What powers are not

Abstract

This paper analyses and criticizes the idea that powers are representable as vectors. Mumford and Anjum have recently developed a vector model of powers as part of their account of dispositional causation. The purpose of this model is to represent dispositionality, i.e. a sui generis type of modality introduced by their power-based ontology, as well as to explain various features of their account of causation. In this paper, we criticise both the claim that powers are vectors and the concomitant claim that the composition of causes can be understood as vector addition. We argue that powers cannot be thought of as even analogous to vectors, and that the vector model is simply misleading. We show that the root of the problem is in Mumford and Anjum’s thought that powers have magnitude and direction.

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Stathis Psillos
University of Athens

References found in this work

How the laws of physics lie.Nancy Cartwright - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Getting Causes From Powers.Stephen Mumford & Rani Lill Anjum - 2011 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. Edited by Rani Lill Anjum.
The Mind in Nature.C. B. Martin - 2007 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
A gradable approach to dispositions.David Manley & Ryan Wasserman - 2007 - Philosophical Quarterly 57 (226):68–75.
Events.Lawrence Brian Lombard - 1979 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9 (3):425 - 460.

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