Dear all,
Serious Metaphysics starts again this Thursday, 21 April. Henry Taylor will be presenting on 'Powerful Qualities and Pure Powers: what's the difference?' (abstract below). Same time and place: 1.00-2.30pm, at the philosophy faculty board room. For the Easter termcard do have a look here: http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/SMG. Hope to see you there, Li Li -- Abstract: The literature on properties is dominated by two extremes. On the Lewisian 'categoricalist' view, all properties are 'quiddistic' or 'categorical' and non-dispositional, whilst at the other end of the spectrum, the 'pure powers' view claims that there is nothing more to a property than its dispositions to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. Many have expressed dissatisfaction with these views, and have attempted to find a middle path. Such a middle path is the 'powerful qualities' view, on which all properties are _both _categorical _and _dispositional. In this paper, I argue that the powerful qualities view is not incoherent (contrary to what some have claimed) but that its supposed advantages over the pure powers view are illusory. Specifically, I argue that any plausible version of the powerful qualities view simply collapses into a pure powers view. -- Li Li Tan PhD (Probationary) in Philosophy St Catharine's College _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
