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Full Idea
Nobody believes, or ought to believe, that manifestations of powers follow upon the single event mentioned in the antecedent of the conditional independently of the circumstances.
Gist of Idea
Powers depend on circumstances, so can't be given a conditional analysis
Source
C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 02.4)
Book Ref
Martin,C.B.: 'The Mind in Nature' [OUP 2008], p.16
A Reaction
Another way of putting it would be that the behaviour of powers is more ceteris paribus than law.
Related Idea
Idea 15466 'The wire is live' can't be analysed as a conditional, because a wire can change its powers [Martin,CB]
| 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] |