Abstract
All of us used to think, and many of us still think, that statements about how a thing is disposed to respond to stimuli can be analysed straightforwardly in terms of counterfactual conditionals. A fragile thing is one that would break if struck; an irascible man is one who would become angry if provoked; and so on. In general, we can state the simple conditional analysis thus:
Something x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s iff, if x were to undergo stimulus s at time t, x would give response r.
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Lewis, D. (1999). Finkish Dispositions. In: Sankey, H. (eds) Causation and Laws of Nature. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9229-1_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9229-1_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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