Realism and the Conditional Analysis of Dispositions: Reply to Malzkorn Stephen Mumford The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 204. (Jul., 2001), pp. 375-378. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8094%28200107%2951%3A204%3C375%3ARATCAO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K The Philosophical Quarterly is currently published by The Philosophical Quarterly.
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7he Philosophical Quarterly, Val. 51,No, 204 ISSN 0031-&q
DISCUSSIONS
REALISM AND THE CONDITIONAL ANALYSIS O F
DISPOSITIONS: REPLY T O MALZKORN
Wolfgang Malzkorn proposes the following as a satisfactory conditional analysis of the disposition ascription Dx, t : Dx, tifFCh@, t, t + 6 C b ((Tx, t
b Rx,t + 6) A (-&,
t + 6[1,7Txx, t))
where 7 is the test for D, R the appropriate manifestation and C+Dthe normal conditions for D.' In invoking 'normal conditions' CbD,Malzkorn is dissenting from my claim that we ought to speak only of zdeal conditions for the manifestation of a disposition, and that because these will be relative to a specific context, we cannot form a reductive conditional analysis that employs them.2 Malzkorn's proposal fails, in my view, for a reason which I have already suggested elsewhere (mentioned by Malzkorn on p. 457). I shall describe this reason more fully. A finite list of normal conditions in which a disposition is to be tested cannot guarantee the manifestation of the disposition, because there remains the possibility of some further condition that interferes with the process and prevents the manifestation. Malzkorn @. 458) suggests that empirical science could provide us with the list L of normal conditions for a disposition D, in which case L determines CsD.He says little about the form L must take. Suppose it is a simple list of types of states of affairs (C1,C2, C3, ... , C n )My claim is that each item may be realized, but the manifestation R may stiU not occur during or after test Tbecause of the presence of an interfering condition CFI.It could be the case that Dx, t, that Tx, t and that C'G, t, t + 6, but still not be the case that Rx, t + 6 because CFl;hence the proposal does not analyse Dx. 1 I\'. Malzkorn, 'Realism, Functionalism and the Conditional Analysis of Dispositions', The Phzlosophtcal Quarterb, 50 (~ooo), pp. 452-69. S. Mumford, Dispositzons (Oxford UP, 1998),pp. 87-91.
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Malzkorn has no answer to this objection in his paper. He does tell us that the problem of excluding interfering conditions is by no means specific to disposition ascriptions @. 457), and that the normal conditions will be those that are normal in the actual world @. 458), but these points do not address the objection directly. Can the objection be answered? Can we claim, for instance, that Cln automatically excludes CFI because CFI is not a normal condition relative to the disposition D? I suspect, but do not assert, that this is the claim Malzkorn would favour, as he seems to think (p. 464) that normal conditions '~reclude'electro-finks and other such possibi1ities.j But I do not see how C"jDcan exclude CFI. For Malzkorn's proposal to be an analysis, he needs conditions CXDthat are specifiable. My claim is that if the list of CFDcan be specified, then it can be defeated: that is, Cw can be satisfied (each item in the list L can be true) but the manifestation can still fail to occur for some x that is D and is tested, because CFl is also the case. The only strate'gy I can en\risage to avoid this problem would be as follows. First, allow negative truths into L, so that we have -XFIamong our list. This is already controversial, as some writers doubt whether there are truth-makers for negative truths: hence it may be questioned whether 7CFI has a legitimate place in L. But even if we allow negative truths, and Cfl is excluded by this move, there may be some other interfering condition Cm that L does not exclude. No matter how many such conditions we list in L, some further interfering condition is possible. For practical purposes, that is as far as the strategy can go. But theoretically, and secondly, we could list in L eveq fact in the world, to make sure we have included everything that could possibly stop the disposition from manifesting. However, that would still not guarantee (entail) that R would follow when I, unless we also include a higher-order 'fact of totality', that these are all the facts there are. Some think this is an acceptable move,l but even if so, Malzkorn's claim (p. 460) that this is a simpler conditional analysis than that which Lewis has offered would look under threat, as Lewis' analysis does not have to invoke higher-order facts.5 Is there some such condition as CFIavailable to defeat every disposition manifestation? Possibly not. Some dispositions of basic particles may manifest indefeasibly, whenezer their stimulus conditions are realized. But I doubt that Malzkorn's analysis is designed solely for these, which are more likely the exceptions than the rule. His analysis is meant to be general, so it fails. I have argued previously only for context-sensitive ideal condztzons that cannot be part of a reductive conditional analysis. The reason for preferring ideal to normal conditions is that disposition ascriptions can sometimes be made in quite abnormal conditions, as when we say things are fragde at very low temperatures. Malzkorn objects (p. 459) that just about everything is fragde at very low temperatures, so that the ascription becomes practically trivial. He may be right in thls case, but all that it shows is that there must be better examples. The speculation appcals to me that much of what we call technology depends upon setting up some arthcial 3 A 'fink' makes a disposition vanish the moment it is tested: see C.B. Martin, 'Dispositions and Conditionals', Ihe Philosophical Quarter&, 44 (1gg4), pp. 1-8. D. Armstrong, A World of States OfAffairs (Cambridge UP, 1997),ch. 13.
j D. Lewis, 'Finkish Dispositions', T h e Philosophical Quarter$, 47 (1gg7), pp. 143-58.
