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Derivative Dispositions and Multiple Generative Levels

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Abstracts

The analysis of dispositions is used to consider cases where the effect of one disposition operating is the existence of another disposition. This may arise from rearrangements within aggregated structures of dispositional parts, or, it is argued, also as what I will call stages of ‘derivative dispositions’ within a set of ‘multiple generative levels’. Inspection of examples in both classical and quantum physics suggests a more general way of looking at these phenomena, as if there is a universal principle of ‘conditional forward causation’: that dispositions act between the levels in a way conditional on certain circumstances or occasions already existing at the ‘later’ levels.

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Correspondence to Ian J. Thompson .

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Thompson, I.J. (2011). Derivative Dispositions and Multiple Generative Levels. In: Suárez, M. (eds) Probabilities, Causes and Propensities in Physics. Synthese Library, vol 347. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9904-5_11

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