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Are Physical Properties Dispositions?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Nick Reeder
Nick Reeder*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of Minnesota
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Abstract

Averill (1990) argues that not every property is a disposition. I claim here that his reasoning is faulty, suffering at one point from a logical error and at other points from an inadequate account of counterfactuals.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 141 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1995

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Footnotes

†

I thank Ed Averill and Geoffrey Hellman for helpful comments.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, 355 Ford Hall, University of Minnesota, 224 Church Street S. E., Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.

References

Averill, E. W. (1990), “Are Physical Properties Dispositions?”, Philosophy of Science 57: 118–132.10.1086/289534CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, N. (1983), Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973), Counterfactuals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. H. (1974), “In Defense of Dispositions”, The Philosophical Review 83: 157–181.10.2307/2184136CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, K. R. (1957), “The Propensity Interpretation of the Calculus of Probability, and the Quantum Theory”, in Körner, S., (ed.), S. Körner, New York: Academic Press, pp. 65–70.Google Scholar