Abstract
Dispositions can be masked: some state of affairs might obtain which would prevent an entity from displaying the manifestation characteristic of its disposition. Yet discussions of masks overlook a number of key problems, chief among them the probabilistic nature of many dispositional masks. In this paper, I highlight the manner in which past analyses of dispositional masks have been unable to solve the problem of masks. I propose an analysis of dispositional masks which focuses on this and a number of other problems, which I argue can address them better than past accounts can. I argue that some entity masks some disposition just in case that entity makes it such that the disposition is less likely to manifest, or such that it will manifest to a lower degree.
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04 April 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04139-w
Notes
Lewis (1997), for instance, assumes the intrinsicness of dispositions; McKitrick (2003) argues for the possibility of extrinsic dispositions. Clarke (2008, 2010) and Kittle (2015b) argue that intrinsic interferers (a blanket term for masks, finks, and antidotes) are possible, while Choi (2005, 2011, 2012, 2017a, 2017b) argues that they are not. Choi distinguishes between dispositional and categorical properties by arguing that categorical properties such as triangularity can be intrinsically finked, while dispositional properties such as fragility cannot.
I draw the use of hyphenated specifications from Bird (2000). The information contained within the hyphens should be understood as a component part of the circumstances in which the entity is disposed to display its characteristic manifestation.
Fisher is hardly the only philosopher to raise this point. Such distinctions can be traced back at least to Mumford (1998). Malzkorn (2000), and Choi (2008) make similar suggestions; Lewis (1997), arguably, does so as well. Though they vary on whether they take such conditions to be distinct from the stimulus conditions for a disposition, Fisher argues that proposals according to which such conditions must be conjoined with a stimulus are alike in spirit to his own.
I will argue below that a disposition might manifest even if it is masked. As such, examining the actual sequence of events to determine whether a disposition is masked or not might sometimes lead us astray. I will return to this issue in Sect. 3.2 of this paper below.
Choi (2017a) argues against the possibility of intrinsic interferers by means of this distinction. He argues that for some case in which an entity’s disposition fails to manifest in the presence of its stimulus, we would do better to categorize its failure as the result of its disposition being probabilistic. When Randy drops his football en route to the endzone, we should not say that he failed to score because his ability to score was subject to intrinsic interference; instead, we should say that Randy has a probabilistic disposition to score a touchdown. While I agree that this is the best explanation for this particular case, there are other cases for which the best explanation would seem to be an intrinsic interferer: alcohol intoxication, for instance, is an intrinsic state which interferes with certain capacities of its bearer.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me on this point.
My contention is not that in such cases, the glass’ disposition is masked in the explanatory sense and not masked in the predictive sense. I am arguing that in both senses, the glass’ disposition is masked, but that even if one wants to hold that, in the explanatory sense, it is better to say that the disposition is not masked, we still must say that it is masked in the predictive sense.
This strategy must be distinguished from a similar strategy: the move from ‘conventional’ dispositional predicates (e.g. fragility) to ‘canonical’ dispositional predicates (e.g. the disposition to break when dropped). Lewis advocates this move as well, but it is not, in itself, his approach to the problem of masks: he argues that a proper analysis of a disposition can avoid masks by means of a specified antecedent. With respect to poison, for instance, Lewis offers the following: “We might offhand define a poison as a substance that is disposed to cause death if ingested. But that is rough: the specifications both of the response and of the stimulus stand in need of various corrections. To take just one of the latter corrections: we should really say 'if ingested without its antidote'” (1997: p. 153).
It might be objected that the circumstances do not obtain, as he is bound. One might hold that we should attribute to him the more specific dispositional ability to save-drowning-children-while-not-bound. Yet this approach runs into the problem discussed above with the strategy of getting specific.
I take it that this position is absurd because, as noted above, attributions of masks must serve a predictive capacity to be at all philosophically or scientifically useful.
Martin (1994) uses the term ‘reverse-cycle finks’ for finks which would imbue an entity with a disposition if the stimulus conditions for that disposition were to obtain. A dead wire is not disposed to conduct electricity, but if it were attached to a reverse-cycle fink, it would turn on whenever touched.
Contessa offers a similar analysis, mutatis mutandis, for constructive interferers: mimics and reverse-cycle finks. I will not discuss that analysis in detail here, but I hold that the same objections I level against DI apply.
Satisfaction of the causal Markov condition requires that all X ∈ V are probabilistically dependent of their non-effects given their causes. The do-operator is Pearl’s (2000): do(xi) indicates that xi’s value is set to xi by an intervention.
It should be noted that changing Gebharter and Fischer’s account slightly would address this problem: instead of holding that a mask must cancel the causal influence of the manifestation, they could hold that the mask must reduce the causal influence of the manifestation. The analysis of masks that I will offer in Sect. 5 below can be wedded to Gebharter and Fischer’s account—as it can be wedded to any account of dispositions—and can allow their view to overcome this problem.
Note that my discussion of (LESS) resembles in part Manley and Wasserman’s (2008) discussion of the predicate (MORE). Manley and Wasserman also note the two dimensions along which an entity can be more disposed to A than some other entity. Unlike Manley and Wasserman, however, I do not take it that the possibility of comparative disposition ascriptions undermines the conditional analysis. As such, I intend for the analysis of (LESS) that I offer here to be used in conjunction with a conditional analysis of dispositions.
To say that G would break in 50% of cases is to say that for some set of nomic duplicates of G, if those duplicates were exposed to the stimulus associated with G’s disposition, the manifestation would be displayed in 50% of cases.
We can also consider a variant of this case in which the novice sorcerer would cast two spells: one causing the bubble wrap to disappear, and the other causing the glass to cease to be fragile. In such a case, similarly, condition (1) would require that we examine only nomic tests in which the bubble wrap remains present and G’s intrinsic properties do not change. As such, the bubble wrap would count as a mask prior to the time at which the spells are cast, but (obviously) not after.
The proportion of cases in which G will break and the degree to which G will break is the same, after the spell has been cast, regardless of whether G is wrapped in bubble wrap. As such, the consequence of the counterfactual conditional in condition (1) is false. Note that the antecedent of the counterfactual here should not be read as ‘if G had retained the property in virtue of which it is disposed to break when dropped,’ as such a reading would render the counterfactual true. Thanks to an anonymous referee for help clarifying this point.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this objection.
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Thanks to Eddy Nahmias and two anonymous referees at this journal for numerous helpful comments on this paper.
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Turyn, G. On dispositional masks. Synthese 199, 11865–11886 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03315-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03315-0