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In 'Finkish Dispositions' 1 David Lewis proposes an analysis of dispositions which improves on the simple conditional analysis. In this paper I show that Lewis' analysis still fails. I also argue that repairs are of no avail, and suggest why this is so.Thanks to Charlie Martin, the simple conditional analysis Something x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s iff, if x were to undergo stimulus s at time t, x would give response r has long been known to be incorrect. Martin's counter-examples 2 involve the possibility of finkish dispositions. Dispositions can be made to go away. A finkish disposition is one which is made to go away by the same stimulus s as the stimulus to which the disposition is a disposition to respond. So when x undergoes stimulus s the disposition disappears and so r does not arise. In Lewis' example, a sorcerer resolves to protect a fragile glass by ensuring that whenever the glass is struck a spell changes the glass in such a way that its fragility is lost. He does this before any shattering can take place, and thus prevents this from occurring. At the time of striking the glass is fragile, but it does not go on to shatter, as is required by the simple conditional analysis. (A fink is the industrial opposite of an agent provocateur -he is a worker in the secret pay of an employer whose job is to dissuade his co-workers from striking. He removes the disposition to strike.) Lewis argues that what is required for something to have a disposition is for it to have a certain sort of intrinsic property, its causal basis. He points out that dispositions sometimes (always?) take time to do their thing. What happens in the finkish cases is that this intrinsic property (the causal basis) is lost, after the object suffers the stimulus but before the response comes into being. What is needed for the response to occur is for the causal basis to remain for a sufficient time. And so Lewis' analysis goes thus: Something x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s iff, for some intrinsic property B that x has at t and for some time t´ after t, if x were to undergo stimulus s at time t and retain property B until time t´, s and x's having of B would jointly be an x-complete cause of x's giving response r.

Traditional approaches to epistemology have sought, unsuccessfully, to define knowledge in terms of justification. I follow Timothy Williamson in arguing that this is misconceived and that we should take knowledge as our fundamental epistemological notion. We can then characterise justification as a certain sort of approximation to knowledge. A judgement is justified if and only if the reason (if there is one) for a failure to know is to be found outside the subject’s mental states; that is, justified judging is possible knowing (where one world accessible from another if and only if they are identical with regard to a subject’s antecedent mental states and judgement forming processes). This view is explained and defended.