Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

This is a review of Mumford's *Dispositions*.

Many philosophers hold that all dispositions must have independent causal bases. I challenge this view, hence defending the possibility of bare dispositions. In part 1, I explain more fully what I mean by "disposition," "causal basis," and "bare disposition." In part 2, I consider the claim that the concept of a disposition entails that dispositions are not bare. In part 3, I consider arguments, due to Prior, Pargetter, and Jackson, that dispositions necessarily have distinct causal bases. In part 4, I (...) consider arguments by Smith and Stoljar that there can't be bare dispositions because they would make for unwelcome "barely true" counterfactuals. In the end, I find no reason to deny the possibility of bare dispositions. (shrink)

Disposition terms, such as 'cowardice,' 'fragility' and 'reactivity,' often appear in explanations. Sometimes we explain why a man ran away by saying that he was cowardly, or we explain why something broke by saying it was fragile. Scientific explanations of certain phenomena feature dispositional properties like instability, reactivity, and conductivity. And these look like causal explanations - they seem to provide information about the causal history of various events. Philosophers such as Ned Block, Jaegwon Kim, Elizabeth Prior, Robert Pargetter, and (...) Frank Jacksonl have suggested reasons for thinking that dispositions are causally inert. I call this the "Inert Dispositions View." According to this view, the glass's fragility was not responsible for its breaking; the man's cowardice was causally impotent as he fled. The Inert Dispositions View would call many of the explanations we give into question. By employing a disposition in an explanation, we might have thought we were giving a causal explanation of the event. Perhaps we took ourselves to be explaining an effect with some feature of its cause that was responsible for the effect. However, if dispositions are causally inert, we are explaining the event in some other way, or not really explaining it at all. The Inert Dispositions View suggests that something is amiss with many scientific explanations. If properties like conductivity and volatility are causally inert, it is not clear how appealing to them provides us with information about why certain phenomena occur. This is especially problematic if one thinks, as some do, that the fundamental properties that scientists attribute to the ultimate constituents of matter -- things like force, mass, charge, impenetrability -- are dispositional. If, as Simon Blackburn says, "science finds only dispositional properties all the way down,"2 and if dispositions are causally inert, it would seem that science does not provide us with real causal explanations. The Inert Dispositions View implies that there is something amiss with psychological explanations as well. At least some psychological states are dispositional -- being courageous or shy, being such that you would accept a drink if you were offered one. On some views, all mental states are like dispositions, since having a mental state is a matter of having some brain state or other that performs a certain causal role. If mental properties are relevantly similar to dispositions, and dispositions are inert, then mental properties make no difference to what a body does. However, it is natural to think that my believing and desiring certain things has much to do with my body moving in certain ways. It would take powerful arguments to cast these beliefs into serious doubt. In this paper, I defend the causal efficacy of dispositions against two types of arguments that l call "Analyticity Arguments" and "No Work Arguments." According to Analyticity Arguments, there is an analytic or necessary connection between a disposition and its manifestation, and this goes to show that there is no causal connection. I argue, on the contrary, that it shows no such thing. According to No Work arguments, manifestations of dispositions already have sufficient causes, and so there is "no work" for dispositions to do. I claim that these arguments rest on some questionable assumptions. (shrink)

Studie over het werk van de Britse wijsgeer Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976).

What is the relation between a reason and an action when the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did? We may call such explanations rationalizations, and say that the reason rationalizes the action. In this paper I want to defend the ancient - and common-sense - position that rationalization is a species of ordinary causal explanation. The defense no doubt requires some redeployment, but not more or less complete abandonment of the position, as (...) urged by many recent writers. (shrink)

Attempts to capture the distinction between categorical and dispositional states in terms of more primitive modal notions – subjunctive conditionals, causal roles, or combinatorial principles – are bound to fail. Such failure is ensured by a deep symmetry in the ways dispositional and categorical states alike carry modal import. But the categorical/dispositional distinction should not be abandoned; it underpins important metaphysical disputes. Rather, it should be taken as a primitive, after which the doomed attempts at reductive explanation can be transformed (...) into circular but interesting accounts. (shrink)

In ‘Finkish Dispositions’1 David Lewis proposes an analysis of dispositions which improves on the simple conditional analysis. In this paper I show that Lewis’ analysis still fails. I also argue that repairs are of no avail, and suggest why this is so.

What is mind? This book attempts to give a philosophical answer to that question in language accessible to the layperson, but with a rigor acceptable to the specialist. Published on the centenary of the birth of Wittgenstein and the 40th anniversary of the publication of Gilbert Ryle 's classic The Concept of Mind, this work testifies to the influence of those thinkers on Kenny's own work in the philosophy of mind, and assembles Kenny's ideas on philosophical psychology into a systematic (...) whole. (shrink)

Understanding human beings and their distinctive rational and volitional capacities requires a clear account of such things as reasons, desires, emotions, and motives, and how they combine to produce and explain human behaviour. Maria Alvarez presents a fresh and incisive study of these concepts, centred on reasons and their role in human agency.

Stephen Mumford puts forward a new theory of dispositions, showing how central their role is in metaphysics and philosophy of science. Much of our understanding of the physical and psychological world is expressed in terms of dispositional properties--from the solubility of sugar to the belief that zebras have stripes. Mumford discusses what it means to say that something has a property of this kind, and how dispositions can possibly be real things in the world. His clear, straightforward, realist account reveals (...) them to be less mysterious than they seem, and shows that an understanding of dispositions is essential to an understanding of properties, causation, and scientific laws. (shrink)

I. Causal Thesis: Dispositions have a causal basis. II. Distinctness Thesis: Dispositions are distinct from their causal basis. III. Impotence Thesis: Dispositions are not causally active.

forthcoming in New Essays on the Explanation of Action Abstract Philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein rejected the idea that the explanatory power of our ordinary interpretive practices is to be found in law-governed, causal relations between items to which our everyday mental terms allegedly refer. Wittgenstein and those he inspired pointed to differences between the explanations provided by the ordinary employment of mental expressions and the style of causal explanation characteristic of the hard sciences. I believe, however, that the particular non-causalism (...) espoused by the Wittgensteinians is today ill- understood. The position does not, for example, find its place on a map that charts the territory disputed by mental realists and their irrealist opponents. In this paper, I take a few steps toward reintroducing this ill-understood position by sketching my own understanding of it and explaining why it fits so uncomfortably within the contemporary metaphysical landscape. (shrink)