توزیع‌ها و قدرت‌های علّی

Dispositions are everywhere. We say that a wall is hard, that water quenches thirst and is transparent, that dogs can swim and oak trees can let their leaves fall, and that acid has the power to corrode metals. All these statements express attributions of dispositions, be they physical, physiological or psychological, yet there is much philosophical debate about how far, if at all, dispositional predicates can have complete meaning or figure in causal explanations. This collection of essays, by leading international researchers, examine the case for realism with respect to dispositions and causal powers in both metaphysics and science. Among the issues debated in this book is whether dispositions can be analyzed in terms of conditionals, whether all dispositions have a so-called categorical basis and, if they do, what is the relation between the disposition and its basis. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 Notes on Contributors......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 12 Introduction......Page 14 Part 1 The Metaphysics of Dispositions and Causal Powers......Page 54 1 Dispositions and Counterfactuals. From Carnap to Goodman’s Children and Grandchildren......Page 56 2 Filled In Space......Page 80 3 Dispositions and Essences......Page 94 4 The Causal Efficacy of Macroscopic Dispositional Properties......Page 116 5 Opium’s Virtus Dormitiva......Page 146 6 Conditional Possibility......Page 164 7 On Ascribing Dispositions......Page 174 Part 2 Dispositions and Causal Powers in Science......Page 192 8 An Extended Semantic Field of Dispositions and the Grounding Role of Causal Powers......Page 194 9 What Makes a Capacity a Disposition?......Page 208 10 Causation, Laws and Dispositions......Page 220 11 Can Capacities Rescue us from Ceteris Paribus Laws?......Page 234 12 Dispositions, Relational Properties and the Quantum World......Page 262 13 Are Specific Heats Dispositions?......Page 284 Bibliography......Page 296 C......Page 312 E......Page 313 L......Page 314 P......Page 315 W......Page 316

Dispositions are everywhere. We say that a wall is hard, that water quenches thirst and is transparent, that dogs can swim and oak trees can let their leaves fall, and that acid has the power to corrode metals. All these statements express attributions of dispositions, be they physical, physiological or psychological, yet there is much philosophical debate about how far, if at all, dispositional predicates can have complete meaning or figure in causal explanations.

This collection of essays, by leading international researchers, examine the case for realism with respect to dispositions and causal powers in both metaphysics and science. Among the issues debated in this book is whether dispositions can be analyzed in terms of conditionals, whether all dispositions have a so-called categorical basis and, if they do, what is the relation between the disposition and its basis.

This collection of essays, by leading international researchers, examines the case for realism with respect to dispositions and causal powers in both metaphysics and science. Among the issues debated in this book is whether dispositions can be analyzed in terms of conditionals, whether all dispositions have a so-called categorical basis and, if they do, what is the relation between the disposition and its basis