheres as lacking the disposition to
roll. I think, however, that matters are more complicated. It is true, following the
work of dispositionalists like Martin (1994), that most philosophers are prepared to
9 Mumford also considers further examples along these lines, such as the case of a spherical soap bubble
which sticks to an inclined plane rather than roll down it (2010, p. 481).
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accept the existence of dispositions whose manifestations are always prevented by
nks or masks. In nking cases, the properties of an object are altered when a certain
disposition is triggered, such that the disposition is immediately lost. In contrast to
nkish cases, masking cases are those in which the relevant disposition is retained
once triggered but the disposition’s manifestation is nonetheless trumped by the pres-
ence of an opposing disposition. In Bird’s example (1998), we can say that a uranium
pile in a nuclear reactor has the disposition to undergo a catastrophic chain reaction
even though the presence of boron rods will (we hope!) act as an antidote to this
disposition.
The problem is, though, that Unger’s sphere cases dier in important respects
from the typical examples of nks and masks. The crucial dierence is that the com-
mon examples of nking and masking used by Martin and others are cases in which
the nks and masks are extrinsic to the object with the disposition in question. In
contrast, the sphere cases that Unger appeals to are all ones in which the nking and
masking dispositions are intrinsic to the sphere. In the nking cases, the spherical
object has an intrinsic disposition to change shape when the plane is inclined. In the
masking case, the spherical object has a further disposition to y o into space.
One might think that it does not make much dierence whether the nking or
masking factors are intrinsic or extrinsic. Given that extrinsic and intrinsic nks/
masks play the same sorts of causal roles, one might naturally assume that there can
be dispositions which can be nked or masked by further intrinsic dispositions of that
same object. Mumford’s reply to Unger seems to rely implicitly on this assumption.
However, the problem is that many philosophers who accept the existence of extrinsi-
cally nkable or maskable powers have denied the existence of intrinsically nkable
or maskable dispositions. In order to rebut Mumford’s criticisms, Unger could simply
side with the many philosophers who reject the possibility of intrinsically nkable
and maskable dispositions.
Roughly speaking, the main argument against intrinsically nkable or maskable
dispositions is that duplicates of the object with such alleged dispositions would not
be able to manifest those dispositions in any possible scenario (or at least in any pos-
sible world with the same laws of nature as ours). But surely it is counterintuitive to
believe in the existence of a disposition that would never manifest. If the relevant
manifestation would never occur, surely that is evidence that the disposition in ques-
tion is not present (see e.g. Choi 2005, pp. 499–500 and Bird and Handeld 2008,
pp. 291–92 for details).
Now, there have been responses to these arguments (see e.g. Clarke 2008, Kittle
2015 and Tugby 2016), but I shall not attempt to settle the debate about intrinsically
nkable and maskable dispositions here. My point is just that the debate between
Mumford and Unger depends on the outcome of this debate, and therefore the plau-
sibility of Mumford’s response is debateable. However, in the next section we will
see that there is another thought experiment which shows more clearly that we can
positively conceive of a sphere which lacks the power to roll, in a way that more
clearly withstands rational scrutiny.
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5 The conceivability objection to pan-dispositionalism improved
What all of Unger’s conceivability cases have in common is that some other disposi-
tion of a spherical object manifests in a way that interferes with its rolling down an
inclined plane. Rather than cooking up an example in which some further disposition
operates in a way that blocks the rolling, why not simply conceive instead of a case
in which the plane is inclined but nothing at all happens to the sphere sitting on it?
Such a scenario is less complicated than the ones Unger considers and it bypasses the
debate about intrinsically nkable or maskable dispositions, since in such a case there
are no other dispositions that interfere. Rather, it is simply a case in which the sphere
is in ideal conditions for rolling but nonetheless it stays put.
Let us illustrate the case more clearly in order to assess whether it really is con-
ceivable in a strong positive sense. As with Unger’s cases, perceptual imagination
plays an important role in the thought experiment: if the scenario described is posi-
tively conceivable, this is because we have a good grip on how the situation would
appear to a human with functional perceptual apparatus. As we will see below (and
as Unger would concede), there also has to be an important intellectual element when
grasping the details of the case. But for starters, we can illustrate the basic picture as
follows: in order to distinguish the new case from Unger’s cases we need to imagine
a spherical object which could not be said to instantiate any intrinsic nks or masks.
That is, we require an example of a spherical object that we would ordinarily expect
to roll on an inclined plane in ideal conditions. This means the imagined sphere can-
not be like one of Unger’s ‘gelatinous’ objects, for example. For the sake of the new
example, then, let us conceive of a billiard ball, which is non-sticky, rigid, suciently
heavy, etc. Since billiard balls are precisely designed to roll easily, this looks like a
good example of a spherical object that does not conceal any intrinsic nks or masks
against its rolling. The rest of the thought experiment, then, is relatively straightfor-
ward. We imagine that the billiard ball is in a room where it is placed on an inclined
plane but simply fails to roll. Importantly, we must also stipulate that the conditions
are ideal for rolling: the plane is not itself sticky, gravity is present, there are no
external forces such as a gust of wind acting on the ball, and so on. Notice here that
the thought experiment focuses only on what properties things have and how those
things are behaving. We need not and should not stipulate facts about laws of nature,
since doing so would beg the question against some dispositional essentialists, like
Mumford (2004), who are eliminativists about laws.
