Analysis, Volume 69, Number 4 (October 2009), pages 677-684.

Main authors discussed: David Oderberg, Galen Strawson, Alexander Bird, Mark Heller

Oderberg’s article is a response to Galen Strawson’s “The identity of the categorical and the dispositional” (reviewed previously). Strawson, following Descartes, assumes that a real distinction between x and y entails that x and y can exist separately. Since dispositional properties cannot exist separately from categorical properties, Strawson concludes that there is no real distinction between them. Thus, what grounds their inseparability is, he claims, identity.

Following Aquinas rather than Descartes, Oderberg maintains that the presupposition of Strawson’s argument is in error. Real distinction does not entail separable existence, as can be seen by considering a circle’s properties of having a radius and having a circumference, between which there is clearly a real distinction even though neither property can exist apart from the other. What grounds their inseparability is therefore not identity, but rather the essence of a circle. In general, where x and y are really distinct but inseparable features of a thing, it is essence (either the essences of x and y themselves or of the thing to which they belong) rather than identity that explains their inseparability.

Like Strawson, Oderberg thinks the terminology used in contemporary debate over these issues is unsatisfactory. Oderberg recommends the traditional language of actuality and potency as less misleading than modern talk of the categorical versus the dispositional. Strawson holds, in effect, that all being is actual being. But in Oderberg’s view, the one example Strawson gives of what is actual – ‘energy whose nature can be positively characterized by us only in terms of what effects it has’ – in fact tells against his thesis. For it is precisely potential energy that can be ‘characterized by us only in terms of what effects it has’ – specifically, Oderberg tells us, ‘in terms of the kinetic energy into which it can be but is not actually converted.’ The example thus points to the reality of that which has being even though it is non-actual – that is to say, to what exists as a potency or potential. And while Strawson is right to hold that potency entails actuality, it doesn’t follow that potency is actuality.

Oderberg also objects to Strawson’s claim that there is no distinction between an object and its ‘propertiedness.’ If this were true, Oderberg argues, then there would be no way to explain how property instances or tropes are individuated. It would also become hard to explain how an object’s properties might have been different from what they are while it remained the same object. Strawson’s reply to this difficulty seems to presuppose either: (a) that an object consists of all of its properties throughout its existence – which cannot be right since some of these properties are contrary or contradictory (and time-indexing these properties would entail denying the existence of any intrinsic properties, which Strawson himself would not do); or (b) temporal parts theory – which, Oderberg argues, leads to similarly problematic results.

Reviewed by Edward Feser
Pasadena City College

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