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REALISM .4ND T H E CONDITIONAL ANALYSIS O F DISPOSITIONS
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environment, some ideal conditions, in which an object or substance can manifest dispositions which it would not manifest in a state of nature. Some examples: oil will yield petrol, but only during a carefully controlled manufacturing process; petrol powers an engine (which is a carefully controlled environment that converts burning petrol into motion and then propulsion); diseases administered in accurately measured doses, at an appropriate age, produce immunity, though uncontrolled exposure produces illness; metals can become molten and be reshaped; we can ascribe dispositions to elements which exist only under artificial conditions, and the same is true of certain subatomic particles which are isolated and tested only in the unique environment created at CERN. There is no shortage of further examples. Malzkorn does not say exactly what 'normal conditions' means. Plausibly, it could mean either natural4 occurring conditions, or commonplace conditions. Whichever of these one opts for, I am quite sure that useful and plausible disposition ascriptions can be found which are not normal in that sense. I am, however, willing to allow that nonnal and ideal may coincide in some cases. This means, on my interpretation, that the ideal conditions are those naturally or commonly occurring. This leaves just one other objection brought against ideal conditions @. 459): that a disposition concept D, in my account, seems to be a different disposition in different contexts. My answer is that D is a single concept when its ideal conditions are unspecified, but when one begins to fill in the detail of the ideal conditions, one is then speaking of a more precise disposition concept. This is no more mysterious than that there is one concept 'tall', even though what it is to be tall for a man and tall for a giraffe are likely to be different heights.Vor the reasons given against Malzkorn's notion of normal conditions, we cannot specify ideal conditions in which any disposition manifestation is guaranteed, and this is why I remain sceptical about the prospects for a reductive conditional analysis. Having argued specifically that Malzkorn's conditional analysis fails, and that in any case he has not provided sufficient reason to reject my ideal conditions as the background against which disposition ascriptions are made, I turn now to a more general issue in his paper, his professed realism. It may well be possible to reconcile realism with a conditional analysis, notwithstanding my objection that Malzkorn's particular analysis fails. However, I am not convinced that Malzkorn's realism is of a kind that most realists would endorse. A realist theory of dispositions allows that a disposition's existence is logically independent of the occurrence of any test or manifestation, to which we can add that some dispositions may be beyond our power to test, and that some may be beyond our conceptual scheme and hence beyond our knowledge completely. I am doubtful that Malzkorn would sign up to this much realism. His first sentence @. 452) declares his starting-point, that a disposition is a property to give a particular response to a particular test (of course testing and conditional analyses often go hand in hand). Further, his second adequacy condition for conditional analyses (p. 461) is that we must not imply that T o r R are actually realized at the time D is ascribed; but he does not go as far as to say that Tand R need never be realized. 6 See D.H. kIellor, 'The Semantics and Ontology of Dispositions', Mind. ~ o g(2000); pp. 757-80, at pp. 759-60, for a pertinent discussion of this issue.
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This betrays a general attraction towards the view that dispositions stand in need of tests. The attraction is manifest when Malzkorn says @. 456) that we have no epistemic reason to ascribe being red to a chameleon sitting in the dark on a green baize cloth, because whenever it is exposed to light it becomes green (let us suppose instantaneously). The realist accepts that some property of the chameleon makes it red whether or not it passes the test for redness. The realist, therefore, would allow dispositions to which we have no epistemic access; but I am not sure that Malzkorn would allow them, and certainly his six adequacy-conditions for a conditional analysis @p. 461-2) are not designed to accommodate them. Making the presence of dispositions dependent upon the passing of tests is a kind of anthropocentrism, of which Malzkorn accuses me in respect of abstract dispositions. I allow that such things may exist, and offer divulibiliQby 2 as an example (Dispositions, pp. 165-7). However, I do not have a 'long since abandoned anthropomorphic conception of mathematical functions' (Malzkorn, p. 462, fn. 12). I think that minddependent acts of division can test whether a number is divisible by 2, but the abstract power of the number resides in one of its standing properties, which we can call its being eva. A number has this property whether or not we test for it. We no more create the property by testing for it than we create solubility by testing for it. I conclude that, although there is much of interest and insight in Malzkorn's paper, he does not provide us with a tenable new theory of dispositions.
LANGFORD AND RAMACHANDRAN ON
OCCASIONAL IDENTITIES
Objects are occasionally identical if they are identical at some time, but distinct at another. In my Occasions ofIdati& (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)I defend the view that there are cases of occasionally identical objects. I call the thesis that there are such objects the 'occasional identity thesis' (OIT). Simon Langford and Murali Ramachandran argue that my defence of (OIT) fails.] In their paper, without endorsing (OIT), they offer an alternative reply to some of the objections to it. In what follows I shall attempt to meet their objections to my defence of (OIT), and I shall argue that their alternative reply is flawed. S. Langford and M. Ramachandran, 'Rigidity, Occasional Identity and Leibniz' Law', 7he Philosophical Quarterb, 50 (~ooo), pp. 518-26. O The Editors of Eu Atlomphophtral @r/m!y,
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