Alternative Approach to Analyzing Disposition Ascriptions

This dissertation will explore the topic of disposition ascriptions. A disposition ascription is any statement that ascribes a disposition to an object. The statement ‘Glass is fragile’ is one example. A popular account – called the conditional account – attempts to understand these statements in terms of counterfactuals. Recently, however, philosophers have offered objections to the conditional account on the grounds that it succumbs to counterexamples or that it rests on an incorrect assumption. I attempt to defend the account against some of these objections by offering an alternative analysis that builds on a distinction between single-track and multi-track ascriptions. In chapter one, I defend the conditional account from the problem of antidotes. I argue that antidotes admit of two different interpretations, and only one of them threatens the conditional account. In chapter two, I describe some problems for the traditional approach to analyzing disposition ascriptions, and I use these problems to motivate looking for an alternative account. This account is the subject of chapter three, in which I present and defend my proposal. Finally, in chapter four, I explain why my alternative is preferrable to another account that was developed recently by Barbara Vetter.