Dispositions’ status as explanatorily potent or impotent has long been a point of contention in the literature, with discussion typically centering on their causal potency. My aim in this presentation is not to argue for or against dispositions’ causal potency, but to consider how we might expand their explanatory potency to include non-causal cases. In the cases I consider, however, it is not enough that a disposition be instantiated for it to exhibit this non-causal explanatory potency: it must also manifest. In fact, it must manifest continuously.

I begin by elucidating dispositional manifestation, distinguishing between what I term the ‘state’ and ‘process’ views of the phenomenon. In light of these views, I develop an account of what it means for a disposition to manifest continuously in the relevant sense. I go on to claim that cases of continuous manifestation can be differentiated according to the explanatory roles played by the dispositions involved in them. Specifically, I claim that dispositions can play an ‘ongoing explanatory role’ for what they bring about when manifested, whereas in other cases they do not. In the former, dispositions can exhibit non-causal explanatory potency and, in a sense, ‘sustain’ the products of their manifestation.