Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Dispositions

  • A Design Argument from the Cognitive Reliability of Our Senses: A Proof of Classical Theism?

    Substack latest. I present an argument that many will take as supporting classical theism. But I point out that, so taken, the argument is not rationally inescapable or philosophically dispositive since it may also be construed along Nagelian lines to support an inherent immanent teleology in nature.   Topics include rationality, intentionality, both intrinsic and…

  • Fragility and Mortality

    A piece of glass is fragile in that it is disposed to shatter if suitably struck. But there is no inevitability in any fragile object's ever breaking. There is no necessity that the disposition be realized. A chocolate bar is disposed to melt in certain circumstances.  It has this disposition at every time at which…

  • What is Potentiality?

    Substack latest. An exploration of a much-misunderstood notion.

  • Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

    Here at MavPhil Strictly Philosophical

  • Is Talk of ‘Possible Worlds’ Wholly Dispensable?

    I made a bold claim earlier: If I am right, the patois of possible worlds is a dispensable manner of speaking: we can make every [modal] point we want to make without engaging in possible worlds talk.  What I just said is not perfectly obvious and there may be counterexamples.  Here is a candidate counterexample…

  • Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and a Powers Theory of Modality

    This is the third in a series on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). #1 is here and #2 here. Most of us hold that not everything possible is actual, and that not everything actual is necessary. I will assume that most of us are right. A doctrine entails modal…

  • Two George Molnars

    Here: Meet George Molnar. Not the witty cartoonist, but the other one: a thwarted philosopher whose wild life finally found some meaning after his death. Did you think there was only one George Molnar – the witty and urbane Hungarian whose cartoons graced the pages of the Herald for many years? Well, think again. To…

  • On Possibility

     David Brightly comments: The view I've arrived at is that sentences involving 'possibility' can be re-written into sentences involving just 'possibly', and that our modal notions arise from our encounter with inference. I'm happy to say, There is the possibility that the bulb will shatter — we say things like that all the time — provided…

  • Does the Potentiality Argument Prove Too Much?

    Here is a simple version of the Potentiality Argument (PA): 1. All potential persons have a right to life.2. The human fetus is a potential person.—–3. The human fetus has a right to life. Does PA 'prove too much'? It does if the proponent of PA has no principled way of preventing PA from transmogrifying…

  • What is Potentiality? An Exploration

    Our Czech friend Vlastimil V. writes, I believe it is precisely the potentiality — or the in principle capacity — of logical thinking, free decisions, or higher emotions that makes killing human embryos morally problematic, seemingly unlike the killing of non-human embryos. This seems to me a promising hypothesis, to say the least. But I…

  • Intentional Objects and Dispositional Objects

    One who balks at intentional objects on the ground of their queerness will presumably also balk at dispositional objects.  But there is reason to speak of dispositional objects. And there is the outside chance that  the foes of intentional objects might be 'softened up' by a discussion of dispositions and their objects.  But I am…

  • Intentionality, Potentiality, and Dispositionality: Some Points of Analogy

    The influential Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch.…

  • An Elementary Confusion Regarding Dispositions and Potentialities

    C. B. Martin, "Dispositions and Conditionals," The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 174, January 1994, p. 1: We must see that dispositions are actual, though their manifestations may not be. It is an elementary confusion to think of unmanifesting dispositions as unactualized possibilia, though that may characterize unmanifested manifestations. Consider two panes of thin glass…

  • ‘Probative Overkill’ Objections to the Potentiality Principle

    Here is a simple version of the Potentiality Argument (PA): 1. All potential persons have a right to life.2. The human fetus is a potential person.—–3. The human fetus has a right to life. Does PA 'prove too much'? It does if the proponent of PA has no principled way of preventing PA from transmogrifying…

  • The Potentiality Universality Principle and Feinberg’s “Logical Point”

    I have already introduced  PIP, PEP, and PAP as three principles governing potentiality in the precise sense relevant to the Potentiality Argument. Now I introduce a fourth principle for your inspection which I will call the Potentiality Universality Principle: PUP: Necessarily, if a normal F has the potentiality to become a G, then every normal…