A Christian Analysis

Dispositional properties have been receiving an increasing amount of attention in the last decade from metaphysicians and philosophers of science. The proper semantics and ontology remains controversial. This paper offers an analysis and ontology of dispositional properties rooted in Christology and the biblical doctrine of creation. The analysis overcomes the standard problems faced by all such analyses and provides an account of “ungrounded dispositions.” The analysis involves a version of a Leibnizian-Aristotelian notion of possible worlds and provides a novel notion of truth-makers for subjunctive conditionals. 1. E.g., in theoretical physics, chemistry, biological psychiatry, epistemology, educational theory, and social theory. 322 PhilosoPhia Christi “proclivity,” “tendency,” “capability,” “ability,” “aptitude,” or some other such thing. Moreover, discovering and mathematically describing dispositional properties is what science primarily aims at.2 It is almost obvious that to attribute a dispositional property to an object is to indicate what events to expect under the right conditions.3 If x is fragile, expect disintegration under the right conditions; if x is poisonous, expect sickness or death under the right conditions. However, the issue confronting attempts at analysis is whether those events are due to some real property (which the disposition term denotes) or whether those events are all there is to a dispositional property. The demonstrated shortcomings of the material conditional analyses in first-order logic noted by Rudolph Carnap in 1936 has led many, including Gilbert Ryle and Nelson Goodman, to account for dispositional properties in terms of events alone by way of a subjunctive conditional analysis: (SCA) “Object x has disposition D” means “Were x in circumstances C, then x would manifest D.” The story has oft been told of the shortcomings of this analysis and its revisions.5 The inadequacy of the Stalnaker-Lewis possible-worlds approach to subjunctive conditionals has also often been noted.6 The primary problems for the latter are specifying what counts as “nearness” or “similarity” of worlds and how one comes to know such things. It is not my purpose to review the various proposals and their shortcomings. My aim in this paper is to offer a new analysis and a corresponding ontology. . See I. J. Thompson, “Real Dispositions in the Physical World,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (1988): 67–79. James Ladyman and Don Ross claim that “science describes the objective modal structure of the world” (Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 007), 130). 3. Mauro Dorato discusses the predictive role disposition attributions serve in ordinary language in The Software of the Universe: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Laws of Nature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 005). . The latter view owes much to Bacon, Descartes, and Boyle, but reached its zenith under the twentieth-century empiricist hegemony of Carnap and Quine. The former view was held by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Suarez and various dynamist natural philosophers (e.g., Gilbert, Kepler, Greene, and Boscovich) and enjoys a current revival among many philosophers of science, metaphysicians, and physicists. 5. See François Schmitz, “Dispositions and Counterfactuals: From Carnap to Goodman’s Children and Grandchildren,” in Dispositions and Causal Powers, ed. Max Kistler and Bruno Gnassounou (Aldershot: Ashgate, 007): 43–66. 6. See Wolfgang Malzkorn, “Defining Disposition Concepts: A Brief History of the Problem,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 3 ( 001): 335–53; and Stathis Psillos, Causation and Explanation (Chesham: Acumen, 00 ). Some Observations toward a Generic Analysis What, then, is meant by such dispositional attributions in philosophical, scientific, and ordinary discourse? What are we asserting when we make such statements? If there are real dispositions, capacities, and powers, just exactly what are they? Observe, first of all, that a dispositional term seems to denote a thing’s7 state of being. However, it is a special kind of state: it is a state of being poised either to effect a change or to be changed. Whereas electrons do not change essentially when manifesting charge by repelling other negatively charged particles, aspirin tablets do change when manifesting solubility. Secondly, it follows that, in both cases, dispositional properties appear to be directed toward some kind of event. Putting these two initial observations together, we may hold that a dispositional property seems to be a directed potentiality of some kind. On this initial synthesis, an aspirin tablet’s solubility, for example, denotes its state of being-poised to be changed, which is its dissolving, so that to attribute solubility to an aspirin tablet is to refer to a specific kind of potentiality. Let us then observe these definitions: (DEF) A dispositional property of an object, substance or system is its state of being poised to effect (or to be subject to) some type of causal process. (DEF) The type of terminating event in a type of causal process that a disposition is a state of being poised to effect (or to be subject to) is its manifestation-type. Shattering, for example, is a token of the manifestation-type associated with fragility. Dissolving is a token of the manifestation-type associated with solubility. Some dispositions have only one type of manifestation and others have multiple manifestation-types. Most dispositions have initiating conditions that, under normal conditions, seem sufficient to initiate a causal process that ends in a manifestation event.9 Striking a vase is an initiating condition of fragility that ends in shattering; seeing a person in pain or in need is an initiating condition for compassion. Some dispositional properties have more than one set of sufficient initiating conditions. In many cases, these may be fulfilled in degrees or blocked all together. Sometimes dispositional properties are not manifested 7. I deny that they are properties of kinds of things. My view overcomes Alice Drewery’s objections in that it treats objects, substances, and systems to be nothing more than structures of dispositional properties, “Dispositions and Ceteris Paribus Laws,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science ( 001): 7 3–33. . In my view, there are several “types of causal processes.” Brian Ellis refers to dispositional properties by the term, “dynamic universal” in The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 00 ), 68. 