Nomic Necessity for Platonists

Abstract

After identifying some existing explanations offered by nomic necessitarians for the alleged necessary connections between natural properties and their dispositional or nomic features, I discuss a less explored necessitarian strategy. This strategy is available to Platonists who hold that properties exist necessarily, as most do.

Power Worlds and the Problem of Individuation

“…This paper merely provides one reason among many for a powers theorist to favour Platonic realism about properties. To give a few examples: It has been argued that the Aristotelian principle of instantiation loses its plausibility within the powers theory because the principle rests on contingentist views about laws and properties (Bird 2004); it has been argued that strong necessitarianism, which the Platonic powers view entails, halts various explanatory regresses (Bird, 2004); it has been argued that Platonism avoids the unpalatable possibility of taking every power out of existence by simply destroying the instances of a single property (Oderberg, 2011); it has been argued that considerations relating to ceteris paribus laws favour a Platonic understanding of powers (Dumsday 2012); it has been argued that Platonism provides a natural way of understanding the holistic solution to the powers theory's "problem of fit" (Williams 2010); Platonism has been offered as a way of shedding light on the directedness of unmanifested powers (Tugby 2013a); and it has been argued that the Aristotelian powers theory faces explanatory problems that a Platonic powers theory can avoid (Tugby 2016). In short, then, this paper ought not to be viewed as providing an ad hoc solution to the problem of individuation, but rather should be viewed as one which makes a contribution to the wider ongoing debate between Aristotelian and Platonic theories of powers.…”

“…But note, first, that jettisoning the contingency assumption is not as radical as it might seem. This is because the necessary existence of power universals falls naturally out of the Platonic version of the powers theory, which a number of powers theorists already favour (see e.g., Fales 1990, Bird 2007, Dumsday 2012and Tugby 2013a. The reason for this necessity is that if properties are transcendent and thereby exist outside of space and time, then they are plausibly necessary existents (see e.g., Bird 2007, p. 55 and Tugby 2013b for discussion).…”

Mirage Realism Revisited

“…Bird 2007, Ch. 5 andTugby 2013). But as critics of the modal account of ontological dependence point out, where the capture the dependences between the ontological categories (in the platonic case, the categories of abstract universals and concrete states of affairs).…”