Dispositional Abilities

Whittle, Ann

PDF
Share+
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Reddit
- Mendeley

Dispositional Abilities

Ann Whittle

December 2010, Volume 10, No. 12, pp. 1-23

Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0010.012

Permissions: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact [email protected] to use this work in a way not covered by the license.

For more information, read Michigan Publishing's access and usage policy.

Abstract

Dispositional compatibilists argue that a proper understanding of our abilities vindicates both compatibilism and the principle of Alternate Possibilities (the claim that the ability to do otherwise is required for freedom and moral responsibility). In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. Both analyses of dispositions and abilities should distinguish between local and global dispositions or abilities. Once this distinction is in place, we see that neither thesis is established by an analysis of abilities.

- 150% +

image

« Prev

An obvious advantage with the specifier’s approach is that it maintains the simple relationship between dispositions and conditionals. But it has its problems. One worry is whether our dispositional concept of conventional disposition D is detailed enough to exclude all would-be maskers. Directing the point more specifically at Choi, the worry is whether the notion of “the ordinary conditions for D,” possessed by the bearers of that dispositional concept, suffices to rule out all would-be, non-standard maskers. If it fails to do this, then it would be possible to formulate a case in which those who possess the dispositional concept D are convinced that the object can truly be ascribed D, yet when it undergoes the D-stimulus under what they take to be ordinary conditions, it fails to manifest the D-manifestation. If the dispositional concept in question does not alert them to the fact that there is a masker present, rendering the circumstances unordinary, then the conditional analysis fails.

« Prev Next »