Hamilton’s Principle and Dispositional Essentialism: Friends or Foes?

Abstract

Most recently Smart and Thébault revived an almost forgotten debate between Katzav and Ellis on the compatibility of Hamilton's Principle (HP) with Dispositional Essentialism (DE). Katzav's arguments inter alia aim to show that HP (a) presupposes a kind of metaphysical contingency which is at odds with the basic tenets of DE, and (b) offers explanations of a different type and direction from those given by DE. In this paper I argue that though dispositional essentialists might adequately respond to these arguments, the question about the compatibility of HP with DE has not been answered yet; therefore, dispositional essentialists have not yet provided an illuminating DE-friendly metaphysical account of HP.