Dispositionalism about belief has had a recent resurgence. In this paper we critically evaluate a popular dispositionalist program pursued by Eric Schwitzgebel. Then we present an alternative: a psychofunctional, representational theory of belief. This theory of belief has two main pillars: that beliefs are relations to structured mental representations, and that the relations are determined by the generalizations under which beliefs are acquired, stored, and changed. We end by describing some of the generalizations regarding belief acquisition, storage, and change.

Semantic dispositionalism is roughly the view that meaning a certain thing by a word, or possessing a certain concept, consists in being disposed to do something, e.g., infer a certain way. Its main problem is that it seems to have so many and disparate exceptions. People can fail to infer as required due to lack of logical acumen, intoxication, confusion, deviant theories, neural malfunctioning, and so on. I present a theory stating possession conditions of concepts that are counterfactuals, rather (...) than disposition attributions, but which is otherwise similar to inferentialist versions of dispositionalism. I argue that it can handle all the exceptions discussed in the literature without recourse to ceteris paribus clauses. Psychological exceptions are handled by suitably undemanding requirements (unlike that of giving the sum of any two numbers) and by setting the following two preconditions upon someone’s making the inference: that she considers the inference and has no motivating reason against it. The non-psychological exceptions, i.e., cases of neural malfunctioning, are handled by requiring that the counterfactuals be true sufficiently often during the relevant interval. I argue that this accommodates some important intuitions about concept possession, in particular, the intuition that concept possession is vague along a certain dimension. (shrink)

Actualists of a certain stripe—dispositionalists—hold that metaphysical modality is grounded in the powers of actual things. Roughly: p is possible iff something has, or some things have, the power to bring it about that p. Extant critiques of dispositionalism focus on its material adequacy, and question whether there are enough powers to account for all the possibilities we intuitively want to countenance. For instance, it seems possible that none of the actual contingent particulars ever existed, but it is impossible (...) to explain this by appealing to the powers of some actual thing or things to bring it about. I argue instead that dispositionalism, in the simple form championed by its proponents, is formally inadequate. Dispositionalists interpret the modal operators as simple existential claims about powers, but if we interpret the operators that way, the resulting system of modal logic is too weak to capture metaphysical modality. I argue that we can modify the standard dispositionalist interpretations of the operators to secure formal adequacy, but at the cost of accepting that not all modality is grounded in powers. This, I shall suggest, is not a bad thing—the resulting theory still has powers at its core and has certain attractive features, in addition to formal adequacy, that the standard theory lacks. (shrink)

According to recent arguments for panpsychism, all physical properties are dispositional, dispositions require categorical grounds, and the only categorical properties we know are phenomenal properties. Therefore, phenomenal properties can be posited as the categorical grounds of all physical properties—in order to solve the mind–body problem and/or in order avoid noumenalism about the grounds of the physical world. One challenge to this case comes from dispositionalism, which agrees that all physical properties are dispositional, but denies that dispositions require categorical grounds. (...) In this paper, I propose that this challenge can be met by the claim that the only dispositional properties we know are phenomenal properties, in particular, phenomenal properties associated with agency, intention and/or motivation. Versions of this claim have been common in the history of philosophy, and have also been supported by a number of contemporary dispositionalists. I will defend a new and updated version of it. Combined with other premises from the original case for panpsychism—which are not affected by the challenge from dispositionalism—it forms an argument that dispositionalism entails panpsychism. (shrink)

According to dispositional realism, or dispositionalism, the entities inhabiting our world possess irreducibly dispositional properties – often called ‘powers’ – by means of which they are sources of change. Dispositionalism has become increasingly popular among metaphysicians in the last three decades as it offers a realist account of causation and provides novel avenues for understanding modality, laws of nature, agency, free will and other key concepts in metaphysics. At the same time, it is receiving growing interest among philosophers (...) of science. This reflects the substantial role scientific findings play in arguments for dispositionalism which, as a metaphysics of science, aims to unveil the very foundations of science. The present collection of essays brings together both strands of interest. It elucidates the ontological profile of dispositionalism by exploring its ontological commitments, and it discusses these from the perspective of the philosophy of science. The essays are written by both proponents of dispositionalism and sceptics so as to initiate an open-minded, constructive dialogue. (shrink)

