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Full Idea
We think dispositionality is the core modality from which the other two standard modal operators draw their sense as being limiting cases on a spectrum. ...This gives a very this-worldly account of possibility and necessity.
Gist of Idea
Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases
Source
S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.5)
Book Ref
Anjum,R.J./Mumford,S.: 'Getting Causes from Powers' [OUP 2011], p.182
A Reaction
I'm strongly in favour of this-worldly accounts of modal truths, so I like this. They take dispositions to hover somewhere between what is barely possible and what is absolutely necessary. But is modality actually part of the physical world?
Related Idea
Idea 14580 Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum]
| 18797 | Modalities do not augment our concepts; they express their relation to cognition [Kant] |
| 12205 | There are two families of modal notions, metaphysical and epistemic, of equal strength [Edgington] |
| 14625 | Necessity is counterfactually implied by its negation; possibility does not counterfactually imply its negation [Williamson] |
| 10709 | Priority is a modality, arising from collections and members [Potter] |
| 14528 | Maybe modal thought is unavoidable, as a priori recognition of necessary truth-preservation in reasoning [Hale/Hoffmann,A] |
| 17535 | Dispositionality has its own distinctive type of modality [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |