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Full Idea
The orthodox realist view has it that what makes an ascription a disposition ascription is not that it is equivalent to a conditional proposition but that it entails one.
Gist of Idea
Orthodoxy says dispositions entail conditionals (rather than being equivalent to them)
Source
Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7)
Book Ref
Mumford,Stephen: 'Dispositions' [OUP 1998], p.83
A Reaction
Mumford says that Martin has shown that dispositions need not entail conditionals (when a 'fink' is operating, something which intervenes between disposition and outcome).
| 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] |