Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

published on December 1, 2015

Dispositionalism, Categoricalism, and Metaphysical Naturalism

In contemporary analytic metaphysics there are five theories concerning the reality (or unreality) of dispositional and categorical properties and their relationship: mixed view dispositionalism (also the dominant view in Scholastic philosophy of nature), pan-dispositionalism, categoricalism, identity theory, and neutral monism. Here I outline briefly a novel argument against metaphysical naturalism, one based on the idea that none of these five theories is compatible with it.