“The identity of the categorical and the dispositional,” Galen Strawson
Analysis, Volume 68, Number 4 (October 2008), pages 271-282.
Main authors discussed: Galen Strawson, John Heil, C. B. Martin, Stephen Mumford, Frank Ramsey
Strawson begins his argument for the thesis of his title by asking us to consider triangularity and trilaterality in a closed plane rectilinear figure. There is a conceptual distinction between them, but not (as Descartes would put it) a real distinction. For it is impossible for triangularity and trilaterality to exist apart from one another. What grounds this impossibility, Strawson argues, is identity. Every instance of triangularity is identical to an instance of trilaterality. In general, Strawson holds, for any A and B, there is no real distinction between A and B if and only if A = B.
Having illustrated the point with the triangularity/trilaterality example, Strawson moves on to two theses relevant to the main argument of the paper. First, he says, there is no real distinction between an object at time t and its propertiedness at t, i.e. between the being of the object at t and the being of its properties at t. Second, there is no real distinction between an object’s categorical properties and its dispositional properties.
In defense of the second thesis, Strawson says that most philosophers would agree that there can no more be dispositional being without categorical being than there can be categorical being without dispositional being. But then it is ‘obvious upon reflection’ that nothing can possibly have the total categorical being that it has without having the total dispositional being that it has, and vice versa. And from this it is a short step to the thesis that there is no real distinction between an object’s categorical being and its dispositional being. But then, in light of Strawson’s earlier claim that the absence of a real distinction entails identity, his main claim follows: an object’s categorical being and dispositional being are identical.
Strawson considers the ‘multiple realizability’-based objection that a thing can be changed with respect to its categorical properties without being changed with respect to its dispositional ones; and the ‘possible worlds’-based objection that a thing can be changed with respect to its dispositional properties without being changed with respect to its categorical properties.
Strawson thinks neither objection succeeds. To take the latter first, even if it were coherent (as he thinks it isn’t) to suppose that a thing could remain categorically the same in a different nomic environment, it would still be the case that its dispositions wouldn’t change in a different environment. For those dispositions include the disposition to behave in one way in this nomic environment, in another way in that nomic environment, and so forth. And the trouble with the first objection is that it is trivially true that if you change a thing’s categorical being at all you change its dispositional being. Even two calculators which are functionally identical mathematically speaking but constructed differently will melt differently, float differently, etc.
Strawson then turns to the defense of the claim that an object is identical to its propertiedness. Between properties and their objects, he holds, there is no relation of subordination, priority, dependence, independence, or existential inequality of any sort. Counterfactual speculations might seem to show otherwise, but to assume they do requires assuming also that counterfactual thinking has a metaphysics of object and property built into it, which (Strawson claims) it doesn’t. Furthermore, alleged counterexamples like ‘I’m bald but my propertiedness isn’t , so I’m not identical to my propertiedness’ are in Strawson’s view really appeals to ‘language, not metaphysics.’ This appeal to language lurks in the background throughout the article, and Strawson affirms that his position simply discards the ‘standard, language-enshrined object-property distinction,’ though he admits that to discard is not to refute.
Finally, Strawson considers the objection: If (as Strawson’s view implies) an object is identical to the being of the properties it has at t1 and is also identical to the being of the (different) properties it has at t2, then the being of the properties it has at t1 must (by the transitivity of identity) be identical to the being of the properties it has at t2. But since the object has changed from t1 to t2, these cannot be identical.
Strawson identifies three possible responses to this objection. First, one could appeal to the block universe conception of reality and hold that there is but a single object and a single propertiedness (which would implicitly deny that change occurs). Second, one could deny that the object at t1 is strictly identical to the object at t2, thereby denying that there is continuing identity throughout change. But Strawson prefers a third response, which is simply to get used to holding both the thesis of the identity of an object with its propertiedness, and that things maintain identity through change. To object to this response, he says, is just to presuppose the language-enshrined framework that he has recommended discarding.
Though Strawson does not make the connection, the first two alternatives are essentially those of Parmenides and Heraclitus, respectively. And the categorical/dispositional distinction is related to (if not identical with) the act/potency distinction Aristotle regarded as the key to finding a commonsense middle way between Parmenides and Heraclitus. Strawson’s aim is essentially to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of Parmenidean monism and Heraclitean flux without embracing Aristotle. What isn’t clear is whether he has actually argued for this alternative so much as proposed it as a possibility.
[NOTE: A reply to Strawson by David Oderberg is forthcoming in Analysis and will be reviewed when it appears.]
Reviewed by Edward Feser
Pasadena City College
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Tags: Categorical, Disposition, Identity, Properties