The paper discusses Saul Kripke's Normativity Argument against semantic dispositionalism: it criticizes the orthodox interpretation of the argument, defends an alternative reading and argues that, contrary to what Kripke himself seems to have been thinking, the real point of the Normativity Argument is not that meaning is normative. According to the orthodox interpretation, the argument can be summarized as follows: (1) it is constitutive of the concept of meaning that its instances imply an ought, but (2) it is not (...) constitutive of the concept of a disposition that dispositions imply an ought, hence (3) no dispositional analysis of meaning can work. According to my alternative reading, the point of the argument is another one, namely that while (1) dispositionalism is committed to the thesis that speakers have non-inferential knowledge of their unmanifested linguistic dispositions, (2) speakers, as a matter of fact, do not have such a knowledge. A point that is in principle independent from the issue of the normativity of meaning. (shrink)

I have proposed wedding the theories of belief known as dispositionalism and interpretivism. Krzysztof Poslajko objects that dispositionalism does just fine on its own and, moreover, is better off without interpretivism’s metaphysical baggage. I argue that Poslajko is wrong: in order to secure a principled criterion for individuating beliefs, dispositionalism must either collapse into psychofunctionalism (or some other non-superficial theory) or accept interpretivism’s hand in marriage.

In virtue of what does a sign have meaning? This is the question raised by Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations. Semantic dispositionalism is a (type of) theory that purports to answer this question. The present paper argues that semantic dispositionalism faces a heretofore unnoticed problem, one that ultimately comes down to its reliance on unanalyzed notions of repeated types of signs. In the context of responding to the rule-following paradox—and offering a putative solution to it—this amounts to simply assuming a (...) solution to the problem in one domain and using it to solve the same problem in another. Given, moreover, the level at which the rule-following paradox undercuts dispositionalism—the level of the notion of a sign's repetition—the objections made to the view also rule out causal/informational theories of meaning as well as communitarian/assertion-theoretic ones as potential solutions to the rule-following paradox. (shrink)

Modal dispositionalism is the view that possibilities are a matter of the dispositions of individual objects: it is possible that p if and only if something has a disposition for p to be the case. We raise a problem for modal dispositionalism: nothing within the theory rules out that there could be necessary, perfect masks, which make the manifestation of a disposition impossible. Unless such necessary perfect masks are ruled out, modal dispositionalism runs the risk of failing (...) to provide a sufficient condition for possibility, and indeed of engendering contradictions. But to rule them out, modal dispositionalism would have to revise a crucial tenet of the view, its localism. (shrink)

Dispositionalism is the view that causal powers are among the irreducible properties of nature. It has long been among the core competing positions in the metaphysics of laws, but its potential implications for other key debates within metaphysics and the philosophy of science have remained under-explored. Travis Dumsday fills this major gap in the literature by establishing new connections between dispositionalism and such topics as substance ontology, ontic structural realism, material composition, emergentism, natural-kind essentialism, perdurantism, time travel, and (...) spacetime substantivalism. He also puts forward a novel view concerning the precise relationship between causal powers and the fundamental laws of nature. His rich and accessible study will appeal to readers interested in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The paper examines the plausibility of analytical dispositionalism about practical reason, according to which the following claims are conceptual truths about common sense ethical discourse: i) Ethics: agents have reasons to act in some ways rather than others, and ii) Metaphysical Modesty: there is no such thing as a response independent normative reality. By elucidating two uncontroversial assumptions which are fundamental to the common sense commitment to ethics, I argue that common sense ethical discourse is most plausibly construed as (...) committed to the denial of metaphysical modesty, and thereby as committed to the existence of a response independent normative reality. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that if one subscribes to dispositionalism — the view that natural properties are irreducibly dispositional in character — then one ought to favour a Platonic view of properties. That is, dispositionalists ought to view properties as transcendent universals. I argue for this on the grounds that only with transcendent universals in play can two central dispositionalist platitudes be accounted for in a satisfactory way. Given that dispositionalism is becoming an increasingly influential view in (...) the metaphysics of science, my argument, if successful, suggests that Platonism will see something of a revival in contemporary metaphysics. This new kind of Platonism is shown to have some striking metaphysical and epistemological consequences. (shrink)