In order for this modied thought experiment to show that properties and disposi-
tions can conceivably come apart (in the appropriate sense), we must make some key
assumptions and address some initial concerns. The rst assumption is that if some-
thing were not to manifest a certain eect in response to triggering circumstances
that are ideal for that eect, then that is good evidence that the thing would not have
a disposition for that manifestation. Notice that this assumption is in the subjunctive
mood, because I take it that when conceiving of the billiard ball, what we are doing
is thinking about how things could be in a possible world. However, I take it that the
sorts of evidence we have for ascribing dispositions (or not) in the actual world are
the same as those that we would apply in counterfactual scenarios. This is precisely
why Unger-type thought experiments are meant to enable us to draw various meta-
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physical conclusions about our world.10 With these standards of evidence in place,
we can still agree with Mumford that the constant prevention of a certain eect in a
counterfactual scenario would not always be good evidence that the disposition for
that eect is not there. This is precisely what Martin’s cases of nks and masks are
supposed to show. But that is just to say that in such cases the conditions would not
be ideal for the relevant manifestation. In contrast, where the conditions for a mani-
festation were ideal, and preventative nks and antidotes were absent, then the failure
of the manifestation would surely be good evidence that the relevant disposition is
absent—especially in deterministic examples, such as the disposition to roll. If we
were told that the constant lack of an eect in ideal circumstances were not good evi-
dence for the lack of the relevant disposition, then I am no longer sure how the world
could constrain our beliefs about the dispositions of things.
Second, we should immediately address the worry that we are not entitled to stipu-
late that the imagined scenario has the properties required for the triggering circum-
stances to be ideal, such as the presence of gravity and the absence of, say, a gust of
wind. If, for example, we are imagining the presence of gravity simply by inserting
a ‘gravity’ label into the imagined picture, this would make the conceivability task
suspiciously easy. But if this simple labelling strategy is not allowed, on what basis
can we say that gravity really is present in the scenario described?
The best reply to this worry is to concede that merely ‘labelling up’ our imagined
scenario in thought is not enough to secure positive conceivability. Even if some
degree of intellectual stipulation is required for positive conceivability, there cannot
be too much of it, since otherwise we would lose too many of the experiential ele-
ments that characterise positive conceivability. Hence, what is ultimately required
for genuine (positive) conceivability is that we can imagine ourselves verifying the
presence of the various features, such as the presence of gravity. Of course, it would
be unrealistic to represent all of these verifying actions at once. But as long as a
sequence of verifying actions is imaginable, we can insist that the relevant features of
the scenario are not merely being stipulated in an ad hoc manner. Fortunately, it does
not seem dicult to imagine the various verifying actions in the case at hand. For
example, in order to be sure that what we are conceiving really is a billiard ball, we
can imagine ourselves feeling its smoothness, weight, and rigidity as it is placed on
the incline. In doing so we can also activate the intellectual components of conceiv-
ability and consider the geometrical information that would be gathered from such
perceptions: namely, that we are in possession of an object such that every point of its
surface is (roughly) equidistant from its centre. We can also imagine ourselves posi-
tively verifying the presence of gravity in the room by feeling its force on our body as
the ball is placed on the incline. And for each possible nk or mask, it is not dicult
to imagine ways of verifying their absence. For example, we can positively imagine
ourselves feeling a lack of breeze, or feeling the non-stickiness of the incline. We can
even check that a hologram machine or some other source of illusion is not in the
vicinity. Although each of these verifying actions adds complexity to the imagined
scenario, none of them are particularly dicult to imagine, and we can coherently
put these elements in place while imagining that the ball simply remains static when
10 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for prompting me to think about this issue.
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placed on the incline. Moreover, consideration of these imagined verifying actions, I
submit, shows that the alleged conceivability of the scenario described can withstand
rational scrutiny.
The nal point to emphasise is that we are not begging the question by claiming
that the scenario described is conceivable in the relevant sense. As we shall see, I ulti-
mately agree with the pan-dispositionalists that the sphere scenario I am describing
is not metaphysically possible. As explained in section three, to say that something
really is positively conceivable is not yet to say that it is metaphysically possible.
The overall aim of the paper, to recall, is to show that one need not deny the conceiv-
ability of, say, an unrollable billiard ball in order to be a dispositional realist. If one
thinks that the redescription strategy is implausible in the new sphere case described
(see next section), then the best thing for a dispositional realist to say is that such a
case is positively conceivable but nonetheless metaphysically impossible. To support
this conclusion, we must move away from pan-dispositionalist forms of dispositional
realism, on which the necessary connection between properties and dispositions lies
in dispositional essence or identity. If properties have a dispositional essence, or are
identical with dispositions, then of course it should not be possible to coherently
conceive of objects with certain properties lacking the relevant dispositions (see Car-
ruth 2016 on this point). But as we saw in section one, there is more than one kind
of dispositional realism. Our discussion of the conceivability objection points us in
the direction of grounding-based dispositional realism. According to the grounding
theory of dispositions, properties are not essentially connected to dispositions, and
this is why we can positively conceive of objects with certain properties lacking the
relevant dispositions. Nonetheless, properties necessarily ground dispositions. And
the reason why positive conceivability is not a good guide to metaphysical possibility
is that grounding relations are generally not epistemically transparent to us (see e.g.
Schaer 2017 and Sect. 9 below).
Before discussing the grounding theory of dispositions in more detail, we must
rst consider how pan-dispositionalists might try to respond to the new thought
experiment described.
6 Essentialist responses to our revised conceivability objection
How, then, might the pan-dispositionalists try to apply the redescription strategy
to the scenario described in the previous section? Assuming that the disposition to
roll would not be present in the scenario described, the redescription strategy would
require us to insist that what we are imagining in this scenario is not really a spheri-
cal billiard ball. To do this, the pan-dispositionalists must insist that some kind of
illusion is taking place in the imagined scenario. For this move to be plausible, they
must explain the source of this illusion. As we will see, I do not nd this strategy to
be plausible. My contention is that the typical moves made by Kripkeans who employ
the redescription strategy cannot be applied in this case; this is because our sphere
case is disanalogous in crucial ways to the sorts of cases that Kripke is concerned
with in Naming and Necessity. So, although I am happy to concede that the redescrip-
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tion strategy is plausible in some cases (particularly those involving natural kinds),
the spherical billiard ball case is not one of them.
