Doing Away with Dispositions: Powers in the Context of Modern Physics

Recent accounts of dispositionalism have extended this stance from vases to quarks. Here I shall present an obstacle to such an extension in the form of the symmetry principles that play such a fundamental role in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. After considering certain ways the dispositionalist might get around this obstacle I shall argue that in its standard ‘Stimulus and Manifestation’ form, this stance should be abandoned. However, this does not mean one should give up on modal metaphysics entirely and adopt some form of Humeanism. Instead I shall suggest that current metaphysics presents certain ‘tools’ that might be deployed in this context, such as Vetter’s recently developed notion of ‘potentiality’. Thus there is still hope for a form of naturalised metaphysics that draws on extant metaphysical devices.