According to dispositional realism, or dispositionalism, the entities inhabiting our world possess irreducibly dispositional properties – often called ‘powers’ – by means of which they are sources of change. Dispositionalism has become increasingly popular among metaphysicians in the last three decades as it offers a realist account of causation and provides novel avenues for understanding modality, laws of nature, agency, free will and other key concepts in metaphysics. At the same time, dispositionalism is receiving growing interest among (...) philosophers of science. This reflects the substantial role scientific findings play in arguments for dispositionalism which, as a metaphysics of science, aims to elucidate the very foundations of science. In this introductory chapter, I give an overview of the state of the debate and explain the twofold aim of the present collection of essays which is (i) to explore the ontological commitments of dispositionalism and (ii) to discuss these against the background of latest scientific research, by bringing together perspectives from both metaphysics and the philosophy of science. I finally provide a summary of this intellectual journey. (shrink)

Suppose dispositions bear a distinctive connection to counterfactual facts, perhaps one that could be enshrined in a variation on the well-worn schema "Necessarily, x is disposed to phi in psi iff x would phi in psi. Could we exploit this connection to provide an account of what it is to be a disposition? This paper is about four views of dispositionality that attempt to do so.

Most recently, a number of philosophers have stressed the need for an intrinsic characterisation of the nature of powerful properties which nonetheless is compatible with the widely shared view that powers are intimately connected to the properties of their manifestations. This paper argues that the adoption of such an intrinsic criterion for the identity of pure powers has important consequences for Dispositionalism, the theory of modality according to which the truth of all alethic modal claims is grounded in the (...) powers of actual entities. To this end, the paper examines the cases of two possibilities regarding pure powers and defends the view that these possible cases undermine the extensional adequacy of Dispositionalism. (shrink)

According to dispositionalism, objects possess genuine powers. This paper argues that the signature claim of dispositionalism can only be articulated with the help of intensionally opaque linguistic resources. This bears a twofold consequence. Firstly, standard non-humility arguments against modal quidditism support too weak of a conclusion to be of use for the dispositionalist. Secondly, if the dispositionalist wishes their position about the powerful nature of properties to be a metaphysically substantive one, they will have to endorse the claim (...) that at least some hyperintensionality has a non-representational source. This adds a new layer of complexity to the discussion: for the legitimacy of the dispositionalism vs. categoricalism debate, as a substantive debate about which kind of property is instantiated in the physical world, rests on the assumption that reality itself is finer-grained than modality. Interestingly, dispositionalism is also able to provide a compelling solution to the unique issues raised by a hyperintensional account of properties, and one in line with their philosophical sensibilities. (shrink)

Yates has recently argued that modal dispositionalism invalidates the axiom. Both Yates and Allen have advanced responses to the objection: Yates’s response proposes installing truth into the possibility biconditional, and Allen’s response requires that all properties be construed as being essentially dispositional. I argue that supporters of Borghini and Williams’s modal dispositionalist theory cannot accept these responses, given critical tenets of their theory. But, since these responses to the objection are the most plausible in the literature, I conclude that (...) the threat that Borghini and Williams’s modal dispositionalist theory invalidates the axiom still looms large. (shrink)

Since the advent of modern philosophy, causation has been treated as a relation between two separate events. Any worldly dynamism is then provided by the succession of essentially static events. Recent decades have seen a revival of interest in powers, but this has been hampered by an acceptance of many of the presuppositions of modern philosophy, most conspicuously those of Hume. Simply placing powers on top of the static Humean framework will not do. Causal dispositionalism offers a more dynamic (...) notion, where an instance of causation involves a unified process rather than a relation between distinct events. This theory has a number of advantages. It can account for change as well as stability, long- and short-lived processes, genuine complexity and real emergence, non-linear interaction of causes, extreme context-sensitivity, and contrary powers. This is a more plausible framework for understanding causation in biology, ontologically and epistemically. (shrink)

Modal dispositionalists hold that dispositions provide the foundation of metaphysical necessity and possibility. According to the kind of modal dispositionalism that can be found in the present literature, a proposition p is possible just in case some things are disposed to be such that p. In the first part of this paper I show that combining this classic form of dispositionalism with the assumptions that the laws of nature are necessary and deterministic and that all dispositions are forward-looking (...) in time leads to the unattractive conclusion that every truth is necessary. I argue that the classic dispositionalist should be troubled by this result and in the second part of the paper I suggest a novel variant of dispositionalism that avoids it. This extended form of dispositionalism allows that some propositions are only indirectly underwritten by dispositions. (shrink)

