ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces theories that understand modality in terms of properties – more precisely, in terms of dispositional properties. In Section 28.2, I outline a set of questions whose answers determine the shape of any such dispositionalist theory. Section 28.3 introduces, as representative examples, two versions of dispositionalism that give different answers to those questions: dispositional essentialism, a view about the nature of nomological necessity; and potentialism, a view about the nature of metaphysical possibility. In the remaining two Sections, 28.4 and 28.5, I discuss problems that are shared by dispositionalist theories regardless of these differences. Section 28.4 addresses the problem of circularity: it seems that properties are prior to modality (because modality derives from them), but modality is prior to properties (because properties essentially depend on modality). How can we have it both ways? Section 28.5 addresses problems of locality. How can local, often intrinsic properties of objects give rise to a coherent set of modal facts, some of them quite global? Each problem provides a way to better understand dispositionalism in particular and powers in general.
