Phenomenal roles: a dispositional account of bodily pain

In this paper I argue that bodily pain, as a phenomenal property, is an essentially and substantial dispositional property. To this end, I maintain that this property is individuated by its phenomenal roles, which can be internal -individuating the property per se- and external -determining further phenomenal or physical properties or states. I then argue that this individuation allows phenomenal roles to be organized in a necessarily asymmetrical net, thereby overcoming the circularity objection to dispositionalism. Finally, I provide reasons to argue that these roles satisfy modal fixity, as posited by Bird, and are not fundamental properties, contra Chalmers’ panpsychism. Thus, bodily pain can be considered a substantial dispositional property entrenched in non-fundamental laws of nature.

Reliabilists Should Still Fear the Demon

In its most basic form, Simple Reliabilism states that: a belief is justified iff it is formed as the result of a reliable belief-forming process. But so-called New Evil Demon (NED) cases have been given as counterexamples. A common response has been to complicate reliabilism from its simplest form to accommodate the basic reliabilist position, while at the same time granting the force of NED intuitions. But what if despite initial appearances, Simple Reliabilism, without qualification, is compatible with the NED intuition? What we can call the Dispositionalist Response to the New Evil Demon problem is fascinating because it contends just that: Simple Reliabilism is fully compatible with the NED intuition. It is claimed that all we need to do to recognize their compatibility is appreciate that reliability is a dispositional property. In this paper I shall critically evaluate the Dispositionalist proposal.

What did Mary know? Russellian Monism Without Intrinsics

The Mary thought experiment aims to demonstrate that science cannot capture what experiences feel like. Russellian Monism (RM) avoids this problem by claiming that phenomenality is an intrinsic (non-relational and non-dispositional) property of matter and beyond the scope of science, which is limited to describing extrinsic (relational and dispositional) properties. Against RM, I argue that metaphysical intrinsicality is not compatible with neuroscientific theories where experiences are considered as causal processes. Second, I argue that if intrinsic properties have causal power, they can also affect neuroscientific measuring devices and be scientifically modeled. Thus, intrinsic properties are not inscrutable, as RM holds. In the third part of the article, I sketch the outlines of RM without intrinsics. I propose that the core Kantian thesis of RM about limits of science can be maintained without postulating metaphysical intrinsics. I argue that metaphysical intrinsicality can be replaced with Weak Intrinsicality, meaning model-independence. Science is confined to observations and models, whereas an experience is the concrete, model-independent process that produces observations of its neural mechanisms. On this account, the epistemic gap is difference between a model and the modeled.

Inklusion zwischen Potenzialität und Latenz: Soziale Teilhabe als dispositionelle Eigenschaft

The purpose of this paper is to defend an understanding of social participation that spells out inclusion as a dispositional property. I assume that an agent must occupy at least one position within a social order so that he is leastways partially included. The fact that a social position is open to someone means that he has the opportunity to take it. However, disputed is how "having the opportunity" should be understood exactly. My thesis, which I will develop and defend in the context of this article, is: Since the appropriate application context decides whether the role characteristics of an agent actually become manifest, participation is a dispositional property. Therefore, a role is not open to someone only if he cannot claim a certain status for himself, even though he is in the relevant context. It is thus not a logical or metaphysical modality, but a normative modality that is relevant in terms of the openness of a role. Hence, social participation consists in a normative status that takes effect when certain conditions occure.

Chance in the World

This book argues that objective chance, or probability, should not be understood as a metaphysical primitive, nor as a dispositional property of certain systems (“propensity”). Given that traditional accounts of objective probability in terms of frequencies are widely agreed to be also untenable, there is a clear need for a new account that can overcome the problems of older views. A Humean, reductive analysis of objective chance is offered, one partially based on the work of David Lewis, but diverging from Lewis’ approach in many respects. It is shown that “Humean objective chances” (HOCs) can fulfill the role that chances are supposed to play of being a guide to one’s subjective expectations. In a chapter coauthored by Roman Frigg, HOC is shown to make sense of physics’ uses of objective probabilities, both in statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. And in the final chapter, the relationship between chance and causation is analyzed; it is argued that there is no direct connection between causation and objective chance, but that, instead, causation is related to subjective probability.