Discussions about dispositional and categorical properties have become commonplace in metaphysics. Unfortunately, dispositionality and categoricity are disputed notions: usual characterizations are piecemeal and not widely applicable, thus threatening to make agreements and disagreements on the matter merely verbal—and also making it arduous to map a logical space of positions about dispositional and categorical properties in which all parties can comfortably fit. This paper offers a prescription for this important difficulty, or at least an inkling thereof. This will be achieved by (...) comparing pairs of positions and exploring their background metaphysics to discover where alleged agreements and disagreements concerning dispositionality and categoricity really lie; more specifically, the Pure Powers view and the Powerful Qualities view will be under scrutiny. Over this background, the prescription functions by isolating a successful identity-based characterization of categoricity, while abandoning the correspondent identity-based characterization of dispositionality. On the contrary, according to this prescription a property is dispositional if and only if it is solely in virtue of possessing that property that its bearer is assigned a certain dispositional profile. A crucial consequence of this prescription is that, while supporters of the Pure Powers view often characterize their position as an essentialist one, the dispositionality of properties needn’t always be a matter of essence. (shrink)

Pan-Dispositionalism – the view that all properties (and relations) are irreducibly dispositional – currently appears to have no takers amongst major analytic metaphysicians. There are those, such as Mumford, who are open to the idea but remain uncommitted. And there are those, such as Ellis and Molnar, who accept that some properties are irreducibly dispositional but argue that not all are. In this paper, I defend Pan-Dispositionalism against this ‘Moderate’ Dispositionalism.

Inspired both by our ordinary understanding of the world and by reflection on science, anti-Humeanism is a growing trend in metaphysics. Anti-Humeans reject the Lewisian doctrine of Humean supervenience that the world is “just one little thing and then another”, and argue instead that dispositions, powers, or capacities provide connection and activity in nature. But how exactly are we to understand the shared commitment of this anti-Humean movement? I argue that this kind of anti-Humeanism, at its most general level, is (...) to be understood neither as a view about ontology nor about fundamentality, but rather as a specific claim about what explains what. (shrink)

Clinical delusions have traditionally been characterized as beliefs in psychiatry. However, philosophers have recently engaged with the empirical literature and produced a number of objections to the so-called doxastic status of delusion, stemming mainly from the mismatch between the functional role of delusions and that expected of beliefs. In response to this, an appeal to dispositionalism about the nature of belief has been proposed to vindicate the doxastic status of delusion. In this paper, I first present the objections to (...) attributing beliefs to delusional patients and the application of dispositionalism in the attempt to vindicate doxasticism. I then assess this application and some responses to the objections to the doxastic characterization. Finally, I offer some conclusions about the limits of folk-psychological concepts in the characterization and explanation of complex psychological phenomena such as delusions. (shrink)

In taking properties to have powerful or dispositional essences, dispositionalism is primed to provide an account of causation. This paper lays out a challenge confronting the dispositionalist’s ability to account for how powers causally interact with one another so as to bring about collective results. The challenge, here labeled the “interaction gap,” is raised for two competing kinds of approaches to dispositional interaction: contribution combinationist and mutual manifestationist. After carefully highlighting and testing potential resources for closing the interaction gap, (...) it is concluded that the mutual manifestationist approach holds a significant advantage. In turn, the importance of the interaction gap itself is highlighted. While powers prime an ontology to yield an account of causation, how far that account can actually go depends on the metaphysical details of one’s view of powers and their causal interaction. (shrink)

Kripke (Wittgenstein on rules and private language: an elementary exposition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass, 1982 ) rejected a naturalistic dispositional account of meaning (hereafter semantic dispositionalism) in a skeptical argument about rule-following he attributes to Wittgenstein (Philosophical investigation. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1958 ). Most philosophers who oppose Kripke’s criticisms of semantic dispositionalism take the stance that the argument proves too much: semantic dispositionalism is similar to much of our respected science in some important aspects, and hence (...) to discard the former would mean to give up the latter, which is obviously wrong. In this paper, I shall discuss and reject a recent defense of Kripke by Kusch (Analysis 65(2):156–163 2005 ; Sceptical guide to meaning and rules: defending Kripke’s Wittgenstein. McGill-Queen’s, London, 2006 ). Kusch attempts to show that semantic dispositionalism differs from the sciences, and consequently, Kripke’s attack can only target semantic dispositionalism, but not the sciences. Specifically, Kusch identifies some important features of the sciences with regard to how it employs idealization and ceteris paribus clauses, and argues that the ways in which semantic dispositionalism uses them are dramatically different. I argue that, upon close examination, the two are more similar than otherwise in each of those features. (shrink)

