According to the powerful qualities view, properties are both powerful and qualitative. Indeed, on this view the powerfulness of a property is identical to its qualitativity. Proponents claim that this view provides an attractive alternative to both the view that properties are pure powers and the view that they are pure qualities. It remains unclear, however, whether the claimed identity between powerfulness and qualitativity can be made coherent in a way that allows the powerful qualities view to constitute this sort of alternative. I argue here that this can be done, given a particular conception of both the qualitativity and powerfulness of properties. On this conception, a property is qualitative just in the sense that its essence is fixed independently of any distinct properties, and it is powerful just if its essence grounds its dispositional role.

According to a well-known argument, originally due to David Armstrong, powers theory is objectionable, as it leads to a 'Meinongian' ontology on which some entities are real but do not actually exist. I argue here that the right conclusion to draw from this argument has thus far not been identified and that doing so has significant implications for powers theory. Specifically, I argue that the key consequence of the argument is that it provides substantial grounds for trope powers theorists, but not other powers theorists, to accept one version of the view that properties are powerful qualities. In particular, they have grounds to favour the view that powerful properties are properties with exclusively qualitative natures that ground modal facts.

Discussions about the nature of essence and about the inference problem for non-Humean theories of nomic modality have largely proceeded independently of each other. In this article I argue that the right conclusions to draw about the inference problem actually depend significantly on how best to understand the nature of essence. In particular, I argue that this conclusion holds for the version of the inference problem developed and defended by Alexander Bird. I argue that Bird's own argument that this problem is fatal for David Armstrong's influential theory of the laws of nature but not for dispositional essentialism is seriously flawed. In place of this argument, I develop an argument that whether Bird's inference problem raises serious difficulties for Armstrong's theory depends on the answers to substantial questions about how best to understand essence. The key consequence is that considerations about the nature of essence have significant, underappreciated implications for Armstrong's theory.

According to a well-known argument against dispositional essentialism, the nature of unmanifested token powers leaves dispositional essentialists with an objectionable commitment to the reality of non-existent entities. The idea is that, because unmanifested token powers are directed at their non-existent token manifestations, they require the reality of those manifestations. Arguably the most promising response to this argument works by claiming that, if properties are universals, dispositional directedness need only entail the reality of actually existing manifestation types. I argue that this response fails, because no version of the response can adequately accommodate dispositions of the sort that follow from Coulomb's law. This result both defeats an important argument that dispositional essentialists ought to be realists about universals and appears to leave dispositional essentialists with a problematic commitment to either non-relational connections or a Meinongian ontology. IntroductionAccording to dispositional essentialism (DE), the essences of at least some natural properties are exhausted by their dispositional roles. 1 Here I refer to these properties as 'powers'. An object's having a power, then, consists just in its having certain dispositions. To take a 1 Well-known versions of DE include Molnar (2003), Heil (2003, Mumford (2004), Bird (2007) and Whittle (2008).2 common example, if fragility is a natural property, then it is a good candidate for a power, as an object's being fragile appears to consist just in its being disposed toward breaking.As this example indicates, for an object to have a power is, at least in part, for that object to be dispositionally directed toward a specific manifestation or set of manifestations. For a vase to be fragile, for instance, is for it to be dispositionally directed at its breaking. I will express this point by saying that token powers are directed at their manifestations. 2 This directedness of token powers leads to a well-known difficulty for DE. Given that a relation is real only if its relata are, token powers' directedness at their manifestations appears to entail that the manifestation of any token power is real. The manifestations of unmanifested token powers, though, do not actually exist. For instance, where the fragility of a vase is unmanifested, the vase's being broken does not actually exist. The consequence appears to be that the manifestations of unmanifested token powers are real despite not actually existing. DE, then, appears to be committed to an objectionable 'Meinongian' ontology on which there are real but non-existent entities.The two main dispositional essentialist responses to this problem have been to claim that directedness is not a genuine relation and to invoke universals. The idea behind the first approach is that, because directedness is not a genuine relation, a token power's directedness at its manifestation does not entail that the manifestation is real. According to the second approach, which following Bird (2007: 106) I...

Taylor has recently argued that adopting either the standard Kimian or Davidsonian approaches to the metaphysics of events quite directly solves the regress of pure powers. I argue, though, that on closer inspection Taylor’s proposal does not succeed, given either the Kimian or the Davidsonian account of events.