Realism, Functionalism and the Conditional Analysis of Dispositions

• Published in: The Philosophical quarterly Vol. 50; no. 201; pp. 452 - 469
• Main Author: Malzkorn, Wolfgang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK and Boston, USA Blackwell Publishers 01.10.2000; Blackwell Publishers Ltd; Blackwell; University of St. Andrews for the Scots Philosophical Club; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Ascriptions; Causation; Contrafactuals; Cubes; Functionalism; Functions; Philosophical analysis; Philosophical logics. Philosophy of language; Philosophical object; Philosophical realism; Philosophy; Property rights; Sugars; Ontology; Lewis (D.); Test; Realism; Disposition; Second Order Logic; Reductionism; Implication; Property; Functionalism
• ISSN: 0031-8094; 1467-9213
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00199

The analysis of disposition concepts in terms of conditionals has recently been challenged by C.B. Martin's electro‐fink examples, by means of which Martin tries to refute the project of a conditional analysis of dispositions in general, and to defend thereby a realistic account of dispositions. In replying to Martin, D. Lewis has presented a new and complex conditional analysis not subject to Martin's counter‐examples. However, according to Lewis' analysis, dispositions are second‐order properties and thus not efficacious. I argue that dispositions are efficacious properties, and therefore deserve a different analysis, in terms of counterfactual conditionals; this is not subject to Martin's counter‐examples. I show that my analysis is not anti‐realistic. On the contrary, my conceptual analysis of dispositions does not imply any ontological reduction that would deprive dispositions of their status as real properties of things.