Draft: Do Extrinsic Dispostions Need Extrinsic Causal Bases?

My paper 'Do Extrinsic Dispositions Need Extrinsic Causal Bases' has been accepted by Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (which, I have to say, is every bit as well-run as people say it is)!

I'm going to have to submit the final version soon (as they will be running an online early program starting this summer!). So this is my last chance to pick your bloggin' brains about this. Any last-minute comment no matter how big or small or whether here or by e-mail would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the abstract:

In this paper, I distinguish two often-conflated theses—the thesis that all dispositions are intrinsic properties and the thesis that the causal bases of all dispositions are intrinsic properties—and argue that the falsity of the former does not entail the falsity of the latter. In particular, I argue that extrinsic dispositions are a counterexample to first thesis but not necessarily to the second thesis, because an extrinsic disposition does not need to include any extrinsic property in its causal basis. I conclude by drawing some general lessons about the nature of dispositions and their relation to their causal bases.

New Metaphysics Drafts

I've got three new drafts of metaphysics papers up on my (new) website.

They are:
Balls and All
In this paper I lay out a rather unusual combination of views about spacetime, mereology and material objects. The view is coherent, I claim: and if it is coherent it seems to provide a counterexample to a number of assumptions that are made about what sorts of views have to go together. (In particular I use it to argue against a number of Ted Sider's arguments in his Four-Dimensionalism.)

Disposition Impossible, with C.S. Jenkins
In this paper Carrie and I investigate "unmanifestable dispositions": dispositions to PHI in C, where either PHI is impossible or C is. We argue that objects have such dispositions, and it is a non-trivial matter which ones they have. We also argue that these impossible dispositions play, or can play, significant theoretical roles. If we are right, a number of standard styles of theories of dispositions are in trouble.

The third is a piece of "applied metaphysics", I suppose, at least if work on counterfactuals counts as metaphysics. My impression is that it often is counted that way, even though it is at least as much philosophy of language and philosophy of science:

Why Historians (and Everyone Else) Should Care About Counterfactuals.

I discuss eight good reasons historians can usefully concern themselves with counterfatuals: some have been argued for before by others, but even in these cases I either have different characterisations of exactly why conditionals are important, or have different arguments for their importance in historical method.

Any feedback on any of the three papers would of course be welcome. (Obviously not any feedback. But you know what I mean.)

Dispositions and Interferences (Part II)

In Part I of this post, I suggested that the simple counterfactual analysis of disposition (SCA) may be saved from the usual counterexamples by introducing clauses to the effect that nothing interferes with o's disposition to M (or not M) when S.

More specifically, the "intereference free" counterfactual analysis (IFCA) would maintain that:

(IFCA) o is disposed to M when S iff:

1. (If it were the case that S, o would M AND it is not the case that something interferes with o's not being disposed to M when S) OR
2. Something interferes with o's being disposed to M when S.

As I noted, this analysis would be circular unless one were able to provide an analysis of 'x interferes with o's disposition (not) to M when S' without employing the notion of disposition.
This is my a first stab at doing so. (be warned that it's more than a bit convoluted)

(Interference)
--> For all ks, I_k interferes with o's being disposed to M when S iff:

1. It is the case that I₁ and … and I_k and … and I_n,
2. For each j, if it were the case that not (I₁ or … or I_(j–1) or I_(j+1) or … or  I_n), then it would not be the case that, if it were that S, then o would M.
3. There is some property G such that o has G and if it were the case that not-(I₁ or … or I_n), then it would be the case that: (3.1.) if it were the case that S and o retained G, o would M, and (3.2.) it is not the case that, if it were the case that not-S, then it would be the case that M and (3.3.) it is not the case that, if it were the case that S and O did not retain G, then o would M.
4. There is no property H such that it is not the case that o has H, and, if it were the case that not-(I₁ or … or I_n), then o would have H and, if o didn’t have H, then it would not be the case that, if it were that S, o would M.

As far as I can see, this can deal with all the usual counterexamples to (SCA). For example, there being an (inverse) fink attached to this live wire comes out as interfering with the wire's disposition to conduct electricity when touched by a conductor (had the fink not been there, the wire would have conducted electricity when touched by a conductor) and there being a chalice-hating wizard interferes with the chalice's disposition not to break when touched (because had there been no wizard, the chalice would not have broken when touched).

(Question A) Am I wrong in thinking that IFCA avoids the standard counterexamples to SCA?
(Question B) Can anyone think of any new counterexamples lurking in the background? (My spidey senses tell me that there is a whole battery of them just waiting to be thought of... :-))

One last thing: I am assuming that properties are sparse. So, in (IFCA 4.), H cannot be something along the lines of being such that no chalice-hating wizard is around or the likes, for I take there is no such property to be had. However, H can be something along the lines of being made of glass (So that the fact that, for example, the live wire is not made of glass does not come out as interfering with its disposition to conduct electricity when touched by a conductor).

Dispositions and Interferences (Part I)

According to the naive counterfactual analysis of dispositions (NCA), o is disposed to M when S if and only if, if it were the case that S, o would M. Unfortunately, NCA is too nice and simple to be true and counterexamples to both sides of the biconditional abound. These include (on the "if" side) finks (the device that would turn a dead wire into a live one if it were to be touched by a conductor) and masks (the carefully wrapped but nonetheless fragile Ming vase) and (on the "only if" side) mimicks (the golden chalice hated by a wizard who would destroy it, if something where to touch it).

As a result of these counterexamples, some have abandoned NCA in favour of some different analysis, others have tried to fix it. Both projects, however, have proved to be quite tricky. Nevertheless, I still hope NCA can be fixed (it's too nice to give it up). The idea I'm exploring right now is that there is a common theme to all counterexamples to NCA. In all of them something is interfering with o's disposition to M when S. So, to avoid the counterexamples NCA should be fixed by adding 'unless something interferes with o's disposition to M when S'. Now, of course, this cannot be the whole story unless we are also able to give an analysis of 'something interferes with o's disposition to M when S' without mentioning 'o's disposition to M when S' otherwise our analysis would simply be circular (and this is far from being an easy task but I'll leave my suggestion for doing so for future post).

Now, the problem is that, as far as I can see, this general strategy seems to be quite obvious and yet, to my knowledge, no one has tried to pursue it so far. So, am I missing something? Have there been any attempts to pursue this general strategy I don't know of? And, if not, is this due to the fact that there is something clearly wrong with it (or is just due to the difficulty of analyzing the concept of interference in non-dispositional terms)? (One thing that could seem to be wrong is that in the case of mimicks there would seem to be no disposition to interfere with (and that is exactly the problem). However, I think this problem can be dealt with by claiming that there is, in fact, a disposition that is being interefered with--i.e. the chalyce's sturdiness. And that if nothing was interfering with that disposition the chalice would not appear to be fragile.)