Earlier I argued that in the scenario described, the conditions surrounding the
sphere really are ideal for rolling. The scenario can be constructed in such a way that
we can imagine ourselves verifying that gravity is present, that the billiard ball on the
incline is smooth and rigid, and so on. However, perhaps a pan-dispositionalist could
concede all this and still insist that the scenario is not one that contains an unrollable
spherical object. To do this, they could simply insist that the object in the thought
experiment would not really be a spherical billard ball. Although I have specied that
the imagined object is a sphere, the pan-dispositionalists might try to redescribe the
situation in a way that makes the appearances deceptive. The onus would then be on
them to explain the source of this deception.
Those who pursue this strategy can hardly deny that, prima facie, what we have in
this imagined scenario is a spherical ball. We have specied that the object appears
spherical to someone who has fully functional visual capacities, and we can also
specify that the lighting conditions are ideal. We have also ruled out any illusion-gen-
erating apparatus such as a hologram machine. How, then, can it be maintained that
the appearances are illusory? It is here that I think the pan-dispositionalists encounter
problems. What is important to note is that in the cases discussed by Kripke (1980),
in which the redescription strategy is employed, Kripke is able to drive a wedge
between the supercial signs of a property and the underlying essential features of
that property. In these cases the redescription strategy gains its plausibility from the
fact that the supercial macroscopic signs of a property could exist in the absence
of that underlying property. The source of the relevant illusions is then explained in
the following terms: the reason why we might think we are conceiving of (say) water
that is not H2O is that we are failing to distinguish the supercial, macroscopic signs
of water (such as transparency and tastelessness) from the essential microscopic fea-
tures of water, namely its underlying molecular structure. Kripkeans can then insist
that such illusions occur precisely because substances other than water can display
supercial signs of water.
In short, in order for the Kripkean redescription strategy to be applied with any
plausibility, we need somehow to drive a wedge between the supercial and under-
lying essential features of sphericality. Can this be done in the sphere case? I am
doubtful. The crucial problem is that the property of sphericality in our thought
experiment is by its nature a macroscopic property. This makes it dicult to drive
a wedge between the supercial marks of sphericality and some underlying essence
of sphericality. If we want to know whether a medium-sized rigid object is spheri-
cal, then microscopic knowledge of the object is largely irrelevant.11 This is why
the sphere thought experiment is importantly dierent from those in which Kripke’s
redescription strategy is employed. The reason why someone might mistakenly think
they can conceive of water that is not H2O, or heat that is not kinetic energy, or gold
11 Of course, if we were to claim that some object were a perfect sphere, then we would need microscopic
knowledge of its surface at an innitesimal scale. However, I am assuming throughout that a macroscopic
object can count as spherical without being a perfect sphere. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that a perfect
sphere would ever be instantiated in a physical world like ours.
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that is not the element with atomic number 79, is that the conceiver is ignoring the
ways in which things are categorised scientically. The problem for the pan-disposi-
tionalists is that it is dicult to see what it is that the observer of the spherical ball is
ignoring. Assuming that the conceiver is of average intelligence, they will know that
an everyday spherical object is nothing more (and nothing less) than a three-dimen-
sional round object such that every point of its surface is (roughly) equidistant from
its centre. Importantly, they will also know how rigid macroscopic spheres would
look and feel in normal conditions, which makes them reliable identiers of spheres.
Because spherical billiard balls are macroscopic phenomena, it is dicult to think of
a scientic development which could cast doubt on our ability to know a spherical
ball when we see one. In contrast, the scientic developments on which Kripke’s a
posteriori essentialism rests, such as the discovery that water has the molecular struc-
ture of H2O, are well established.
The problems facing pan-dispositionalism in this case can also be put in terms of
the notion of evidence. Kripkean illusions typically occur when, by scientic stan-
dards, there is something wrong with the evidence that someone has for a given
claim. The reason why Kripke’s redescription strategy has some plausibility in the
cases he discusses is that, again, the observable features of a substance at the macro-
scopic level do not provide good evidence for the kind of substance that it is, because
we know that dierent substances can give rise to the same observable appearances.
In contrast, the macroscopic appearance of a medium-sized sphere is surely good
evidence for the fact that it really is a sphere (see Ingthorsson 2013, p. 68 who makes
a similar point about spatial properties).
Let me now defend this line of argument against two further possible pan-dispo-
sitionalist responses. First, a referee has pointed out that when considering whether
the imagined spherical object has the disposition to roll, certain underlying features
of the object are relevant, just in the same way that the microstructural features of a
substance are relevant for whether it is, say, water. This, it might be thought, gives us
wiggle room to employ the Kripkean redescription strategy.12 For example, suppose
that the imagined spherical object had no mass. It is true that such an object would not
roll, but this would not be because it lacks sphericality or the associated disposition
to roll. Rather, the explanation for the failure to roll would be that gravitational pull
has no eect on the (massless) object.
Now, to be clear, I do not deny that a spherical object’s having mass is a necessary
condition for its rolling. We can think of the object’s mass as either part of the trig-
gering conditions for the disposition to roll, or as something that partly constitutes
the object’s disposition to roll in conjunction with its sphericality.13 Either way, then,
in order for the thought experiment to be successful, we need to stipulate that the
object has mass (and other relevant features, such as a rigid microscopic structure)
and maintain that the object still does not roll in the imagined scenario. Indeed, this
is why in the previous section I was keen to stipulate that all the conditions concern-
12 Again, I’m grateful to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
13 This latter view would be more in line with Shoemaker’s conception of properties like shape as being
associated with conditional powers (2003).
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ing the spherical object and its environment were ideal for rolling.14 Crucially, we
saw that it is not dicult to imagine ourselves verifying the various features. In the
current example, it is not dicult to imagine ourselves feeling that the ball has mass
by picking it up. And it is not dicult to imagine ourselves feeling that the ball is
rigid by squeezing it. The important point here is that where the mass and rigidity
properties of medium-sized objects are concerned, tactile evidence is perfectly good
evidence, as it is in the case of the sphericality.
