Jennifer McKitrick offers an opinionated guide to the philosophy of dispositions. In her view, when an object has a disposition, it is such that, if a certain type of circumstance were to occur, a certain kind of event would occur. Since it is very common for this to be the case for a variety of reasons, dispositions are very abundant and diverse. They 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.
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Jennifer McKitrick offers an opinionated guide to the philosophy of dispositions. In her view, when an object has a disposition, it is such that, if a certain type of circumstance were to occur, a certain kind of event would occur. Since this is very common for this to be the case, dispositions are an abundant and diverse feature of our world.
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1: Introduction to Dispositional Pluralism
2: The Failure of Conceptual Analysis
3: Abundant Properties
4: The Metaphysics of Dispositional Pluralism
5: Manifestations
6: Triggers
7: Ungrounded Dispositions
8: Extrinsic Dispositions
9: Causal Efficacy of Dispositions
10: Causal Relevance
11: Against Necessitarianism
12: Conclusion
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A stimulating treatment of a central philosophical topic
McKitrick's original account of dispositions gives them a pervasive role in our world
Offers a lucid guide to philosophical debate about dispositions, accessible to non-specialists
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Jennifer McKitrick is Professor and Chair of Philosophyat the Universuity of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she has worked since 2004.
A stimulating treatment of a central philosophical topic
McKitrick's original account of dispositions gives them a pervasive role in our world
Offers a lucid guide to philosophical debate about dispositions, accessible to non-specialists
Read more
Product details
ISBN
9780198717805
Published
2018
Publisher
Oxford University Press; Oxford University Press
Weight
566 gr
Height
242 mm
Width
165 mm
Thickness
22 mm
Age
P, 06
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Number of pages
270
Author