Topics Science

Question What is a "disposition"? Philosophers seem to use the word a lot, but I do not understand why. For example, to say that "Thunderclouds have a disposition to produce lightning" seems to say little more than "Thunderclouds produce lightning". What is the "little more", if anything?

Accepted:
January 18, 2006

Comments

Consider a match. It has the disposition -- the power, the capacity -- to produce fire. But suppose that as a matter of fact, the match is never struck. So it never, in fact, produces any fire. Yet it still had the power to produce fire. "This match produces fire" is false, yet "This match has the disposition to produce fire" is true. In your example, the thundercloud's disposition refers to (in Goodman's words) the "threats or promises" made by the thunderclouds , whereas a sentence like "Thunderclouds produce lightning" is true only if some thundercloud actually makes good on its threat.