At this point, it is dicult to see what other lines of response are available to the
pan-dispositionalists. I have provided plenty of reasons for thinking that the scenario
described really is conceivable in the relevant sense: I have explained why there is
good evidence in the thought experiment for thinking that the static ball is spherical,
for we can imagine ourselves verifying that it is such that every point of its surface
is (roughly) equidistant from its centre. We can also imagine ourselves verifying that
the static ball is massy, rigid, and non-sticky, and that the surrounding conditions
are ideal for rolling. In order for the pan-dispositionalists to reject the conceivabil-
ity claim, they must explain what it is that the conceiver has done wrong and why
appearances are deceptive. I have tried to show that this is a formidable task, given
that the standard Kripkean redescription strategies cannot be applied in this case. To
repeat once more: The idea behind the redescription strategy is that supercial signs
are not reliable indicators of the presence of the relevant property. My argument is
that we simply cannot apply this strategy in the billiard ball case because the super-
cial (visual and tactile) signs of the relevant properties of the ball (like being spheri-
cal, having mass, being non-sticky etc.) are reliable indicators. For example, seeing
that every point of an object’s surface is (roughly) equidistant from its centre is gen-
erally good evidence that the object is spherical. I nd this argument is compelling.
However, a further line of resistance to my argument is to point out that I prob-
ably have not ruled out all the possible ways in which the imagined visual and tactile
appearances of the alleged sphere could be deceptive. Two points should be empha-
sised in response. Firstly, given the stipulations made earlier, any alleged source of
illusion that is posited through a redescription strategy would have to be much more
far-fetched than those posited in Kripke’s work, which are based simply on igno-
rance of certain microscopic facts. For example, perhaps a pan-dispositionalist could
maintain that after the imagined billiard ball were placed on the incline in the thought
experiment, the ball would be switched for a hologram while the observer is not
paying attention. But this is surely an ad hoc move. Moreover, if our evidence for
things had to rule out such far-fetched sceptical scenarios, it is unlikely we would
ever know anything. Secondly, and more importantly, it seems that we can rule out
these far-fetched illusion scenarios within our thought experiment by adding more
detail into the picture. For instance, in the scenario I have described, we can imagine
checking constantly that the ball has not been switched. It is not even clear that this
14 In other words, it would be too simplistic to say that if the essence of sphericality does not rule out
possibility p, then p is (positively) conceivable. I am attracted to the idea that the totality of essence-truths
about properties constrains what is and is not conceivable, but our argument certainly does not assume
that a single property can exert these constraints by itself. As should be clear, other properties such as the
mass and rigidity of the ball, the non-stickiness of the slope, etc., play an important role in the thought
experiment.
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would be necessary to rule out switching. Given that we are assuming that positive
conceivability involves intellectual and well as perceptual components, I see no obvi-
ous reason why we could not legitimately stipulate that the scenario we are imagining
is one in which deceptive switchers are not in the vicinity.15
To be clear, though, none of this is a devastating result for dispositional realism:
I agree with pan-dispositionalists that it is metaphysically impossible for the massy,
rigid, spherical object described to fail to roll in the ideal circumstances that have
been stipulated. My conclusion is just that the reason for this metaphysical impos-
sibility does not lie in the fact that sphericality makes an essential contribution to the
disposition to roll. The best dispositional realist response to our modied thought
experiment, I argue, is simply to reject the link between conceivability and metaphys-
ical possibility, rather than to deny the positive conceivability of the cases discussed.
So, I ultimately disagree with Unger, who claims to have shown that the connec-
tion between properties and powers is contingent. In sum, the dialectical role of our
new conceivability argument is to undermine essentialist pan-dispositionalism, rather
than dispositional realism. Dispositional essentialists have to say that the relevant
thought experiments are inconceivable, which is why they try to employ the Krip-
kean redescription strategy. That strategy breaks down in our new case, for reasons
outlined above. However, this new conceivability argument does not undermine the
grounding-based version of dispositional realism, which can accept the conceivabil-
ity of the case discussed.
In the sections to follow, we shall explore more of the details of the grounding
theory of dispositions and show how it allows dispositional realists to avoid the con-
ceivability objection without having to employ a Kripkean redescription strategy. In
the process, we shall say more about the link between conceivability and metaphysi-
cal possibility.
7 An outline of the grounding theory of dispositions
In a recent paper, Schroer (2018) also urges dispositional realists to accept that it is
conceivable for properties to fail to confer the dispositions necessarily associated
with them. Schroer and I agree on that general point. However, the sense in which
we think such scenarios are conceivable is quite dierent. Drawing on Loar’s work
in the philosophy of mind (1990), Schroer proposes that we can imagine the relevant
properties merely by ‘tagging’ them with thin type-demonstrative concepts such as
that property I was just thinking about. So, for example, on Schroer’s account we
can think about the property of being salt and then imagine that ‘An object possess-
ing that type of property I was just thinking about fails to dissolve in water’ (2018,
p. 359). The reason why this kind of conceivability is not a good guide to metaphysi-
cal possibility is that ‘the cognitive contents of these type-demonstrative concepts
are not detailed enough to put the subject in a position to appreciate the metaphysi-
15 I leave this as a tentative suggestion because it is far from clear how much intellectual stipulation is
allowed where positive (secunda facie) conceivability is concerned. I am inclined to think that a large
amount of intellectual stipulation is tolerable but I do not have the space to explore the issue in detail here.
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cal impossibility of various (imagined) scenarios’ (2018, p. 360). This response to
the conceivability objection is compatible with pan-dispositionalism because the
type-demonstrative concepts can be applied even if the essences of the properties
are dispositional. The type-demonstrative concepts ignore the content of the relevant
property’s essence, which is why they are thin concepts.
As should be clear from the previous section, I believe that the sense in which we
can conceive of a spherical billiard ball lacking the power to roll is much richer than
the type-demonstrative strategy allows.16 On my account, we can positively conceive
of a spherical object by grasping its geometrical form, using a combination of percep-
tual and intellectual capacities. And so, due to the thought experiment described in
the previous section, we must ultimately abandon pan-dispositionalism and develop
an alternative dispositional realist response. Fortunately, a theory of dispositions has
recently been developed that ts the bill.