9. This seems to be what underlies a disposition’s being a relation describable isomorphically by mathematical models. See Dorato, The Software of the Universe. Walter sChultz 323 324 PhilosoPhia Christi because of interference of some kind or because their initiating conditions are not met in the first place. A museum, for example, takes great pains to ensure that one of its ancient Chinese vases never manifests its fragility. A complete analysis should represent and explain these three alternatives: (1) normal manifestation, (2) nonmanifestation because no event occurs that meets the initiating conditions, and (3) nonmanifestation because some other causal process interferes. We have this definition: (DEF) A dispositional property’s initiating conditions are those conditions that are sufficient to begin a causal process that terminates in a manifestation event. With few exceptions, objects retain their dispositional properties throughout the duration of their nonmanifestation. In other words, dispositional properties usually seem to be present in their subjects even when such dispositional properties are not manifested or even if they are never manifested. This is part of what I had in mind when I first said that dispositional terms denote states of being poised to effect a change or to be changed. Thus, dispositional terms appear to denote properties of some kind that are responsible for these possibilities. In other words, something x has a potentiality, because of its having some other property y. The toxicity of arsenic, for example, points to its potential for causing sickness or death because of something essential to it as arsenic and because of something essential to the physiology of mammals. An electron repels, because it is negatively charged. There are also second-order dispositions, which are dispositions to acquire, modify or lose first-order dispositions. Whatever accounts for an object’s being in a particular state-of-beingpoised to effect or to being subject to some causal process involving initiating conditions and a manifestation is that property’s grounds (sometimes called categorical base or causal base). In other words, the grounds of a dispositional property seems to be what it is about an object that involves it in causal processes. Let us then observe this definition: (DEF) The grounds of a dispositional property of a material object or substance is an intrinsic, intentional, causally-efficacious, feature. With few exceptions, the grounds or causal base of a dispositional property is a “lower-level” physical feature of the object possessing the property. However, such physical features are usually structures of other lower-level dispositional properties that, in turn, may be structures of even other lowerlevel dispositional properties, and so “all the way down” to an apparently ungrounded disposition. These ungrounded or irreducible dispositional properties seem to have no lower-level components that could be the cause of its manifestation.10 In sum, since a dispositional property D of some object 10. I am indebted to the physical account given by I. J. Thompson in his unpublished manuscript “Pragmatic Ontology I: Identifying Propensity as Substance.” or substance x seems to be a state of being poised to effect a change (be a causal agent) or to be changed (be a causal subject), it involves x—by virtue of some further property of x, called grounds—in a type of causal process C, which has initiating conditions and manifestations. Eventually, there are three kinds of natural dispositional properties that I want to account for: dispositions per se, capacities, and powers. Space precludes giving a detailed account of all of them in this paper, but let us initially say that for an object, substance or system to have a disposition is to be constituted in such a manner so as to be potentially subject to a token of a type of causal process and to have a capacity is to be constituted in such a manner so as to be potentially an agent of a token of a type of causal process. (I am using the term, “agent,” figuratively. Let us understand the term, “causal process” to denote a sequence of states that may be either deterministic or stochastic.) Each dispositional property involves an intrinsic feature called grounds. Capacities are complex dispositional properties that have at least one power as a component. Charge and mass are examples of basic powers. There is one more crucial point that I must add to this general conception. Whether or not the causal processes associated with dispositional properties are realized depends on what the actual world plan includes. The “actual world plan,” as I use the term is a representation for the physical universe. It is a consistent, infinite, strict linear-order of discrete total world states or situations according to which the physical world is realized. If the mass-energy distribution depends on something else, then the actual world plan represents what that something else realizes. I will propose this in more detail in the section devoted to ontological explanation.