Problems of Explication of Concepts of Validity and Efficacy of Law in E. Bulygin’s Legal Theory

Throughout his scientific work, the Argentine lawyer E. Bulygin re-peatedly analyzed the problem of the validity and efficacy of law. Based on the for-mu lations of H. Kelsen’s pure theory of law, E. Bulygin sought to explicate the con-cepts of legal validity and efficacy, i.e. to replace them with new more accurate ones. In the 1965 paper "The Concept of Validity" Bulygin entered into a polemic with H. Kelsen and A. Ross and formulated the concept of efficacy as a dispositional property of the legal norm reflecting its justiciability. Subsequently, however, the Argentine lawyer clarified his terminology and distinguished between the dispositional concept of efficacy (law in force) and the traditional notion of efficacy because of the conclusion on the expediency of using the old concept of efficacy along with the new one defined through justiciability. But the concept of efficacy as justiciability formulated by E. Bulygin faced a number of theoretical difficulties.In the 1966 paper "Judicial Decisions and the Creation of Law" E. Bulygin made an attempt to explicate the concept of validity. E. Bulygin points to three concepts designed to replace the traditional notion of validity: the validity of the norm in the system sense, the binding force of the norm and the existence of the norm. Each of these specified concepts was developed in theoretical constructions of the Argentine lawyer, however their using also generates the problems. Alternatively, the development of the notion of validity of law in the system sense can be considered "definitive" concept of validity proposed by E. Bulygin in collaboration with K.E. Alchourron in the monograph "Normative systems" (1971). However, this concept has significant differences from the originally formulated and has a very limited application. The concept of the existence of the norm does not receive independent development as a variant of the explication of the concept of the validity of law. The concept of the binding force of law, on the contrary, is divided by the Argentine jurist into two fundamentally different concepts — binding force in the metaphysical sense and binding force in the technical sense, which later E. Bulygin called "applicability". The concept of applicability was used by the Argentine legal philosopher to solve a number of problems of H. Kelsen’s theory, however the concept of applicability itself leads to paradoxical consequences.On the whole E. Bulygin’s project of explicating of the concepts of validity and efficacy of the law didn’t result in replacing them with series of new more precise concepts although refined in some way their meaning.

Introduction

Chapter 1 introduces the subject matter of the book. It analyses the methodological issues that arise when conceptualizing power in society. It first looks at the definitional divisions that demarcate different approaches to power. The first division describes causal approaches to power and dispositional accounts of power. It argues that power is a disposition concept – power is best seen as a property of individuals that they can choose or not to wield. The second division concerns structural versus individualist accounts. The chapters argues we need to transcend this division. Whilst in this book power is seen as a dispositional property of agents, and can thus be seen as methodologically individualist, it is equally a structural account. A structure is the relationship between people which can be described in terms of their relative powers. We concentrate on actors for some questions and the structure for others.

