Dispositional Pluralism

Abstract

Dispositional Pluralism is the view that dispositional properties are abundant and diverse. When something has a disposition, it is such that, if it were in a certain kind of circumstance, a certain kind of effect would occur. Dispositions include such varied properties as character traits like a hero’s courage, characteristics of physical objects like a wine glass’s fragility, and characteristics of microphysical entities like an electron’s charge. Some dispositions are natural while others are non-natural. Some dispositions called “powers” are ungrounded while non-fundamental dispositions are grounded in other properties. Some dispositions manifest constantly, some of them manifest spontaneously, while others manifest only when they are triggered to do so. Some dispositions manifest by causing another dispositional property to be instantiated, while others have manifestations that involve non-dispositional properties and relations. Some dispositions are intrinsic to their bearers while others are extrinsic. Some of them are causally relevant to their manifestations while others are not. Some dispositions manifest in some particular way in particular circumstances, while other dispositions manifest in various ways in various circumstances. What makes all of these diverse properties dispositions is their connection to a certain kind of counterfactual fact. Nevertheless, disposition ascriptions are not semantically reducible to counterfactual claims.

Towards a Unified Dispositional Framework for Realizable Entities

“…This practical attitude towards dispositions can be theoretically undergirded by McKitrick's [14] theory of dispositions that is pragmatically motivated by a dispositional analysis of various entities such as character traits and gender [23] (refer to Toyoshima et al [24] for a formal analysis of her dispositional theory of gender). She argues for what she calls "five marks of dispositionality", according to which a property (instance) is a disposition if it ([14], p. 2):…”

“…Assuming that dispositional pluralism is general enough to cover a large number of realizable entities, this would amount to the question of what dispositions in dispositional pluralism can have in common. To address it, we will consider McKitrick's [14] discussion on causal bases of dispositions. This notion should not be conflated with material bases of dispositions in BFO (see Section 2), not least because causal bases are properties of the disposition bearer but material bases are its material parts.…”

“…McKitrick affirms the causal thesis but denies the distinctness thesis. In her understanding: "A causal basis is a property of an object which is, or would be, causally relevant to the manifestation [realization] of a disposition of that object" ( [14], p. 132). Note that a disposition can have multiple causal bases because: "if some property is causally relevant to a manifestation [realization], this does not rule out some other property also being causally relevant to that manifestation.…”

“…Section 2 describes how BFO represents realizable entities, dispositions, and roles. Section 3 develops one way of classifying systematically realizable entities, taking a cue from McKitrick's [14] pragmatically motivated approach to dispositions. Section 4 is devoted to the discussion on the potential application of our proposal.…”

Grounding theories of powers

“…There are also many necessitarians who tend not to use essentialist language but who nonetheless agree that some natural properties are individuated, at least in part, by the powers that they confer (e.g. Cartwright 1989;Chakravartty 2007;Fales 1990;Harré and Madden 1975;Kistler 2002;Marmodoro 2017;Maxwell 1968;McKitrick 2018;Molnar 2003;Mumford 2004;Vetter 2015;Whittle 2008;Williams 2019). Such philosophers therefore count as dispositional essentialists as we are using the term.…”