Some Ways of Operationally Introducing Dispositional Predicates with Regard to Scientific and Ordinary Practice

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.