Dispositional Properties

2. Counterfactual Conditionals

2 COUNTERFACTUAL CONDITIONALS Contemporary logical empiricists are unreconstructed Humeans , and their adaptation of Hume's principles must be considered before it is said categorically that reductionist empiricism is unable to afford a satisfactory metaphysics. Logical empiricists are perhaps best described as philosophers who extract the formal elements other than spatial and temporal relations from processes in the world, discover those elements or versions of them in language, and then argue that the original extraction was justified, because the world can do without its formal elements so long as language has them. Treatment of the formal elements follows an established procedure: Nothing of which we have no impression can have being in the world; because we cannot see or touch them, it will follow that causal sufficiency and necessity, and potentiality cannot be real. Obviously, however, these are notions which have an important function in our descriptions of the world, and the next step in the empiricist argument must prove that there are counterparts for these elements in certain features of language. Causal sufficiency and necessity are provided for, as subsequent discussion will show, by describing the relation of premises and consequent in a formal language system, and potentiality is said to be a nuance expressed when terms like "can" and "able" are used in ordinary speech. DISPOSITIONAL PROPERTIES There ought to be a criterion for the success of reductionist linguistic analyses of this kind, and a likely one is the requirement that linguistic solutions must eliminate the difficulties which project us into metaphysical discussions. The object of this chapter is to determine whether this requirement is satisfied when logical empiricists give their analyses of potentiality and the causal relationship. For purposes of exposition , it will help to begin with a survey of their discussion of potentiality. This will carry us to their analysis of causal relationships, and, finally, back again to the notion of potentiality . IIa. Survey of the problem; 1] View that dispositions are to be analyzed by reference to causal-law statements ; 2] Difficulty: rules of material implication do not enable us to distinguish true causal-law statements from certain other counterfactuals. Nelson Goodman discusses the considerations which direct a logical empiricist account of dispositional properties, and at one point, he makes this observation: The peculiarity of dispositional predicates is that they seem to be applied to things in virtue of possible rather than actual occurrences - and possible occurrences are for us no more admissible as unexplained elements than are occult capacities. The problem, then, is to explain how dispositional predicates can be assigned to things solely on the basis of actual occurrences - that is, in terms of manifest predicates - for the correct assignment of dispositional predicates to things.l Hume made this same point when he prescribed that all our ideas of the world must copy impressions of it. In its modem guise, Hume's rule is the verificationist principle that a statement about the world can only be true, and hence meaningful , if we can imagine the observable difference that its truth Counterfactual Conditionals 85 would make to our experience. If we accept this principle, it will have to be admitted that Hume and Goodman are correct ; the reality of dispositional properties will not make an immediate difference to our perceptions. There are no perceptions of real potentiality, and, therefore, it will not be true, or even intelligible, to say that dispositional properties ought to be described as real potentialities. Some alternative analysis of powers will have to be considered. Arthur Pap offers an explicit statement of the view that empiricists usually adopt: To ascribe dispositions to a thing which exist even while they are not displayed, is not to ascribe to it any metaphysical, hidden powers. It merely amounts to the assertion that a law, expressed as a subjunctive conditional , is true even though the conditions it refers to are not always realized. To say that a girl, at this moment cold and reserved, has the disposition to be amorous, is to say that she would be amorous if she were exposed to the appropriate stimuli.2 In outline, this is the theory that talk about dispositions is to be understood through the analysis of conditional, "if-then," statements. We recognize it as the second version of the causal law analysis of powers. Gilbert Ryle helped to popularize this theory when he argued that dispositions, powers and capacities are merely "inference tickets"; given...