absolute to the world, individuals to the whole, human freedom, causation, and many other aspects of his system. This highlights that what underpins Schelling’s entire account is that it is fundamentally holistic: the claims that Schelling is able to make depend on his ontology as a whole. Not only is his power-based ontology central to his account, but his wider claims about the nature of the natural process ground his conceptions of causality, organism, and essence on which his solution to the problems of individuation and human freedom is based. The natural process in turn is derived from Schelling’s account of the absolute: the nature of the natural process follows from the nature of the absolute and the particular part/whole relation which characterises it. All of this indicates a difficulty for the contemporary metaphysician hoping to utilise some of Schelling’s solutions: his system is so fundamentally interlinked as a whole that it is difficult to reject some of his commitments while retaining others; his philosophy comes as a whole, or not at all. It may be possible for the contemporary pan-dispositionalist to attempt solutions along similar lines, but I have shown above that these solutions come with their own difficulties. What I want to demonstrate below is that these solutions will fail if they are attempted against the backdrop of an ontology which does not support this kind of account. What Schelling’s holistic solution to these problems demonstrates is that securing individuation, control, and ultimately agency requires a rethinking of our concept of nature as a whole rather than just some aspects of it. Schelling’s solution depends on rejecting mechanistic, dualistic, and reductive conceptions of nature; this allows him to provide an account of causality as reciprocal, and to give the account of the nature of natural objects and agency that I have been outlining throughout this project. Mayr and the Importance of Holism In this section I want to demonstrate that unless this problematic conception of nature is challenged, the problems that I have outlined above will be difficult for the pan-dispositionalist to solve. I do this by looking a chapter of Mayr’s Understanding Human Agency where he deals with a form of one of the worries that I have been discussing in this chapter: the question of whether the causal
absolute to the world, individuals to the whole, human freedom, causation, and many other aspects of his system. This highlights that what underpins Schelling’s entire account is that it is fundamentally holistic: the claims that Schelling is able to make depend on his ontology as a whole. Not only is his power-based ontology central to his account, but his wider claims about the nature of the natural process ground his conceptions of causality, organism, and essence on which his solution to the problems of individuation and human freedom is based. The natural process in turn is derived from Schelling’s account of the absolute: the nature of the natural process follows from the nature of the absolute and the particular part/whole relation which characterises it. All of this indicates a difficulty for the contemporary metaphysician hoping to utilise some of Schelling’s solutions: his system is so fundamentally interlinked as a whole that it is difficult to reject some of his commitments while retaining others; his philosophy comes as a whole, or not at all. It may be possible for the contemporary pan-dispositionalist to attempt solutions along similar lines, but I have shown above that these solutions come with their own difficulties. What I want to demonstrate below is that these solutions will fail if they are attempted against the backdrop of an ontology which does not support this kind of account. What Schelling’s holistic solution to these problems demonstrates is that securing individuation, control, and ultimately agency requires a rethinking of our concept of nature as a whole rather than just some aspects of it. Schelling’s solution depends on rejecting mechanistic, dualistic, and reductive conceptions of nature; this allows him to provide an account of causality as reciprocal, and to give the account of the nature of natural objects and agency that I have been outlining throughout this project. Mayr and the Importance of Holism In this section I want to demonstrate that unless this problematic conception of nature is challenged, the problems that I have outlined above will be difficult for the pan-dispositionalist to solve. I do this by looking a chapter of Mayr’s Understanding Human Agency where he deals with a form of one of the worries that I have been discussing in this chapter: the question of whether the causal
Freedom%20and%20Powers%20in%20Schelling%27s%20Metaphysics.docx