A new anti-Humean theory of dispositions has emerged in recent literature on
which natural properties fully ground powers (see e.g. Coates 2021, Kimpton-Nye
2021, and Tugby 2021).17 Grounding is a relation of metaphysical determination that
explains why something is so. For instance, it is often said that parts ground the wholes
that they form or that physical states ground mental states. It has been proposed that
dispositions can be added to this list: natural properties fully ground dispositions. The
theory is exible on whether each disposition is fully grounded by a single natural
property, or whether some dispositions are collectively (fully) grounded in multiple
properties.18
It is widely accepted that grounding occurs with metaphysical necessity, in the
sense that necessarily, a grounded entity exists if its (full) ground exists (e.g. Bliss
and Trogdon 2014, Sect. 5). So, like pan-dispositionalism, the grounding theory of
dispositions accepts that properties and dispositions cannot come apart in the way
that categoricalists like Armstrong (1997) and Lewis (2009) claim.19 However,
unlike pan-dispositionalists, grounding theorists do not think that dispositions are
part of the essence or identity of properties. Indeed, it is generally implausible to
16 Although I will not develop this argument here, one reason why I am sceptical of Schroer’s account of
conceivability is that I think the essences of things ought to exert constraints on what we can and cannot
conceive. The grounding theory developed here is consistent with this principle.
17 Again, this work builds on earlier papers by Jacobs (2011) and Tugby (2012). Dierent versions of the
grounding theory of dispositions have also been discussed by Audi (2012, p. 117), Leuenberger (2014,
Sect. 2.2), Smith (2016, pp. 250–51), Yates (2018, Sect. 4), Kimpton-Nye (2018, Ch. 3), Azzano (2019,
p. 348), Contessa (2019, Sect. 6), Vetter (2021, Sect. 6.2), and Giannotti (2021).
18 See e.g. Tugby 2021, Sect. 3. The property of sphericality that we have discussed at length could be
interpreted in either way by the grounding theorists. That is, some might argue that the disposition to roll is
fully grounded by sphericality alone, or grounded collectively by the sphericality along with, say, the rigid-
ity of the sphere. The arguments presented in the previous section are compatible with either interpretation.
Regardless of whether sphericality makes a full or merely partial contribution to the disposition to roll,
the point remains that it is implausible to think that this contribution is part of the essence of sphericality.
19 Interestingly, Leuenberger (2014, Sect. 2.2) has argued that if the relationship between categorical prop-
erties and dispositions were contingent, then we would have a reason to accept that grounding is contingent
after all. I do not have the space do discuss Leuenberger’s argument in the detail that it deserves, except
to note that I draw a dierent conclusion from his discussion of categoricalism. Given the plausibility of
the idea that full grounding is metaphysically necessary in the paradigm cases, I think that contingentist
categoricalists should avoid formulating their theory in terms of full grounding.
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think that a grounded entity is ever part of the essence of its ground. To use a well-
known example, the fact that Socrates exists grounds the existence of the singleton
{Socrates} but it is implausible to think that we need to mention this singleton when
spelling out the essence of Socrates (see e.g. Fine 2015). This shows that grounding
and essence are not the same thing, and also suggests that essence cannot be dened
in purely modal terms (see Fine 1994 for discussion of the non-modal conception of
essence; see also Jaag 2014 who discusses these points in a critical discussion of dis-
positional essentialism). Nonetheless, even if grounding entities are not essentially
dependent on that which they ground, there is a remaining question about whether
there are essential dependences in the opposite direction, such that grounded entities
are essentially dependent on the entities which ground them. If, for example, disposi-
tions were essentially dependent on the properties that ground them, this would still
leave us with an essentialist element in the theory. It is to this issue that we now turn.
8 Are grounded entities essentially dependent on their grounds?
Fine does indeed maintain that there is generally an essential connection in the other
direction, such that grounded entities are essentially dependent on their grounds. For
example, when discussing the Socrates example Fine claims that ‘it should somehow
be part of the nature of singleton Socrates that its existence is to be determined in
this way from the existence of Socrates’ (2015, p. 297). This form of ‘top-down’
essentialism about grounding has also been discussed by Dasgupta (2014) and Rosen
(2010). If this form of top-down essentialism were to apply in the current case, it
would mean that dispositions are essentially dependent on the properties that ground
them. Of course, it would be implausible to think that the essence of a disposition is
exhausted by the property (or properties) that ground it, because it is widely accepted
that dispositions are metaphysically individuated by the manifestations that they are
dispositions for (see e.g. Bird 2007, Ch. 6 and Lowe 2010).20 Nonetheless, if dis-
positions were, in part, essentially dependent on the properties that ground them,
this would leave us with an essentialism of sorts concerning the connection between
dispositions and properties.
However, as I and others have argued elsewhere (see e.g. Bennett 2017, Ch. 7,
Sect. 4, and Tugby forthcoming, Ch. 6, Sect. 7), this top-down essentialist view of
grounding is problematic as a general thesis. Hence, in what follows I shall assume a
view on which grounding is a more primitive aair. And importantly for current pur-
poses, one of the implications of this view is that grounding is typically epistemically
opaque. But rst, let me say a little more about why I take top-down essentialism
about grounding to be problematic.
One problem is that the Finean top-down essentialist claim would only be plau-
sible in cases where the grounded entity is essentially constituted (at least in part) by
that which grounds it. On this view, it seems that grounding entities would always be
part of the real denition (i.e. real essence) of the grounded entity. In order for this
20 For Bird (2007, Ch. 6), dispositions are also metaphysically individuated by the kind of stimulus that
gives rise to the relevant manifestation.
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top-down essentialist strategy to be applicable across the board, then, it would have
to generally be the case that if ψ grounds φ, then φ is at least partly ontologically
reducible to ψ. Let us call this principle the ‘Reduction–Grounding Link’. The prob-
lem is that this principle is implausibly strong, and it is also one that a grounding-
based dispositional realist will be keen to reject.
