Consider a glass sitting on your table. We say it's fragile—but what does this really mean? The glass hasn't broken. It might never break. Yet we attribute to it a genuine property, something real about its nature that goes beyond anything currently happening to it. This puzzle about dispositional properties opens onto fundamental questions about the structure of reality itself.

Dispositions pervade our understanding of the world. Salt is soluble, copper is conductive, sugar is sweet. These properties seem to characterize what things can do rather than what they're currently doing. But how should we understand properties defined by their potential manifestations? Are they reducible to something more basic, or do they represent irreducible features of reality?

The stakes extend far beyond philosophical curiosity. How we understand dispositions shapes our theories of causation, natural laws, and the fundamental nature of properties. Whether powers are basic or derivative determines whether the universe is, at bottom, a collection of inert qualities pushed around by external laws—or a dynamic web of capacities actively structuring what happens.

The most intuitive approach to understanding dispositions is the conditional analysis. On this view, to say something is fragile is simply to say that if it were struck with sufficient force, then it would break. The disposition reduces to a counterfactual truth about what would happen under certain circumstances. This seems elegantly simple: dispositional vocabulary becomes shorthand for conditional claims.

However, this analysis faces devastating counterexamples. Consider finks: imagine a sorcerer who monitors a fragile glass and, whenever it's about to be struck, instantly transforms its molecular structure to become unbreakable. The glass remains fragile—its intrinsic nature hasn't changed—yet the conditional 'if struck, would break' is false. The disposition and the conditional come apart.

Masks present similar problems from the opposite direction. Wrap the fragile glass in protective packaging. The glass is still fragile, but striking it won't cause breakage because the packaging masks the disposition's manifestation. Again, the property persists while the conditional fails. Mimics reverse the situation: a non-fragile object might be rigged to shatter when struck, making the conditional true without the disposition.

These cases reveal something profound. Dispositions seem to involve more than patterns of conditional behavior. They appear to be intrinsic features of objects that can be interfered with, blocked, or mimicked. The conditional analysis treats dispositions as essentially relational—defined by what would happen—but the counterexamples suggest they're categorical features that explain what would happen under normal circumstances.

Takeaway

When analyzing any concept in terms of what would happen under certain conditions, always ask whether the concept and the conditional can come apart—through interference, masking, or mimicry. This reveals whether you've captured the concept's true nature or merely its typical manifestations.

Faced with the failure of simple conditional analysis, many philosophers retreat to a categorical basis approach. Dispositions, on this view, are grounded in or realized by non-dispositional properties. The fragility of glass is explained by its molecular structure—the arrangement of silicon and oxygen atoms. The categorical basis is what's really there; the disposition is just how we describe its potential behavior.

This strategy appeals to scientific practice. Chemists explain solubility through molecular bonding patterns. Physicists explain conductivity through electron configurations. It seems dispositions are eliminable in favor of the underlying structural properties that science reveals. The world contains categorical bases; dispositional talk merely reflects our interest in potential behavior.

Yet profound difficulties emerge when we ask: what exactly is a categorical property? The standard answer invokes properties like shape, size, and spatial arrangement. But examine these closely. Isn't being spherical partly a matter of how an object would appear from different angles, how it would roll on various surfaces? Shape properties seem implicitly dispositional—defined by potential interactions. When we probe any supposedly pure categorical property, dispositional elements emerge.

This threatens a regress. If categorical bases must themselves be explained, and if every candidate categorical property dissolves into dispositions upon analysis, perhaps there are no purely categorical properties. The categorical-dispositional distinction, which seemed clear, becomes murky. Some philosophers conclude that the distinction itself is confused, while others argue we need a more sophisticated account of how dispositions relate to their bases.

Takeaway

When explaining one type of phenomenon in terms of another supposedly more fundamental type, verify that the explanatory base is genuinely different in kind. Otherwise, you may have explained nothing—you've merely relocated the original puzzle to a new level.

Dissatisfied with both conditional analysis and categorical reduction, a growing movement in contemporary metaphysics proposes that powers or dispositions are irreducible and fundamental. On this view, the basic furniture of reality includes genuine causal powers—capacities that are not grounded in anything more basic. This represents a radical reorientation of metaphysical thinking.

The implications are far-reaching. If powers are fundamental, then causation becomes intrinsic to properties themselves. A particle's charge isn't an inert quality that external laws push around—it is a power to attract or repel. Causation is built into the nature of properties rather than imposed from outside by laws of nature. Properties become essentially dynamic, defined by what they do rather than by passive quiddities.

This transforms our understanding of natural laws. Rather than viewing laws as external principles governing inert properties, powers fundamentalism suggests laws flow from the natures of properties themselves. Electrons repel each other not because a law mandates it, but because that's what the property of negative charge is—a power of mutual repulsion. Laws become descriptions of how powers manifest rather than prescriptions imposed on passive matter.

Critics worry about explanatory circularity. If we explain why glass breaks by citing its fragility, and fragility just is the power to break, have we explained anything? Powers fundamentalists respond that explanation terminates in the fundamental natures of things. Just as we eventually reach bedrock in any explanatory chain, the basic powers constitute that bedrock. The alternative—explaining powers in terms of categorical bases that themselves require explanation—merely postpones this terminus.

Takeaway

Consider whether the phenomena you're trying to reduce might themselves be among the basic building blocks of reality. Sometimes the attempt to explain everything in terms of something else prevents us from recognizing what's genuinely fundamental.

The debate over dispositions illuminates a fundamental choice about reality's architecture. Either the world consists of inert categorical properties governed by external laws, or it comprises genuine powers that intrinsically determine how things interact. Neither picture has achieved consensus, but the trajectory of recent metaphysics favors taking powers seriously as irreducible.

For philosophy of science, the stakes are significant. Causal explanation, natural laws, and the success of scientific prediction all hang on how we understand dispositional properties. The powers ontology offers resources for understanding why science works—it discovers the real capacities of things.

What things can do might be as fundamental as what they are. Perhaps more fundamental. The hidden structure of dispositions reveals that reality is less a static arrangement of qualities and more a dynamic web of powers awaiting manifestation.