On Dispositional Essences
Quaeritur utrum necessitas legum naturae possit sufficienter explicari per essentias dispositionales ipsarum rerum, an vero talis explicatio tandem recidat in naturalem essentialismum sine fundamento ontologico, qui rursus ad participationem infiniti redigitur.
It is asked whether the necessity of natural laws can be adequately explained by the dispositional essences of things themselves, or whether such an explanation ultimately collapses into an unfounded natural essentialism that once again requires participation in the Infinite.
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Thesis
Dispositional essentialism seeks to ground the laws of nature in the intrinsic powers of entities. Accordingly, each thing, by virtue of what it is, behaves as it does. Laws are thus expressions of essence, not external constraints. Yet finite essence itself requires grounding for its actuality and coordination. Therefore, the appeal to dispositional essences displaces but does not resolve the need for an infinite ground of law.
Locus Classicus
“In him we live and move and have our being.” — Acts 17:28
The early Fathers, having read Paul in light of Hellenic metaphysics, interpreted this as a declaration that all powers and movements within creation presuppose divine causality. For example, Basil of Caesarea (Hexaemeron I.5) taught that “every natural power is the gift of divine energy,” and Aquinas affirmed that “omnis operatio naturae est actus Dei in natura” (ST I.105.5). Thus, even when power is intrinsic to a creature, its being and operation participate in the act of the Creator.
Explicatio
Dispositional essentialism emerged in late twentieth-century metaphysics as a reaction against both Humean regularity and Armstrong’s relational realism. Philosophers such as Brian Ellis, C. B. Martin, and Stephen Mumford argued that laws do not govern things from without but that the flow from within from the very essences or natures of entities. Accordingly, an electron repels another not because a law commands it, but because repulsion belongs to its nature. The behavior is thus essential and not contingent.
In this view, every natural property is dispositional; it is defined by its powers and tendencies. To possess a charge, mass, or spin just is to manifest appropriate dispositions under suitable conditions. Laws of nature are thus derivative descriptions of the necessary behaviors of these dispositional essences. Therefore, there are no separate laws or external principles, but only powers whose exercise constitutes the order of nature.
This approach elegantly restores necessity to the finite without invoking extrinsic governance. But the question remains: Whence the unity of this system of powers? If every essence carries its own necessity, what guarantees the coherence of those necessities across the totality of the world? Why do distinct powers not conflict or dissolve into chaos? While the finite essence, to be actual, must exist and operate within a coherent totality of being, that totality cannot itself be one of the powers. Rather, it must be the condition of their coexistence and harmony.
Hence, while dispositional essentialism succeeds in moving the locus of necessity inward—from external law to internal essence—it fails to remove the need for ontological participation. While essence, in so far as it is essence, is an intelligible structure of being, powers, however intrinsic, can only be participatory modes of a deeper enabling act.
Obiectiones
Objiectio I. According to Ellis in 2001, the essence of each natural kind explains its behavior. Thus, no further metaphysical foundation is required, and to demand more is to mistake explanation for regression.
Objiectio II. Martin argued in 2008 that disputations constitute causal grounds for their manifestations. Since power is primitive and self-explanatory, the world’s order is the network of powers acting according to their natures.
Objiectio III. Mumford in 2004 argued that laws are supervenient on dispositional essences, and hence add nothing ontologically to them. Thus, the finite order is self-sufficient so long as it consists of stable powers and their mutual tendencies.
Objiectio IV. Naturalistic Metaphysics claims that to appeal to an Infinite act is unnecessary duplication. If dispositions suffice for explanation, positing divine participation is a metaphysical surplus.
Objiectio V. Sometimes the theological tradition assumed that grounding the powers of things directly in the infinite may risk erasing natural causality. But the integrity of secondary causes requires that creatures possess genuine powers of their own.
Responsiones
Ad I. While essence may explain behavior, it does not explain existence. To say “the electron repels because it is its nature to repel” still leaves unasked why such a nature exists at all. Essence is formal cause and being is act. The latter cannot be derived from the former without reference to a self-sufficient act of existence.
Ad II. Power cannot be self-explanatory, for power is always power to act.The actuality of its exercise depends on a larger order within which it operates. Without a unifying act of being, powers remain mere potentialities without coherence.
Ad III. Supervenience explains correspondence but not causation. That laws supervene on essences tells us that essence and law covary, not why such correlation obtains. The dependence relation itself requires grounding.
Ad IV. Appealing to the infinite is not an additional move but a natural completion in the order of explanation.The Infinite is not another entity among the powers but the act in which all finite essences receive their actuality and unity. Without such an act, the multiplicity of powers lacks ontological coherence.
Ad V. Participation does not abolish finite agency but founds it. Creatures possess true powers because the infinite communicates actuality to them. Their independence as secondary causes is secured by the divine act that continuously sustains them in being.
DETERMINATIO
From the foregoing it is determined that:
Dispositional essentialism internalizes necessity but does not abolish dependence. Thus, finite essences are intelligible structures whose actuality presupposes a unifying act of being.
The unity of natural order cannot arise from a plurality of isolated powers. Coordination among dispositions requires an ontological ground transcending them.
Essence without act is impotent. The existence and operation of every power presuppose an act that is not itself one power among others. They thus presuppose an infinite act of being.
The participation of finite essences in the Infinite corresponds to the metaphysical structure of creation. As Augustine said, “Omne bonum quod habet creatura, habet participando” (De Diversis Quaestionibus 83.46). Powers are real and finite, and their actuality is participatory.
Hence, dispositional essentialism, though the most promising finite account, nonetheless points beyond itself. Its truth lies not in rejecting participation but in clarifying the mode of it: each finite power is a share in the creative act that sustains and orders all powers.
Therefore, the necessity of natural law is neither imposed from without nor self-generated from within. It arises from the participation of dispositional essences in the infinite act of being, in the Word through whom all powers subsist and in the Spirit who continuously actualizes their operation.
Nota
Having examined the finite attempts to explain necessity in nature, we now turn to the formal structure of finitude itself as disclosed by logic. For even reason’s most abstract systems -- be they mathematical or linguistic—manifest the same incapacity for self-grounding that we have observed in metaphysics.
The following disputationes will therefore consider Gödelian incompleteness and the Löwenheim–Skolem results as formal witnesses within reason to the necessity of participation in the Infinite.