Note, rst, that the Reduction–Grounding Link is a manifestation of the more gen-
eral thought that where there are metaphysically necessary connections, such connec-
tions must be explained in terms of the essential constitution of things. However, in
recent grounding literature there are several grounding theories that are taken to be
serious contenders but which provide counterexamples to the Reduction–Grounding
Link. For this reason, it is dicult to see how top-down essentialist explanations can
be delivered in such cases. Indeed, even Rosen himself acknowledges that there are
plausible exceptions to grounding essentialism (2010, pp. 132–133). Consider, for
example, a version of non-reductive physicalism on which physical states ground
mental states (e.g. Schaer 2017, 2021). Many physicalists deny that mental states
are essentially connected to certain physical states, and for good reason: the real de-
nitions of mental states seem to have nothing to do with their physical grounds. For
example, the essences of thoughts arguably concern their intentional content rather
than their physical grounds. Notice also that in our current context, in which we are
trying to develop a grounding-based version of dispositional realism, it would be a
bad result if we had to accept that dispositions were partly reducible to the ground-
ing properties. This would shift the view more towards a version of categoricalism,
which as we saw earlier is typically regarded as a reductionist approach to disposi-
tions (see e.g. Franklin 1986). Hence, the marriage of dispositional realism with a
top-down essentialist view of grounding would surely be an unstable one.
I note that Dasgupta and other top-down grounding essentialists might deny that
they are reductionists. ‘Reductionism’ is a slippery term, and as Dasgupta denes
them, reductionists are those who think that grounding always has a physical ground
(2014, p. 571). However, it is important to distinguish reductionism about meta-
grounding (in Dasgupta’s sense) and reductionism about grounded entities. As
explained above, reductionists in the current sense are those who accept that when
one type of entity grounds another, the former partly essentially constitutes the latter.
Dasgupta’s top-down ‘brute essentialism’ certainly seems to be reductionist in that
sense.
The worry is, then, that the top-down essentialist account of grounding is only
plausible if we rule out from the start the sorts of non-reductionist grounding theories
described above. Fine (2012, p. 77) bites the bullet here, but tries to lessen the pain
by suggesting that a version of, say, non-reductive physicalism remains available on
which the physical naturally determines rather than metaphysically determines the
mental. Nonetheless, the fact that a metaphysical grounding theory of the mental is
precluded from the start is surely bad news. As we have already mentioned, many
theorists take it that the connection between physical states or mental states (and
in our case, properties and powers), is not merely that of natural determination but
rather full-blown metaphysical determination. In short, metaphysicians with anti-
Humean sympathies, in which group I include myself, have reason to be sceptical of
top-down grounding essentialism.
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My scepticism about the top-down essentialist approach to grounding does not rest
only on the argument just outlined. Bennett and Audi discuss other reasons for scepti-
cism (e.g. Bennett 2017: Sect. 7.4.4; Audi 2020): One of Bennett’s arguments against
the approach is that whatever metaphysically explains the fact that a metaphysically
grounds b (or in her terminology what ‘builds the building’) must surely also explain
b. But then the top-down theorist faces a problem, because ‘the claim that b makes it
the case that a builds b entails that b partly makes it the case that b’ (Bennett 2017,
p. 206). The irreexivity of grounding explanations therefore appears to be violated.
In sum, there are good reasons for a grounding-based dispositional realist to resist
the top-down essentialist theory of grounding. In the next section, we shall see what
kind of grounding theory this leaves us with, and see why it allows the dispositional
realist to deny that conceivability is a good guide to metaphysical possibility.
9 Grounding, conceivability and metaphysical possibility
As we have just seen, there are reasons for a grounding-based dispositional realist to
deny that properties and dispositions are essentially connected, even though proper-
ties necessarily generate dispositions. Thus, grounding-based dispositional realists
typically say that properties have a non-modal, qualitative essence (see Coates 2021,
Kimpton-Nye 2021,and Tugby 2021, Sect. 3). Importantly, if properties like spheri-
cality do not have a dispositional essence, then grounding theorists can agree with our
assessment that we can genuinely conceive of situation in which the relevant proper-
ties are present but the dispositions in question are absent. We can coherently do this
in certain cases because we can grasp the essence of a property independently of the
dispositions that it partly or fully grounds. In the case of sphericality, for example, we
can insist that the essence is geometrical rather than dispositional.
At the same time, the grounding-based dispositional realists will insist that the
conceivability thought experiment does not show that a contingentist categorical
theory of properties is correct, as Unger intended. The grounding theorists can still
maintain that properties and dispositions are necessarily connected, by denying that
positive conceivability is a good guide to metaphysical possibility. The reason why
conceivability is not a good guide to possibility when it comes to grounding is that
grounding relations are typically not epistemically transparent. For example, descrip-
tions of grounds do not entail descriptions of the grounded (or vice versa).
On this point, I agree with Kimpton-Nye (2021) and also Schaer (2017,
2021), who makes similar moves when developing grounding physicalism theory in
the philosophy of mind. Cartesian dualists criticise physicalists on the basis that we
can clearly conceive of physical brain states existing without mental states, which
they take to be good evidence that physical brain states and mental states can exist
without each other, contrary to the physicalist thesis. Schaer argues, rightly in my
view, that this is not a good argument against grounding physicalism. As we have
already seen, a grounding theorist need not accept that mental states are part of the
essence of physical states. Moreover, grounding is a theoretical metaphysical relation
rather than a logical one, and therefore a grounding physicalist is not committed to
the idea that descriptions of physical states entail descriptions of mental states. Thus,
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it will hardly come as a surprise to a grounding theorist that we can coherently con-
ceive of physical states existing without mental states. But it does not follow from
this that there is not a metaphysically necessary connection between grounding states
and the grounded states. At best, conceivability is only a guide to logical possibility;
conceivability is not a good guide to metaphysical possibility because grounding
relations are often opaque to us.
