Dispositions and Laws of Nature

Abstracts

What is a Disposition?

Troy Cross

I argue that attempts to reductively explain the categorical/dispositional
distinction are bound to fail because of certain symmetry
considerations. In spite of this failure however, the distinction
should be upheld as a primitive. Once the distinction is taken as a
primitive, the doomed attempts at reductive explanation are
transformed into circular but interesting and informative accounts.

Powers and Qualities

John Heil

Philosophers have been attracted to the idea that
dispositions and qualities are related asymmetrically and
contingently. I suggest that Locke may have been right: powers are
qualities; qualities, powers. Application of a view of this kind to
issues in the philosophy of mind yields surprising results.

Four Issues about Properties

David Armstrong

Four issues are canvassed:
(1) Should we think of properties as universals or as tropes?
(2) Should we adopt a subject/attribute conception of particulars, or are they
just bundles of properties?
(3) Should we have a categoricalist (quality) view of properties or are they
just powers (dispositions)?
(4) When a property is truly predicated of a particular, is this truth
contingent or is it necessary?
The main concern of the paper will be with (3) and (4), which are less well-worn
issues than (1) and (2).

Are Dispositions Causally Relevant?

Jennifer McKitrick

In order to determine whether dispositions are causally relevant, first we have
to get clear about what causal relevance is. Several characteristics of causal
relevance have been suggested, including Explanatory Power, Counterfactual
Dependence, Lawfullness, Essentialism, Exclusion, Independence, and Minimal
Sufficiency. Different accounts will yield different answers about the causal
relevance of dispositions. However, accounts of causal relevance that are the
most plausible, for independent reasons, render the verdict that dispositions are
causally relevant.

Laws and Their Stability

Marc Lange

Many philosophers have believed that the laws of nature differ from
the accidental truths in their invariance under counterfactual suppositions.
Roughly speaking, the laws would still have held had q been the case, for any
q that is consistent with the laws. (Trivially, no accident would still
have held under every such counterfactual supposition.) The main problem
with this slogan (even if it is true) is that it uses the laws
themselves to delimit q's range.

I shall present a means of distinguishing the laws from the
accidents, in terms of their range of invariance under counterfactual
anteccedents, that does not appeal to physical modalities (or any cognate
notion) in delimiting the relevant range of counterfactual perturbations.
If time permits, I shall use this framework to explore the
autonomy of "special sciences".

The relation between dispositions and laws

Stephen Mumford

There has been a temptation in the past to account for dispositions by
some reference to laws. Increasingly, this view has been regarded as
upside down. Laws are to be accounted for in terms of dispositional
properties. This would explain the apparent dispositional force of many
laws. But what is the exact nature of this relation? Do laws supervene
upon dispositions? Do laws have a distinct existence over and above the
existence of dispositional properties? Are any other categories required
for there to be laws? I will try to make some progress on these
questions and thereby begin to construct a theory of laws in nature.

Alice Drewery

What is the relationship between laws and dispositions? Dispositional
Essentialism holds that dispositions are the truth-makers of at least
some (fundamental) laws. This is because some or all kinds have certain
dispositional properties, and therefore certain default causal behaviour, as
part of their real essences. The claim that this causal behaviour flows
from the essence of the kind explains the necessity of the laws of
nature, and indeed replaces the tricky notion of physical necessity with the
more familiar metaphysical necessity associated with a posteriori real
essences.

I will not directly discuss the controversial claim that at least some
laws are metaphysically necessary. Instead I will examine some of the
consequences of this view for the relationship between laws and
dispositions. How should we understand the necessary link between
dispositions and behaviour, given that the possession of a disposition
does not entail the causal behaviour (many factors can prevent a
disposition's being manifested)? Which laws can and cannot be
understood in terms of dispositions, and is all causal behaviour ultimately
describable in terms of disposition ascriptions? What constraints does this
view place on any theory of natural kinds and properties, and how
reductionist is it?

How General is Generalized Scientific Essentialism?

Erik Anderson

I look at a recent argument in defense of a doctrine which I will call
‘generalized scientific essentialism’. This is the doctrine according to which
not only are some facts about substance composition metaphysically
necessary, but in addition some facts about substance behavior are
metaphysically necessary. I explore the degree to which this new
argument provides a means of generalizing classical scientific essentialism
to include substance behavior, and therefore a means of defending a
strong necessitarian theory of natural laws.

Measurability and Laws of Nature

John Roberts

I present a sketch of a new philosophical account of laws of nature, which
I call the measurability account of laws (MAL). The MAL has an unusual
logical form: It takes the primary nomological concept to be that of a law
relative to a theory, and it takes the concept of a law of nature to be a
derivative concept, definable as a law relative to a true theory. The MAL
works best as a law of fundamental physical laws, rather than of laws in
general. I try to motivate the project of seeking an account that applies
only to fundamental physical laws, and provide a little motivation for the
MAL itself.