2024.08.2 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro, and Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers, Routledge, 2023, 260pp., $180.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781032288567.
Reviewed by Andrew L. McFarland, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
Over the last several decades conversations about dispositions (or powers) have been commonplace among philosophers.[1] According to dispositionalists, properties like fragility are said to have triggers (or stimulus conditions)—like dropping a glass onto the floor—that bring about their manifestations, e.g., breaking, cracking, shattering, etc. What’s more, triggers and manifestations are often claimed to play some sort of individuating role with respect to powers. These considerations raise a philosophical question. Are powers—fragility, flammability, solubility, and the like—ontologically simple or complex? If they are complex, can we understand them compositionally? For example, is breaking a part of the power of fragility? Or is talk of parthood merely an instance of speaking with the vulgar? This thought-provoking collection of twelve essays edited by…
Read the full article which is published on Notre Dame's Philosophical Reviews (external link)