It is true that when the contemporary notion of grounding was rst introduced, it
was often assumed by prominent gures such as Kit Fine that grounding is epistemi-
cally transparent (see Trogdon 2013 for discussion). This is hardly surprising, given
that many have taken there to be an essential connection (of one sort or another)
between grounding entities and grounded entities. But as we have seen, the essen-
tialist approach to grounding faces problems. Of course, we should still insist that
grounding is explanatory, but we must be careful to distinguish explanation in the
sense of metaphysical determination from explanation in the epistemically illuminat-
ing sense. While grounding always concerns the former kind of explanation, it does
not always deliver on the latter (see Bennett 2017, p. 62).
Schaer has also strengthened the case against grounding essentialism by showing
that even the most common cases of grounding do not seem to be transparent on close
inspection. To think of parts as being the grounds of wholes seems the most natural
thing in the world, but even simple grounding claims involving mereology are far
from transparent. As Schaer points out, the thesis of nihilism, which denies that
wholes exist at all, is a matter of substantive metaphysical dispute. And even if one
denies nihilism, it is not transparent which parts should compose (i.e. ground) which
wholes: ‘Even given mereological universalism, the most that follows is that there
is a fusion of the H, H, and O atoms. But for all classical mereology is concerned,
that fusion could be a cabbage’ (Schaer 2017, p. 7). To use another example from
Schaer, it might seem obvious that the combination of two 5 kg masses necessarily
generates a 10 kg mass, but this is only because we implicitly accept an underlying
metaphysical principle, which is that mass is additive (2017, pp. 11-12).21 In general,
grounds only metaphysically explain the grounded because such explanations are
backed by these sorts of primitive metaphysical principles (see also Wilsch 2015).
Another way of expressing these points is that the methodology of grounding is
abductive rather than deductive (Schaer 2021). Grounding relations or lack thereof
are not revealed merely through thinking about concepts or essences or by contem-
plating thought experiments involving things like spherical objects and inclines.
Thus, we should not expect that conceivability is a good guide to possibility in cases
involving theoretical relations like grounding.
For the same reasons, grounding-based dispositional realists have the resources for
giving a plausible response to the conceivability objection: the scenario described in
the previous section is indeed positively conceivable even though it is metaphysically
impossible, and this is precisely what we should expect, if metaphysical grounding
is often epistemically opaque. This shows that the grounding theory of dispositions
has an advantage over pan-dispositionalism. Is this advantage signicant? One might
doubt that it is, given that, rst and foremost, the grounding theory of dispositions
21 More precisely, mass is additive on a Newtonian conception.
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and pan-dispositionalism are both metaphysical theories about properties rather than
theories about what is or is not conceivable.22 However, in the course of our discus-
sion we have seen how one cannot judge conceivability objections independently
of the metaphysics. For example, we saw how Mumford’s dispositionalist response
to Unger implicitly rests on the metaphysical possibility of intrinsically nkable (or
maskable) dispositions. Many have cast doubt on the coherence of such dispositions,
however, including those who are otherwise sympathetic towards dispositionalism
(see e.g. Handeld and Bird 2008). This example shows why the arguments concern-
ing conceivability are treated with utmost seriousness in the literature on the meta-
physics of dispositions. It is a signicant result, therefore, to see that there is another
way of dealing with the conceivability objections for dispositional realists. Rather
than arguing that the alleged counterexamples are not genuinely conceivable, we can
instead question the assumed link between conceivability and metaphysical possibil-
ity. In this section, we have seen how a recent, grounding-based theory of disposi-
tions can support this new strategy. Given that the grounding theory of dispositions
is relatively unexplored, it is signicant to see that it can support a new – and in my
view, plausible – response to what has traditionally been one of greatest challenges
facing anti-Humean theories of dispositions.
Although we have only focused on one type of property in this paper, namely spa-
tial properties, I take it there are good reasons to accept this grounding theory across
the board: all natural properties are qualitative and they necessarily ground powers.
The alternative would be to accept a grounding theory of dispositions in some cases
but a dispositional essentialist account of properties in others. This would leave us
with a disunied and inelegant form of dispositional realism. Moreover, I direct the
reader to Jaag 2014 and Tugby 2021 where other general reasons are discussed for
accepting grounding-based dispositional realism across the board rather than dispo-
sitional essentialism.
Nonetheless, Ellis (2002) for one has advocated a mixed view, on which some
properties are essentially dispositional while others are not. In particular, Ellis nds it
plausible that the fundamental properties of physics, such as electric charge, are pure
dispositions. Williams (2011) calls this ‘the argument from science’ for disposition-
alism. So, one might wonder whether the grounding theory really is plausible in the
case of the fundamental properties. And unfortunately, it is dicult to see how con-
ceivability arguments can have much to contribute to this debate about fundamental
scientic properties. Given that properties like negative charge are purely theoreti-
cal, it is dicult to see how we can engage in the sort of experiential thinking that
Unger describes in his discussion of conceivability. It is not surprising, therefore, that
Unger focuses on the sorts of macroscopic properties, like sphericality, that are direct
objects of our experience.
Fortunately, though, there are other arguments which show that the grounding
theory delivers a plausible account of fundamental properties like negative charge,
some of which I have developed elsewhere. To give one example: The dispositional
essentialist conception of fundamental properties faces problems when it comes to
explaining the status of latent, unmanifested dispositions. If a fundamental property
22 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this point.
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Synthese (2022) 200:222
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like electric charge is nothing more than a bare disposition, how does it exist during
periods when it is not manifesting (see Psillos 2006 and Tugby forthcoming, Ch. 5)?
Call this the ‘argument from latent dispositions’. The danger is that latent unmani-
fested dispositions become ghostly existents that amount to nothing more than mere
possibilities. Mumford describes the puzzle as follows:
To be a disposition is just to be directed towards some possible manifestation.