Colour and qualia

There are two basic philosophical problems about colour. The first concerns the nature of colour itself. That is, what sort of property is it? When I say of the shirt that I am wearing that it is red, what sort of fact about the shirt am I describing? The second problem concerns the nature of colour experience. When I look at the red shirt I have a visual experience with a certain qualitative character – a ‘reddish’ one. Thus colour seems in some sense to be a property of my sensory experience, as well as a property of my shirt. What sort of mental property is it? Obviously, the two problems are intimately related. In particular, there is a great deal of controversy over the following question: if we call the first sort of property ‘objective colour’ and the second ‘subjective colour’, which of the two, objective or subjective colour, is basic? Or do they both have an independent ontological status? Most philosophers adhere to the doctrine of physicalism, the view that all objects and events are ultimately constituted by the fundamental physical particles, properties and relations described in physical theory. The phenomena of both objective and subjective colour present problems for physicalism. With respect to objective colour, it is difficult to find any natural physical candidate with which to identify it. Our visual system responds in a similar manner to surfaces that vary along a wide range of physical parameters, even with respect to the reflection of light waves. Yet what could be more obvious than the fact that objects are coloured? In the case of subjective colour, the principal topic of this entry, there is an even deeper puzzle. It is natural to think of the reddishness of a visual experience – its qualitative character – as an intrinsic and categorical property of the experience. Intrinsic properties are distinguished from relational properties in that an object’s possession of the former does not depend on its relation to, or even the existence of, other objects, whereas its possession of the latter does. Categorical properties are distinguished from dispositional ones. A dispositional property is one that an object has by virtue of its tendency to behave in certain ways, or cause certain effects, in particular circumstances. So being brittle is dispositional in that it involves being liable to break under slight pressure, whereas being six feet tall, say, is categorical. If subjective colour is intrinsic and categorical, then it would seem to be a neural property of a brain state. But what sort of neural property could explain the reddishness of an experience? Furthermore, reduction of subjective colour to a neural property would rule out even the possibility that forms of life with different physiological structures, or intelligent robots, could have experiences of the same qualitative type as our experiences of red. While some philosophers endorse this consequence, many find it quite implausible. Neural properties seem best suited to explain how certain functions are carried out, and therefore it might seem better to identify subjective colour with the property of playing a certain functional role within the entire cognitive system realized by the brain. This allows the possibility that structures physically different from human brains could support colour experiences of the same type as our own. However, various puzzles undermine the plausibility of this claim. For instance, it seems possible that two people could agree in all their judgements of relative similarity and yet one sees green where the other sees red. If this ‘inverted spectrum’ case is a genuine logical possibility, as many philosophers advocate, then it appears that subjective colour must not be a matter of functional role, but rather an intrinsic property of experience. Another possibility is that qualitative character is just a matter of features the visual system, in the case of colour, is representing objects in the visual field to have. Reddish experiences are just visual representations of red. But this view too has problems with spectrum-inversion scenarios, and also entails some counterintuitive consequences concerning our knowledge of our own qualitative states. Faced with the dilemmas posed by subjective colour for physicalist doctrine, some philosophers opt for eliminativism, the doctrine that subjective colour is not a genuine, or real, phenomenon after all. On this view the source of the puzzle is a conceptual confusion; a tendency to extend our judgements concerning objective colour, what appear to be intrinsic and categorical properties of the surfaces of physical objects, onto the properties of our mental states. Once we see that nothing qualitative is happening ‘inside’, we will understand why we cannot locate any state or property of the brain with which to identify subjective colour. The controversy over the nature of subjective colour is part of a wider debate about the subjective aspect of conscious experience more generally. How does the qualitative character of experience – what it is like to see, hear and smell – fit into a physicalist scientific framework? At present all of the options just presented have their adherents, and no general consensus exists.

Dispositional Pluralism

Dispositional Pluralism is the view that dispositional properties are abundant and diverse. When something has a disposition, it is such that, if it were in a certain kind of circumstance, a certain kind of effect would occur. Dispositions include such varied properties as character traits like a hero’s courage, characteristics of physical objects like a wine glass’s fragility, and characteristics of microphysical entities like an electron’s charge. Some dispositions are natural while others are non-natural. Some dispositions called “powers” are ungrounded while non-fundamental dispositions are grounded in other properties. Some dispositions manifest constantly, some of them manifest spontaneously, while others manifest only when they are triggered to do so. Some dispositions manifest by causing another dispositional property to be instantiated, while others have manifestations that involve non-dispositional properties and relations. Some dispositions are intrinsic to their bearers while others are extrinsic. Some of them are causally relevant to their manifestations while others are not. Some dispositions manifest in some particular way in particular circumstances, while other dispositions manifest in various ways in various circumstances. What makes all of these diverse properties dispositions is their connection to a certain kind of counterfactual fact. Nevertheless, disposition ascriptions are not semantically reducible to counterfactual claims.

Conclusion

Dispositional Pluralism is more consistent with our dispositions talk than more monolithic views. Our evidence for extrinsic, ungrounded, and non-natural dispositions is comparable to that of intrinsic, grounded, and natural ones. Dispositional Pluralism has wide applicability to various philosophical issues. Secondary qualities, such as colors, can be given a dispositional account. Thinking of character traits as dispositions sheds light on the debate over Dispositionalism Situationism in moral psychology. One can give an account of gender identity as a cluster of behavioral dispositions. Finally, the potentiality of an embryo or a patient is best understood as an extrinsic dispositional property.