The Current Paradigm on Dispositions

In this chapter I present a sketch of the historical debate on dispositions and disposition ascriptions and I will show that it is rooted in the traditional empiricist problem of the inaccessibility of the disposition. The general aim is to show that critics share at least three aspects on the study of dispositions: 1. A non-normative notion of disposition; 2. A factual treatment of the question “What is a disposition?”; 3. A notion of disposition as a latent depositary of pre-arranged courses of action. In particular, I will expound Quine’s, Armstrong’s, and Mumford’s views in order to show that the current paradigm rests on four assumptions: 1. Realist perspective and hypostatization of dispositions; 2. The “simplification fallacy”; 3. Causal efficacy of dispositions, 4. A picture of potentiality as “potentiality that lies in a box”. Finally, I will present some limits of the current paradigm which directly derive from the shared assumptions: 1. There is no third way between mentalism and behaviourism, or between heuristic function and ontological foundation of dispositions; 2. Narrowness of the philosophical discourse on dispositions with respect to dispositional talk of ordinary language; 3. Materialist character of the realist perspective; 4. Divorce between dispositions and normativity.