To be an ungrounded disposition is to be so directed and nothing else. In par-
ticular, it is for there to be no microstructural basis to this directedness (what
Molnar calls, and accepts, the missing reduction base). But if such a property
is unbased, what in the world is it that is directed towards some possible man-
ifestation? Such a property looks like no property at all. It is nothing more
than the possibility of some future property, when there is a manifestation. An
ungrounded disposition has no Being between manifestations and such mani-
festations need never be actualized. (Mumford in Molnar 2003, p. 15)
I do not have the space here to discuss this problem in detail (see Tugby forthcoming,
Ch. 5 for further details). I shall merely observe that the grounding theory of dispo-
sitions oers a straightforward solution: unmanifested dispositions are grounded in
qualitative properties which are fully occurrent and actual.
10 How does the grounding theory of dispositions dier from
categoricalism?
Let us nish by briey considering a possible complaint that pan-dispositionalists
might raise against the grounding theory of dispositions. A potential worry is that the
grounding theory moves so far away from essentialist pan-dispositionalism that it is
really just a version of categoricalism by another name. Hence, solving the conceiv-
ability problem by accepting the grounding theory amounts to giving the game away.
For a start, on the grounding theory, dispositions arguably become non-fundamental.
Grounded entities are typically said to be less fundamental than their grounds, and
when discussing the grounding theory of dispositions elsewhere (2021), I openly
accepted that dispositions are taken to be less fundamental than qualitative proper-
ties. In contrast, essentialist pan-dispositionalism embraces the idea that dispositions
are part of the fundamental fabric of reality. To make matters worse, if grounding
connections are underwritten by primitive metaphysical principles in the way that
Schaer suggests, then it seems that dispositions are generated by metaphysical laws
of sorts, in just the same way that natural laws generate dispositions on most categori-
calist theories.23
In reply, I concede that essentialist forms of pan-dispositionalism are in some
respects further away from categoricalism than the grounding theory. For that reason,
some philosophers have denied that the grounding theory is in the ‘dispositional-
ist’ camp (e.g. Vetter 2021, Sect. 6.2). However, I believe that the grounding theory
23 Again, I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this point.
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outlined disagrees with categoricalism on a sucient number of fundamental issues
to be regarded as being a dierent view. Indeed, the grounding theory even satises
some non-standard denitions of pan-dispositionalism that are to be found in the
literature (e.g. Bostock 2008, pp. 141–42; see footnote two of this paper).
First, we have assumed that grounding occurs with metaphysical necessity, which
means that properties confer the same dispositional proles in all possible worlds.
This leaves us with a version of necessitarianism about natural laws, which is clearly
in opposition to most categoricalists, such as Armstrong (1997) and Lewis (2009),
who are contingentists about the laws of nature. One of the implications of this, as
Smith notes (2016, p. 241), is that the grounding-based dispositional realists reject the
sorts of free recombination principles that typically underwrite Humean approaches
to modality.
Perhaps more importantly, and as we observed earlier, the approach to grounding
that we have favoured allows that dispositions are not reducible (in either the concep-
tual or metaphysical sense) to the properties that ground them. This is partly because
we have rejected the Finean essentialist view of grounding, on which grounded enti-
ties are essentially constituted by their grounds.24 However, prominent categorical-
ists such Lewis and Armstrong are generally regarded as providing a reductionist
story about dispositions (see e.g. Franklin’s 1986 debate with Armstrong, which he
presents as a disagreement about the reduction of dispositions). Moreover, if disposi-
tions are not reducible to their grounds, then the necessary grounding connections
between properties and dispositions are likely to violate most versions of Hume’s
Dictum, which rejects metaphysically necessary connections between distinct enti-
ties.25 Overall, then, the grounding theory of dispositions rmly opposes the Humean
approaches to metaphysics that typically underlie categoricalist theories.26 Even if
the grounding theory is not a version of pan-dispositionalism (as standardly con-
ceived), the grounding theory is still a version of dispositional realism as we have
dened it.
It has not been my aim here to oer a detailed development of the grounding
theory of dispositions or to consider other objections that the theory might face. Such
work has been undertaken elsewhere and I direct the reader to it (e.g. Coates 2021,
Kimpton-Nye2021, Tugby 2021 and forthcoming).27 My aim in this paper, rather,
has been to oer new support to the grounding theory, which is in its infancy. What
we have tried to establish is that considerations surrounding conceivability provide
good reasons for favouring a grounding approach to dispositional realism. Given that
the conceivability objection is arguably the categoricalists’ strongest weapon, the
24 An argument from Audi (2012) leads to a similar conclusion. If properties ground powers, this precludes
us from thinking that dispositions are identical with the properties that ground them. Given that identity is
reexive, such identity would violate the irreexivity of grounding (see Audi 2012, p. 110).
25 More precisely, they are typically violated providing that the grounding theorist accepts (as I do) that
dispositions are multiply realizable. For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Tugby 2021, Sect. 5.
26 I note that although Vetter denies that the grounding theory is a version of dispositionalism (2021,
Sect. 6.2), she agrees that the grounding theory is a broadly anti-Humean view.
27 For example, an important objection concerns how it is that qualitative properties are eligible to be
grounding dispositions, given that they have a non-modal essence. See Tugby 2021, Sect. 3, and Tugby
forthcoming, Ch. 6, for responses.
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Synthese (2022) 200:222
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grounding theory of dispositions is a new and attractive prospect for those who think
that properties necessitate dispositions.
Acknowledgements This paper is a descendent of papers presented in the departmental research seminars
at Trinity College Dublin and University of Glasgow, as well as the New Foundations of Dispositionalism
Conference at the University of Exeter. I thank the audiences and organisers of those events: James Miller,
Nathan Wildman, Lorenzo Azzano and Andrea Raimondi. Special thanks are due to Sam Kimpton-Nye
and Stephen Mumford, with whom I have discussed the themes of this paper over the years. I am also
grateful to Ben Young for the excellent proofreading work. Finally, I thank the anonymous referees and
the editors of this topical collection, Lorenzo Azzano and Andrea Raimondi, for their support and very
helpful comments.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
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licenses/by/4.0/.
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