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Full Idea
Using dispositional analyses in aid of ontological reductions is what empiricism taught us. If you are down on cats, reduce them to permanent possibilities of sensation; if you are down on electrons, reduce them to possibilities of experimental outcome.
Gist of Idea
Empiricists use dispositions reductively, as 'possibility of sensation' or 'possibility of experimental result'
Source
Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.1)
Book Ref
Fodor,Jerry A.: 'Concepts: where cognitive science went wrong' [OUP 1998], p.4
A Reaction
The cats line is phenomenalism; the electrons line is instrumentalism. I like this as a serious warning about dispositions, even where they seem most plausible, as in the disposition of glass to break when struck. Why is it thus disposed?
15466 | 'The wire is live' can't be analysed as a conditional, because a wire can change its powers [Martin,CB] |
15467 | Powers depend on circumstances, so can't be given a conditional analysis [Martin,CB] |
15461 | A 'finkish' disposition is real, but disappears when the stimulus occurs [Lewis] |
12613 | Empiricists use dispositions reductively, as 'possibility of sensation' or 'possibility of experimental result' [Fodor] |
14312 | Orthodoxy says dispositions entail conditionals (rather than being equivalent to them) [Mumford] |
14416 | An object can have a disposition when the revelant conditional is false [Merricks] |
9474 | A disposition is finkish if a time delay might mean the manifestation fizzles out [Bird] |
9475 | A robust pot attached to a sensitive bomb is not fragile, but if struck it will easily break [Bird] |
14348 | An 'antidote' allows a manifestation to begin, but then blocks it [Corry] |
14347 | A 'finkish' disposition is one that is lost immediately after the appropriate stimulus [Corry] |
14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |