THE CONDITIONAL ANALYSIS REFUTED

The analysis stated. 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:

Simple indeed - but false. The simple conditional analysis has been decisively refuted by C. B. Martin. The refutation has long been a matter of folklore I myself learned of it from Ian Hunt in 1971 – but now it has belatedly appeared in print.

How a disposition can befinkish. Dispositions come and go, and we can cause them to come and go. Glass-blowers learn to anneal a newly made joint so as to make it less fragile. Annoyances can make a man irascible; peace and quiet can soothe him again.

Anything can cause anything; so stimulus s itself might chance to be the very thing that would cause the disposition to give response r to stimulus s to go away. If it went away quickly enough, it would not be manifested. In this way it could be false that if x were to undergo s,x would give response r. And yet, so long as s does not come along, x retains its disposition.