Dispositionalism about colours is usually held to be incompatible with Colour Eliminativism: the view that there are no objects that have colours. I think that this common belief is false. There are different forms, both of Eliminativism and Dispositionalism, and that we can mount a combination of two forms of the views, forms that are compatible. The aim of this paper is to support this claim by discussion of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. We mostly have only second-hand (...) reports of his thought, some of which ascribe to him, some very ropey arguments in support of his view on colour. (One of these receives heavy emphasis by R.C. Chisholm, in his discussion of perception.) One fragment of his writings we do have is the famous remark: “For by convention colour exists, by convention bitter, by convention sweet, but in reality atoms and the void.” But this remarks suggests that his position is more complex than it is usually considered. If it comprises eliminativism, it is not a bald eliminativism. For in the first part of the fragment, he says “By convention colour exists, by convention sweet exists, …” I suggest that there is a way of understanding Democritus’s position: it comprises a form of dispositionalism, but a special kind: it is one that is compatible with one form of Eliminativism, which can be thought of as Colour-Fictionalism. This suggestion is not meant to be merely of historical interest. It is, I argue, an eminently defensible position to hold about colour. (shrink)

Nomological dispositionalism has occupied a center stage in contemporary metaphysics about laws, holding the view that laws of nature derive from an ontology of intrinsically modal dispositional properties. This view faces, though, various challenges, some of which are worth revisiting. Among them, dispositionalism about properties condemns laws to ontological redundancy; its reconstruction of properties does not seem to fit with experimentalism; it introduces a view of metaphysical modality that ambiguously moves between (_de dicto_) logical modality and (_de re_) (...) physical modality; and it assumes fundamentalist meta-metaphysical presuppositions. Rather than dismantling nomological dispositionalism –quite the contrary, we believe it is a valuable theory–, we aim at identifying those nodes where alternative strategies could be followed in a theory of laws. (shrink)

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.

Causal dispositionalism developed in metaphysics of science offers a useful tool to conceptualize shallow causes in behaviour genetics, in a way such that (a) it accounts for complex aetiology and heterogeneity of effects, and (b) genetic causal contribution can be considered to be explanatory. Genes are thus causal powers that make a difference.

Dispositionalism is most often paired with some form of realism about universals, whether moderate or Platonic. However, both historically and in the contemporary literature there have been advocates of nominalist dispositionalism. Here I argue that such a combination is likely to be workable only given the truth of theism. For those already inclined to favor nominalism and dispositionalism, a novel cosmological argument for theism results. Correspondingly, for nominalists already opposed to theism, it provides new reason to oppose (...) dispositionalism, while for dispositionalists opposed to theism it provides new reason to reject nominalism. (shrink)

In this thesis, I offer a study of a metaphysical theory that has acquired popularity in recent years: Dispositionalism. Dispositionalism is first and foremost an actualist, property-based theory of modality. The ontology of dispositionalism postulates, primus inter pares, that there are properties with a modal nature. Dispositionalists call these properties powers, mostly because of the role they play in doing what the argument says they should do: explaining natural modalities, i.e. first-order physical regularities. Albeit the view has (...) increased in popularity in recent years, not much attention has been dedicated to investigating which theory of properties best fits the requirements from the metaphysics. The present thesis aims​ to remedy this. (shrink)

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: (i) showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and (ii) offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account (...) for de re truths about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness (all powers are “for” their manifestation) and Independence (some powers might fail to bring about their manifestation) has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

Dispositionality is a modal notion of a certain sort. When an object is said to have a disposition, we typically understand this to mean that under certain circumstances, the object would behave in a certain way. For instance, a fragile object is disposed to break when dropped onto a concrete surface. It need not actually break - its being fragile has implications that, so to speak, point beyond the actual world. According to dispositionalism, all modal features of the world (...) may be accounted for in terms of its dispositional features. My aim in this paper is to assess the prospects for dispositionalism by examining the most promising theories. Sections 1 and 2 clarify the assumptions and desiderata of a successful dispositionalist theory of modality. Section 3 introduces the principles governing the dispositionalist theories that apparently meet the desiderata. Sections 4 through 6 show that dispositionalism nonetheless faces three problems: while dispositions help account for modal features of the world that are local, diachronic, or gradable, they cannot account for certain modal features of the world that are global, synchronic, or absolute. I end by discussing the costs of preserving dispositionalism. (shrink)

