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Fisk on Capacities and Natures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Bruce Aune*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Extract

Fisk begins his discussion by asserting, that the FS model attempts to complete the SR model by accounting for the necessity with which, according to the SR model, a capacity will be exercised when certain operations are performed. He argues that the FS model ultimately fails in this task, and he seeks to improve upon the FS approach by grounding the relevant necessity in an entity's nature - a component that defenders of the FS model ignore or misinterpret. For the most part my comments will concern the general strategy of his paper rather than details of the arguments he offers.

Since the major focus of Fisk's paper is on the necessity with which, according to his description of the SR model, a capacity is exercised under certain conditions, it is worth emphasizing that this idea is pretty implausible.

Type
Symposium: Capacities and Natures
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1970

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References

Notes

1 Quine, W. V. O., Word and Object, Cambridge, Mass. 1960, pp. 222-5Google Scholar.

2 A similar approach to causal conditionals can be found in Sellars, W., ‘Counterfactuals, Dispositionals, and the Causal Modalities’, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume II (ed. by Feigl, H. et al.) Minneapolis 1958, pp. 225308Google Scholar.