Toward a different theory of powers: Dispositional realism with difference and repetition

Abstract

There is, in analytic metaphysics, a debate over the nature of fundamental properties. Having taken the side of the dispositional realistsin this debate, i.e. those who believe that there are intrinsically powerful properties at the heart of reality, one is required to adopt a particular ontology of such powers. Extant views in the literature have rooted their frameworks in templates derived from familiar figures: on the one hand, there are Platonic dispositional realists, and on the otherthere are Aristotelians. Both varieties, this thesis argues(chapters 1 4)suffer from the same explanatory gap: they cannot, upon serious consideration, account for how dispositions conceived these ways come to manifest. Yet manifest they must, if dispositional realism is to make any sense of the (after all quite dynamic) world.

Dispositional realism therefore stands to gain something by looking for an alternative in the metaphysics of a philosopher often associated with a criticalreaction to traditional thinkerslike the onesmentioned above. Gilles Deleuze is the perfect candidate for this role. In his 1968 Difference and Repetition (as is the task to show in chapter 5), Deleuze adduces all the necessary concepts to put together what in this thesis is called a ‘realisation set up’: the necessary concepts to try to account for the becoming actual (realised, manifested) of dispositions (powers, dispositions, potencies, the virtual). I argue that not only does Deleuze have the necessary concepts to provide such a set up, but it manages to forge explanatory links between them in waysI argued extant views cannot. Deleuze’s metaphysics, that is, manages to indeed make sense (in any case more sense than the extant views do) of manifestation.

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ORCID for William Mcneill: orcid.org/0000-0002-3647-0720

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