Dispositionalist accounts of colour concepts are now largely discarded. But a number of recent and influential objections to this type of theory can be readily answered providing the dispositionalist account contains the key elements it should---which actual versions in the literature do not. I explicate some of the conceptual components needed in such an account once we correctly understand the anthropocentricity of the colour concepts involved. When these components are incorporated into dispositionalism, including one crucial distinction in particular, some (...) powerful seeming objections against this revised dispositionalism fail. In addition, dispositionalism has extra advantages over the far more popular physicalist theories, and I therefore contend that we should explore vigorously this kind of enriched dispositionalist account. (shrink)

The imperviousness of delusions to counter-evidence makes it tempting to classify them as imaginings. Bayne and Pacherie argue that adopting a dispositional account of belief can secure the doxastic status of delusions. But dispositionalism can only secure genuinely doxastic status for mental states by giving folk-psychological norms a significant role in the individuation of attitudes. When such norms individuate belief, deluded subjects will not count as believing their delusions. In general, dispositionalism won't confer genuinely doxastic status more often (...) than do competing accounts of belief. (shrink)

The boundary problem in psychiatry raises the difficulty of posing criteria to distinguish between what is pathological and what is not. This problem has also been one of the main sources of dispute between naturalistic and normativistic theories of mental disorders in philosophy of psychiatry. The main aim of this article is to address the boundary problem from the view known as regulative dispositionalism. According to this view, an attitude or mental faculty is a disposition, or set of cognitive, (...) phenomenal, and behavioral dispositions, that is determined by normative criteria defined and sustained within a community of social agents. I argue that regulative dispositionalism can explain why the diagnosis of some mental illnesses seems to be influenced by social norms while biological facts may still underlie mental illnesses. (shrink)

The paper compares dispositionalism about laws of nature with primitivism. It argues that while the distinction between these two positions can be drawn in a clear-cut manner in classical mechanics, it is less clear in quantum mechanics, due to quantum non-locality. Nonetheless, the paper points out advantages for dispositionalism in comparison to primitivism also in the area of quantum mechanics, and of contemporary physics in general.

Dworkin’s famous argument from legal disagreements poses a problem for legal positivism by undermining the idea that the law can be (just) the result of the practice and attitudes of norm-applying officials. In recent work, the chapter author argued that a hybrid contextualist theory paired with a dispositional theory of value—a hybrid dispositionalism, for short—offers the resources to respond to similar disagreement- based arguments in other evaluative and normative domains. This chapter claims that the theory the author advocates can (...) extend to legal statements and disputes, and shares some important features with Toh’s (2011) idea that legal statements express shared acceptance of norms. The chapter proposes that a contextualist semantics for legal statements paired with the pragmatic communication of implicatures that express shared acceptances of norms, achieves the same goal that Toh aims at. (shrink)

Barker and Smart have argued that dispositional monism is just as susceptible to the ultimate regress problem as Armstrong’s contingent necessitation view of laws. In this response, I consider what implications this conclusion has for the dispositional essentialist project more generally. I argue that it is the monistic aspect of dispositional monism, rather than the dispositional essentialist aspect, which is the source of the problem raised by Barker and Smart. I then outline a version of dispositional essentialism which avoids the (...) ultimate problem by avoiding the commitment to monism. Despite the article by Barker and Smart, it is not time to give up on the dispositionalist project yet. (shrink)

This article attempts to do two things. The first is to make it plausible that any adequate dispositional view of color will have to associate colors with complex functions from a wide range of normal circumstances to a wide range of (simultaneously) incompatible color appearances, so that there will be no uniquely veridical appearance of any given color. The second is to show that once this move is made, dispositionalism is in a position to provide interesting answers to some (...) of the most challenging objections that have been pressed against it. It explains why colors do not seem to come on when the lights come on, and why the right thing to say seems to be that the light causes the objects to reveal their colors. It explains why the content of visual experience need not be problematically circular. It eliminates the problem of intrapersonal variation in color appearance. And it even provides resources for dealing with the problem of interpersonal variation. It is true that in moving to the more complex view, the dispositionalist becomes subject to a new objection, which has been called the problem of unity. The paper offers a solution to this problem as well. (shrink)

Paul Boghossian has recently argued against reductive dispositionalism concerning mental content. However, there is a powerful version of reductive dispositionalism—based on work by Ramsey and Lewis—that Boghossian does not consider. In this paper I argue that Boghossian's arguments can be adapted to apply even to this stronger version of reductionism.

