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Full Idea
A disposition which would straight away vanish if put to the test is called 'finkish'. A finkishly fragile thing is fragile so long as it is not struck. But if it were struck, it would straight away cease to be fragile, and it would not break.
Clarification
A 'fink' is a worker planted by the bosses to undermine a strike!
Gist of Idea
A 'finkish' disposition is real, but disappears when the stimulus occurs
Source
David Lewis (Finkish dispositions [1997], I)
Book Ref
Lewis,David: 'Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology' [CUP 1999], p.134
A Reaction
There are also 'antidotes'. Finks kill the disposition, antidotes kill the effect. These cases are problems for the simple conditional analysis of a disposition - because we never achieved the consequent.
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] |