William Bauer, Associate Teaching Professor of Philosophy, published a monograph titled Causal Powers and the Intentionality Continuum in 2022. A paperback version appeared in 2023. In the following interview, he discusses his fascination with this topic and clarifies some of the basic ideas of the work.

Could you tell us about causal powers as a philosophical topic?
The investigation of causal powers has a long history in philosophy. However, in recent decades, causal powers have received increased attention in metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and related areas. Causal powers, sometimes called simply “powers” or “dispositions” – though sometimes hard distinctions are made between these concepts – are inherently powerful properties posited to explain the connections between events in the natural and social world. Examples of powers include properties like flammability, elasticity, and even fundamental properties such as charge and mass. According to the powers ontology, powers can be found throughout reality, from subatomic particles to everyday objects and animals. Human agency is, perhaps, best understood as the exercise of a complex array of causal powers.

You describe powers as “inherently powerful properties”. Is there another kind of property that isn’t inherently powerful?
In the philosophical literature, powers contrast with what are called “categorical” properties, which are purely qualitative and thus lack an inherent dispositional aspect. Categorical properties, unlike powers, need the help of laws of nature to gain their potential, although different accounts of laws of nature imply different claims about how this works exactly. It should also be recognized that some theorists favor “powerful qualities”, which are simultaneously powerful and qualitative (or, alternatively, dispositional and categorical). Because they compete with laws of nature to explain connections among events, powers now occupy a central point of debate in the metaphysics of science, a flourishing field of inquiry at the crossroads of metaphysics and philosophy of science. More specifically, they are central to debates about natural modality (concerning possibility and necessity in nature) alongside concepts such as chance, causation, and laws of nature.

How did you become interested in this topic?
I first became interested in powers and dispositions during my doctoral studies because they are relevant to explaining how nature operates and why science can be so successful, two topics of great interest to me. Since then, I have continued my research into their nature and application while exploring adjacent (and sometimes not so adjacent!) topics. I find the powers ontology worthy of sustained attention because powers are relevant to so many areas of philosophy, from philosophy of physics to ethics.

Your book is titled Causal Powers and the Intentionality Continuum. For those who may not know, what do you mean by “intentionality” in this context?
The concept of intentionality also has a long history. It comes up frequently in philosophy of mind, psychology, and cognitive science more broadly. We can believe that something exists or desire something to be the case, even though nothing matches that belief or the desire remains unfulfilled. That is, our mental states are about things even if the things they are about do not exist. This quality of being about things is what philosophers call intentionality. (Like beliefs and desires, the mental states we call intentions are also about things.) The nature of intentionally, its physical basis, and how it relates to our overall concept of mind are big questions in cognitive science that continue to be investigated.

And what do you mean by the idea of an “intentionality continuum”?
By an ‘intentionally continuum,’ I mean that there is intentionality from the most fundamental layers of reality (as found in the fundamental powers of subatomic particles) all the way up to larger atomic and molecular objects, animals (humans included), and societies. According to the intentionality continuum thesis, some form of intentionality is found throughout nature, though not always attended by consciousness. This is based on what Karl Pfeifer calls “panintentionality”; it is similar to, but differs in key ways from, the view known as panpsychism, according to which mentality is found in some form or another throughout nature.

So how does intentionality, or the intentionality continuum, relate to causal powers?
According to the view I defend in the book, causal powers just are intentional states. That is, powers in the physical world (e.g., charge, radioactivity, elasticity) share the marks of intentionality with mental states; in a nutshell, powers are about or for their possible manifestations, which may or may not occur. To be clear, there are mental powers too, and if these are mental states, then it would make sense that they have intentionality; but the physical intentionality thesis claims that it is an essential feature of physical powers, or non-mental powers, that they are intentional. The claim that powers, or dispositions, possess intentionality has been both advanced and challenged by prominent scholars over the last few decades. My goal in the book was to develop and defend the claim anew while exploring nuanced facets of the debate. It’s something I continue to investigate.

A review of Bauer’s book, by Nicholas M. Danne, can be found here.