NDPR Vassilis Livanios The Metaphysics of Powerful Qualities: Powerful Categoricalism and the Laws of Nature

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2026.05.5 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Vassilis Livanios, The Metaphysics of Powerful Qualities: Powerful Categoricalism and the Laws of Nature, Routledge, 2025, 214pp., $61.99 (pbk) ISBN 9781032636894.

Reviewed by Ashley Coates, University of the Witwatersrand

The powerful qualities view is most commonly associated with C.B. Martin (1997) and John Heil’s (2003) “identity theory”, on which properties are identical to both their powerfulness and their qualitativity. This identity claim has struck many philosophers as deeply puzzling. Witness David Armstrong’s (2005: 315) reaction: “I confess that I find this totally incredible. If anything is a category mistake, it is a category mistake to identify a quality—a categorical property—and a power, essentially something that points to a certain effect.” Contemporary defenders of the powerful qualities view often share at least some of this scepticism toward Martin and Heil’s...