A number of metaphysicians and philosophers of science have raised the issue of themodalityof the fundamental structures of the world. Although the debate so far has been largely focused on the (alleged) inherent causal character of fundamental structures, one aspect of it has naturally taken its place as part of the dispositional/categorical debate. In this paper, I focus on the latter in the case of the fundamentalsymmetrystructures. After putting forward the necessary metaphysical presuppositions for the debate to make sense, I (...) offer an argument which undermines the plausibility of a dispositionalist account of fundamental symmetry structures. (shrink)

Kripkenstein’s paradox is an argument to the conclusion that there is no such thing as intending a certain thing by a given sign. This conclusion is usually taken to entail that there are no correctness criteria governing the use of linguistic expressions, which in turn would entail that words, sentences, and the like are always devoid of any meaning and that linguistic communication is impossible. I sketch a general picture of communication and meaning that shows that the latter entailment does (...) not hold: both communication and meaning are possible in the absence of any correctness criteria. I then go on to show that the view of meaning in question amounts to a form of semantic dispositionalism, even though a non-standard one. (shrink)

Radical non-dispositionalism is the view according to which the actual causal/nomic roles of natural properties are totally irrelevant to their de re modal representation. The major difficulty besetting all forms of radical non-dispositionalism is that the latter allegedly allows the metaphysical possibility of two natural properties swapping their actual causal/nomic roles. The aim of this paper is to provide a plausible solution to that problem. To this end, I describe the necessary steps that a proponent of the view (...) may take to respond to it. I argue that those steps include the rejection of the transworld existence of natural properties and the adoption of a counterpart-theoretic framework for their de re modal representation. I, finally, present two versions of the property-counterpart framework which are consistent with the radical non-dispositionalism. (shrink)

This paper aims to defend that the best framework for characterizing dispositions is a Rylean, non-factualist dispositionalism. I follow Tugby, 451–480, 2013) in explaining which are the main candidates for characterizing the ontology of dispositions. Tugby, 451–480, 2013) concludes that the best metaphysical framework for characterizing dispositions is Platonism, because it is the only theory that can account for the central and the intrinsic platitudes. Following this I show that Platonism is not desirable because it is difficult to reconcile (...) with ontological naturalism and because it is not parsimonious. Thus, I offer a different candidate: Rylean non-factualist dispositionalism. This approach retains the explanatory power of our dispositional vocabulary without appealing to facts, entities, or properties. In conclusion, non-factualist dispositionalism is preferable over naturalism and Platonism for characterizing dispositions. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show how a proper version of dispositionalism, taking powers as basic elements of reality, may figure as a causal theory of perception. On the basis of this argument, the paper draws some further conclusions, which may indicate the explanatory competence of such a disposition-affine theory of causality, for example in terms of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, as well as an ontological account of mere potentialities of active capacities to perceive and of “privations,” (...) respectively. (shrink)

Dispositionalist theories of mental content have been attacked on the grounds that they are incompatible with semantic holism. In this paper, I resist important worries of this variety, raised by Paul Boghossian. I argue that his objections can be avoided by a conceptual role version of dispositionalism, where the multifarious relationships between mental contents are grounded on the relationships between their corresponding, grounding dispositions.

In contemporary analytic metaphysics there are five theories concerning the reality of dispositional and categorical properties and their relationship: mixed view dispositionalism, pan-dispositionalism, categoricalism, identity theory, and neutral monism. Here I outline briefly a novel argument against metaphysical naturalism, one based on the idea that none of these five theories is compatible with it.

Pan-dispositionalism is one of the major theories in current analytic metaphysics concerning dispositional properties and how they relate to categorical properties. According to pan-dispositionalists, all fundamental properties are dispositional in nature, such that any supposed categorical properties are either unreal or reducible in some way to the dispositional. I argue that if pan-dispositionalism is true then metaphysical naturalism is false. To the extent that one finds pan-dispositionalism a plausible theory, one ought to question the truth of metaphysical (...) naturalism. On the other hand, if one is a committed metaphysical naturalist, one ought to question the truth of pan-dispositionalism. Either way we get a significant result, of interest both to those working in metaphysics and to those working in philosophy of religion. (shrink)