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18088 | Intentionality is the mark of dispositions, not of the mental |
Full Idea: My thesis is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional. | |||
From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 1) | |||
A reaction: An idea with few friends, but I really like it, because it offers the prospect of a unified account of physical nature and the mind/brain. It seems reasonable to say my mind is essentially a bunch of dispositions. Mind is representations + dispositions. |
18089 | Dispositions are not general laws, but laws of the natures of individual entities |
Full Idea: Dispositions are the substantive laws, not, as for Armstrong, of nature in general, but of the nature of individual entities whose dispositional properties they are. | |||
From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 6) | |||
A reaction: [He notes that Nancy Cartwright 1989 agrees with him] I like this a lot. I tend to denegrate 'laws', because of their dubious ontological status, but this restores laws to the picture, in the place where they belong, in the stuff of the world. |