Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 New work for a theory of universals
- 2 Putnam's paradox
- 3 Against structural universals
- 4 A Comment on Armstrong and Forrest
- 5 Extrinsic properties
- 6 Defining ‘intrinsic’ (with Rae Langton)
- 7 Finkish dispositions
- 8 Noneism or allism?
- 9 Many, but almost one
- 10 Casati and Varzi on holes (with Stephanie Lewis)
- 11 Rearrangement of particles: Reply to Lowe
- 12 Armstrong on combinatorial possibility
- 13 A world of truthmakers?
- 14 Maudlin and modal mystery
- 15 Humean Supervenience debugged
- 16 Psychophysical and theoretical identifications
- 17 What experience teaches
- 18 Reduction of mind
- 19 Should a materialist believe in qualia?
- 20 Naming the colours
- 21 Percepts and color mosaics in visual experience
- 22 Individuation by acquaintance and by stipulation
- 23 Why conditionalize?
- 24 What puzzling Pierre does not believe
- 25 Elusive knowledge
- Index
7 - Finkish dispositions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 New work for a theory of universals
- 2 Putnam's paradox
- 3 Against structural universals
- 4 A Comment on Armstrong and Forrest
- 5 Extrinsic properties
- 6 Defining ‘intrinsic’ (with Rae Langton)
- 7 Finkish dispositions
- 8 Noneism or allism?
- 9 Many, but almost one
- 10 Casati and Varzi on holes (with Stephanie Lewis)
- 11 Rearrangement of particles: Reply to Lowe
- 12 Armstrong on combinatorial possibility
- 13 A world of truthmakers?
- 14 Maudlin and modal mystery
- 15 Humean Supervenience debugged
- 16 Psychophysical and theoretical identifications
- 17 What experience teaches
- 18 Reduction of mind
- 19 Should a materialist believe in qualia?
- 20 Naming the colours
- 21 Percepts and color mosaics in visual experience
- 22 Individuation by acquaintance and by stipulation
- 23 Why conditionalize?
- 24 What puzzling Pierre does not believe
- 25 Elusive knowledge
- Index
Summary
THE CONDITIONAL ANALYSIS REFUTED
The analysis stated. All of us used to think, and many of us still think, that statements about how a thing is disposed to respond to stimuli can be analysed straightforwardly in terms of counterfactual conditionals. A fragile thing is one that would break if struck; an irascible man is one who would become angry if provoked; and so on. In general, we can state the simple conditional analysis thus:
Something x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s iff, if x were to undergo stimulus sat time t,x would give response r.
Simple indeed - but false. The simple conditional analysis has been decisively refuted by C. B. Martin. The refutation has long been a matter of folklore I myself learned of it from Ian Hunt in 1971 – but now it has belatedly appeared in print.
How a disposition can befinkish. Dispositions come and go, and we can cause them to come and go. Glass-blowers learn to anneal a newly made joint so as to make it less fragile. Annoyances can make a man irascible; peace and quiet can soothe him again.
Anything can cause anything; so stimulus s itself might chance to be the very thing that would cause the disposition to give response r to stimulus s to go away. If it went away quickly enough, it would not be manifested. In this way it could be false that if x were to undergo s,x would give response r. And yet, so long as s does not come along, x retains its disposition.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology , pp. 133 - 151Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
- 2
- Cited by