[lit-ideas] Re: Alleged Circularity of Dispositional Analysis (was Donalling Donal)
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 17 Nov 2004 14:17:15 PST
Donal writes:
This is surely wrong [that the evidence that A has a disposition to do x is that
A does x under certain circumstances] because a disposition to do x may be
non-actualised, so that despite the disposition to do x existing, x is not done.
To say someone has a disposition to do x is therefore not the same as saying
someone has done x.
*This is, of course, simply a counter-assertion, not an account of what it is to
have a 'disposition' to do x. Donal's account is closer to that of an
explanation of what it is for someone to have 'a temptation' (i.e., to be
tempted) to do x.
*What's the difference? To say that there are 'non-actualised' dispositions is
just to say that the person who allegedly has such a disposition does not do x.
(This follows trivially from what it means to say that the disposition is
'non-actualised.') The evidence that such a person has any disposition at all
with regard to x must then lie elsewhere. In the case of persons, our
conceptually primitive psychology prevents of from saying just what such
evidence would be: there is nothing like the molecular structure of fragile
things which can be appealed to here.
*From this point on one gets tangled up in counterfactuals: 'If A were in the
right circumstances, A would do x--that is what it means for A to have a
disposition to do x.' But of course 'the right circumstances' turn out to be
just those circumstances in which A does x. If these circumstances are something
like 'is dropped into a cup of water' and the 'result' is something like
'dissolves,' we might think that we could extract from this the disposition of a
sugar cube to dissolve. Yet how this is an advance on saying that sugar
dissolves in water is unclear. We can--someone can--explain why sugar dissolves
in water in terms of the molecular structure of both sugar and water, and the
addition of 'because it has a disposition to' violates Occam's principle, by
introducing an unnecessary step into the account.
*No doubt statements like 'Sugar is soluble' lend themselves to a metaphysical
fascination with substantives such as 'solubility,' which then are thought to
need explaining as do dispositions. Perhaps. But one need not, in saying that
this piece of sugar is soluble make a tacit appeal to 'non-actualised'
solubility, or to a disposition this sugar is said to possess. I imagine that
when one refers to particular lumps of sugar, coal, or whatever, that one does
mean that if put in water or heated the sugar or the coal would dissolve or
combust, as the case may be, for in referring to 'this lump' one is referring to
something that is not at present (rapidly) dissolving or burning. But this is a
long way from the notion that 'solubility' in the case of sugar or
'irascibility' in the case of humans, refer to something 'unactualized,' even
though the sugar is not just now dissolving or the man at present berating the
clerk who has sold him two left shoes.
*In saying this I don't deny that much of what Donal says is interesting and
true.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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