Abstract

Objects have dispositions. Dispositions are normally analyzed by providing a meaning to disposition ascriptions like ‘This piece of salt is soluble’. Philosophers like Carnap, Goodman, Quine, Lewis and many others have proposed analyses of such disposition ascriptions. In this paper we will argue with Quine (‘Natural Kinds’, 1970) that the proper analysis of ascriptions of the form ‘x is disposed to m (when C)’, where ‘x’ denotes an object, ‘m’ a manifestation, and ‘C’ a condition, goes like this: (i) ‘x is of natural kind k’, and (ii) the generic ‘ks are m (when C)’ is true. For the analysis of the generic, we propose an analysis in terms of causal powers: ‘ks (when C) have the causal power to m’. The latter, in turn, is analyzed in a very precise way, making use of Pearl’s probabilistic graphical causal models. We will show how this natural kind-analysis improves on standard conditional analyses of dispositions by avoiding the standard counterexamples, and that it gives rise to precise observable criteria under which the disposition ascription is true.

Highlights

  • Talk of dispositions is omnipresent, in our everyday life, and in scientific discourse. Ellis and Lierse (1994) argue that almost all fundamental properties in science are dispositional

  • We don’t have to rely on the ambiguity of what is claimed about the meaning of predicates like ‘fragile’ and ‘irascible’ in the Oxford English Dictionary to argue in favor of a comparative analysis of disposition ascription

  • We have argued above that dispositions statements should be analyzed in terms of generics

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Summary

Introduction

Talk of dispositions is omnipresent, in our everyday life, and in scientific discourse. Ellis and Lierse (1994) argue that almost all fundamental properties in science are dispositional. Talk of dispositions is omnipresent, in our everyday life, and in scientific discourse. Ellis and Lierse (1994) argue that almost all fundamental properties in science are dispositional. Whether a particle is an electron, for instance, can only be. We would like to thank the reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments. We would like to thank Dean McHugh for correcting our English

B Robert van Rooij
A conditional analysis
Standard worries involving mimicking and masking
Structural worries about the conditional analysis
Multi- and zero-track dispositions
Manley and Wasserman’s and Vetter’s proposals
A generic analysis using natural kinds
A causal analysis
Causal models and Carnap’s testability criterion
B Riflemen
A causal analysis of dispositions
Final thoughts

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