Power collapse

What distinguishes things that are endowed with agency from those that lack it? Some scholars in the Aristotelian tradition suggest a distinction in terms of two kinds of powers: agents have both one-way and two-way powers; non-agents, by contrast, have only one-way powers. I call this view Aristotelianism. In this paper, I examine different ways to think of one-way and two-way powers. First, I argue that the conditional analysis faces a problem that resists well-known repair strategies for conditional analyses of dispositions and abilities. Second, I argue that a prominent alternative to the conditional account, as well as variations of it, yield a certain form of Megarianism when combined with Aristotelianism: for non-agents, power collapses into actuality—that is, non-agents have the power to do something iff they manifest it. This might not be a knock-down argument against Aristotelianism, but does call for a reinvestigation of one-way and two-way powers.