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The Explanatory Import of Dispositions: A Defense of Scientific Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Jon D. Ringen
Jon D. Ringen*
Affiliation:
Indiana University at South Bend
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Extract

It is widely assumed that disposition predicates do not designate events, processes, or states of affairs which could be causal factors in the production of natural phenomena, yet the fact that an object has a given dispositional property is frequently taken to help explain the behavior exhibited by the object to which the disposition can be ascribed. Considerable philosophical effort has been devoted to the task of explaining how this could be so. The results run the gamut from Hume's (1739, p. 224) view that faculties and occult qualities have absolutely no explanatory import to Armstrong's (1968, p. 88) recent conclusion that dispositions are causes. Most proposals, however, lie between these extremes. Most contemporary philosophers take it for granted that disposition ascriptions have some explanatory import even though disposition predicates do not designate causes.

Type
Part III. Scientific Realism and Observation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1982 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1982 , 1982 , pp. 122 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1982

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Footnotes

1

Support from Indiana University Faculty Fellowships is gratefully acknowledged as are helpful comments from my colleagues in the Philosophy Department at Indiana University at South Bend.

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