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Exploring various aspects of modern and ancient metaphysics as they relate to the hypothesis that powers (or dispositions) are the sole elementary building block in ontology.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ powers/dispositions metaphysics • causation, necessity, modality, emergence • process vs substance ontology • structure, relations, grounding, persistence • Aristotle, Stoics, Empedocles, Galen: perception, ethics, politics, medicine • science/physics links (mechanisms, quantum)This podcast presents academic talks and discussions on metaphysics and ancient philosophy, organized around the hypothesis that powers or dispositions are central to ontology. Across the episodes, speakers examine how causal efficacy, necessity, and modality should be understood if the world is fundamentally composed of powers, and how these ideas compare with rival frameworks such as structuralism, law-based accounts of modality, and views that prioritize processes over substances.
A recurring theme is how higher-level phenomena relate to underlying structures and processes. The podcast explores different notions of emergence and reduction, the status of ordinary macroscopic objects and biological organisms, and questions about persistence, composition, and grounding. Several contributions focus on causation—whether causal production can be analyzed as interaction, how causal claims connect to counterfactuals without heavy metaphysical machinery, and what role mechanisms play in causal explanation and inference.
The series also connects contemporary debates to historical sources, especially Aristotle, Stoicism, and Empedocles. Topics include Aristotelian dynamics, perception and common sense (including multimodal perception and metaperception), singular thought, virtue development and self-knowledge, and political philosophy concerning the happiness and value of the city. Later ancient and early modern materials appear as well, including Marcus Aurelius’ ethical project and questions about religious context, Megarian argumentation, Galenic medical powers and physiology, Daoist reflections on health and weakness, and a case study in Cartesian metaphysics of the Eucharist.
Throughout, the podcast foregrounds methodological issues about how metaphysical knowledge is possible and how to integrate conceptual analysis with results from the sciences.