Abstract
This paper employs some outcomes (for the most part due to David Lewis) of the contemporary debate on the metaphysics of dispositions to evaluate those dispositional analyses of meaning that make use of the concept of a disposition in ideal conditions. The first section of the paper explains why one may find appealing the notion of an ideal-condition dispositional analysis of meaning and argues that Saul Kripke’s well-known argument against such analyses is wanting. The second section focuses on Lewis’ work in the metaphysics of dispositions in order to call attention to some intuitions about the nature of dispositions that we all seem to share. In particular, I stress the role of what I call ‘Actuality Constraint’. The third section of the paper maintains that the Actuality Constraint can be used to show that the dispositions with which ideal-condition dispositional analyses identify my meaning addition by ‘+’ do not exist (in so doing, I develop a suggestion put forward by Paul Boghossian). This immediately implies that ideal-condition dispositional analyses of meaning cannot work. The last section discusses a possible objection to my argument. The point of the objection is that the argument depends on an illicit assumption. I show (1) that, in fact, the assumption in question is far from illicit and (2) that even without this assumption it is possible to argue that the dispositions with which ideal-condition dispositional analyses identify my meaning addition by ‘+’ do not exist.
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Notes
An anonymous referee for this journal remarked that my discussion seems mostly directed at a conceptual analysis claim, rather than at some a posteriori form of reduction. The referee is right, and, therefore, I think I owe the reader some explanation here. Well, take a paradigmatic example of a posteriori reduction: that of heat to molecular motion. It should be clear that even if such a reduction can be seen as an explanation of the phenomenon of heat, it would be a mystification to say that before the reduction we had no idea of what heat is. And, indeed, it seems that if we had not had the faintest idea of what heat is, no a posteriori reduction would have been possible (actually, the issue would not even have arisen). Now, I am pretty sure that many semantic dispositionalists believe the case of (the mental state of) meaning to be analogous to that of heat; however, I think they are wrong: I do not believe that we have a clear enough idea of what meaning is. The very fact that meaning has been identified with things as diverse as qualia and dispositions is inconsistent with the idea that we have strong enough intuitions on the matter. Of course, we have a use for sentences of the form “X means Y by Z”, but this is fully compatible with the idea that the notion of meaning relevant in this paper is, say, a philosophical daydream. What we need here is an Erläuterung of the concept. Hence my conceptual-analysis reading of semantic dispositionalism.
It is worth noting that Boghossian works with a wider concept than that of ideal conditions. This allows him to apply his remarks to theories such as Dretske’s, too.
For some more recent remarks about the Argument from Finitude and Mistake see Boghossian (2008, pp. 495–497).
Fara (2005) can be seen as a development of some core ideas of Hampshire’s work, even if Fara does not mention it.
In what follows, my use of the term ‘property’ will be somewhat loose: I will use it to refer both to universals and to the corresponding tropes.
As Lewis himself stresses (Lewis 1997, p. 152), the expression ‘categorical bases’ may be a bit too strong. Whatever the terminology, the concept of causal basis is absolutely central to the Reformed Conditional Analysis: ‘A finkish disposition is a disposition with a finkish base’ (Lewis 1997, p. 149) [see also the remarks on the ‘variety of finkishness that has so far escaped our notice’ in Lewis (1997, pp. 150–151) and those on the ‘modification of the notion of causal basis’ in Hauska (2008b, pp. 26–27)].
For a promising version of this suggestion see Hauska (2009). Here Hauska maintains that, contrary appearances notwithstanding, the ceteris paribus clause can be non-vacuously specified by means of a combination of description, exemplification and enumeration [see (2009, p. 319) for a clear formulation of Hauska’s claim; see also Hauska (2008a) for a convincing criticism of the idea that the ceteris paribus clause can be non-vacuously specified by means of an appeal to normal conditions]. Hauska also notes that since the ceteris paribus clause solves the problem posed by finkish dispositions too, its addition allows us to drop the requirement that the grounding property be retained for long enough (2009, pp. 331–333). The remarks of Lewis (1997, pp. 152–154) may seem in line with Hauska’s approach, as Hauska himself seems to tentatively suggest in (2009, note 12). Implicitly, Bird (2007, pp. 31–41) suggests the complete opposite (in Bird’s terminology, Hauska’s approach is a version of response (ii), while Bird maintains that Lewis’ remarks are a version of response (i); truth be told, what Bird regards as the correct reading of Lewis’ remarks looks fairly similar to a version of response (ii)). On this issue see also Fara (2005, pp. 49–50) and Manley and Wasserman (2008, pp. 63–64).
It is worth noting that my argument is fully consistent with the idea that the intuitions in question leave room for some exceptions. In particular, it is consistent both with the existence of dispositions with extrinsic causal bases and with that of baseless dispositions, both of which would be counterexamples to the Actuality Constraint [it is important not to mistake the notion of a baseless disposition, i.e. a disposition with no causal basis, for that of a bare disposition, i. e. a disposition with no distinct causal basis—for this latter concept see McKitrick (2003b)]. McKitrick (2003a) presents several examples of (alleged) extrinsic dispositions, and some of them (truth be told, the less convincing, at least in my opinion) are also examples of dispositions with (allegedly) extrinsic causal bases [note that, as Lewis himself stresses in (1997, pp. 151–152), the Reformed Conditional Analysis is consistent both with the idea that dispositions are identical with their causal bases and with the idea that they are not—on this issue see, e.g., Prior, Pargetter and Jackson (1982, pp. 253–255) and Johnston (1992, p. 234); note also that there is a trivial sense in which all dispositions are extrinsic—see Lewis (1997, pp. 147–148) and McKitrick (2003a, pp. 158–159); for a useful discussion of McKitrick’s work see Bird (2007, pp. 29–31)]. As for baseless dispositions, I am inclined to accept Hauska’s argument to the conclusion that there are not (2008b, pp. 32–41) [the argument is an attempt to amend that of Prior, Pargetter and Jackson (1982, pp. 251–253); note that Hauska maintains that, in virtue of its commitment to the causal efficacy of some dispositional properties, his argument relies on the idea that dispositions are, at least sometimes, identical with their causal bases (2008b, p. 42); for the link between the ‘identity thesis’ and the ‘efficacy thesis’ see, e. g., Prior, Pargetter and Jackson (1982, pp. 255–256) and McKitrick (2005)]. Be that as it may, my argument does not assume either that there are no extrinsic causal bases or that there are no baseless dispositions. What it does assume is that all the dispositions relevant here have intrinsic causal bases.
These remarks are, of course, highly speculative. Their role is just to explain why I am inclined to believe that even if (2) actually were the analysis that most accurately depicts the situation, we nevertheless would lack the relevant dispositions. My “official position” on the topic is the one I argued for in the first part of this last section: (2) is not the analysis that most accurately depicts the situation (mutatis mutandis for the Reformed Dispositional Analysis).
In fact, the previous remarks would be a refutation of the idea that the relevant causal basis involves only my current, non-extra-strengthened brain. I tried to keep things simple.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of (some parts of) this paper were given at the VIII National Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy and at the Università degli Studi di Milano in February 2009. A distant ancestor of the argument of this paper appeared in my (2009a, pp. 80–82). The book is a slightly revised version of my PhD thesis, which I defended in January 2008.
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Guardo, A. Rule-following, ideal conditions and finkish dispositions. Philos Stud 157, 195–209 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9632-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9632-y