Abstract
In many technical languages as well as in ordinary discourse dispositional predicates (DPs) play an important role. This holds especially for those disciplines which aim at describing and explaining or influencing human behaviour. Apart from the theoretical difficulties adherent to almost all of the attempts of introducing those predicates into standardized language, the suggestions made so far show a remarkable remoteness from the way DPs are practically used.1 They are, therefore, not sufficiently suitable for the reconstruction of the semantical rules which are implicitly behind the use of these predicates. A primary source of this insufficiency lies in the fact that the respective authors of these attempts offered one single logical scheme for the introduction of all kinds of DPs. They did not take into account that there are various kinds of rules governing the use of these predicates. A more refined treatment of DPs has to consider several factors many of which have been completely disregarded so far. Those factors include the different temporal status of DPs, the necessity of combining this status with the different introduction of classificatory, comparative, and two kinds of quantitative DPs, the distinction between the operational procedures referred to regarding the number of tests, the truth-functional structure of test-and reaction-predicates, the distinction between obligatory and non-obligatory tests, the consideration also of many-place predicates, and the integration of an interference-factorclause into the definitions. How differently introduced are e.g. DPs like ‘fragile’, ‘flexible’, ‘adhesive’, ‘explosive’ on the one hand and many DPs used in psychology on the other hand — be they introduced on the basis of one of the general intelligence tests, special aptitude tests, motor, sensory or physical ability tests, or one of the personality tests. The DPs of the first group can be defined by reference to just one test, whereas the precise meaning of the DPs of the latter group requires rather complex definitions. The same holds for some DPs which are central in jurispru-dence such as credible, reliable (said of a witness), irresponsible, insane, easily influenceable, dangerous to the public, violent, without conscience of wrongdoing etc. In contradistinction to the psychological DPs mentioned, which are exactly definable on the basis of generally accepted test methods, these latter DPs, however, do not have precisely the same meaning for everyone who uses them — a fact which severely afflicts the possibility of predicting the judgment in a trial.
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Notes
By this remark we do not refer to the conception of DPs as theoretical terms nor to their introduction on the basis of the logic of induction. These two ways of treating DPs shall stay out of consideration also for the rest of this paper.
By explicit definitions, which are one kind of total definitions, we understand identity-or equivalence-statements of the form ‘definiendum = df definiens’.
The powers of x over y may consist in x’s influencing y’s interest in such a way that y thinks x’s interest to be his own. If this avoidance of a conflict of interest fails, x’s power2 over y may consist in being able to force his will on y.
See Kaila, E.: 1939, Den mänskliga kunskapen,Helsinki, p. 239. As we are not capable to read Kaila’s book in its original version, the definition (D4) has been taken from Pap, A.: 1955, Analytische Erkenntnistheorie,Vienna, p. 140.
This discussion was led by letter, see Pap, loc. cit., p. 141.
Wedberg, A.: 1944, ‘The Logical Construction of the World’, Theoria.
Storer, T.: 1951, ‘On Defining ‘Soluble", Analysis; Bergmanns refutation also appeared in Analysis, 1951.
Essler, W. K.: 1970, Wissenschaftstheorie I, Freiburg/Munchen. Briefly put, a partial definition of the truth-functional structure T - (R HD) has to be regarded as conditioned if the predicates T, R,and D are all of the same number of places n(n % 1). If T and R are n-place predicates, however, while D is a k-place predicate (1 s k 000n), as it is the case in the following definitions (D5) and (D6), then we have a proper conditioned partial definition before us. If (D5) and (D6) had been used to introduce a momentary disposition (‘Dxt’) instead of a permanent disposition (‘Dx’) then (D5) and (D6) would be only conditioned instead of proper conditioned definitions.
Cf. Essler, loc. cit., esp. pp. 132.
Some of the following objections are discussed in Stegmüller, W.: 1970, Probleme and Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytischen Philosophie, vol. II, Berlin/Heidelberg/New York, pp. 226.
Another way of lessening the range of indeterminacy consists in using inductive inferences in a way similar to Kaila’s method.
Let us forget about the ban of multiple definition for a moment.
Cf. Trapp, R 1975, Eine Verfeinerung des Reduktionssatzverfahrens zur Einführung von Dispositionsprädikaten’, Erkenntnis,esp. p. 357.
This be especially the case if at least one of the other tests ended positively. This additional difficulty of the MSM was already referred to in objection (04).
For the central ideas of the following section see also Trapp, loc. cit., p. 360.
The dropping of time variables as it was done in the ’Erkenntnis’-article mentioned (for reasons of simplicity) turned out to be very disadvantageous. The most unpleasant difficulty I had to face in that paper does not even arise if time variables are maintained. R.T.
This holds for the MSM as well as for all the versions of the SSM.
Miss Irene Heim kindly drew my attention to this second unpleasant consequence of (D8). She also pointed out a way to me how to avoid it. R.T. (See the addenda to Trapp, loc. cit., pp. 379. In this paper I only discussed the first of these two consequences.)
This holds only for the circumstances given. The first alternative will of course be appropriate if there are no previous opposite reactions.
Cf. Essler, W. K.: 1975, ‘Die Kreativität der bilateralen Reduktionssätze’, Erkenntnis 9, esp. p.
Cf. Suppes P.: 1957, Introduction to Logic,Princeton, N. J., Ch. 8, and Essler, W. K.: Wissenschaftstheorie I,op. cit., p. 72.
Cf. Essler, W. K.: Die Kreativität der bilateralen Reduktionssätze’, Erkenntnis 9, p. 390.
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Essler, W.K., Trapp, R. (1978). Some Ways of Operationally Introducing Dispositional Predicates with Regard to Scientific and Ordinary Practice. In: Tuomela, R. (eds) Dispositions. Synthese Library, vol 113. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1282-8_7
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