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Dispositionality and Symmetry Structures

  • Vassilis Livanios EMAIL logo
From the journal Metaphysica

Abstract

A number of metaphysicians and philosophers of science have raised the issue of the modality of the fundamental structures of the world. Although the debate so far has been largely focused on the (alleged) inherent causal character of fundamental structures, one aspect of it has naturally taken its place as part of the dispositional/categorical debate. In this paper, I focus on the latter in the case of the fundamental symmetry structures. After putting forward the necessary metaphysical presuppositions for the debate to make sense, I offer an argument which undermines the plausibility of a dispositionalist account of fundamental symmetry structures.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Triennial International Conference of SILFS (Bologna 2017) and the 9th European Congress for Analytic Philosophy (Munich 2017). I would like to thank the participants for their helpful comments.

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Published Online: 2018-01-24
Published in Print: 2018-08-28

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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