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This chapter discusses how to explain the relation between ascriptions of belief and intention, and statements ascribing the corresponding implication or means-end commitments. Dispositionalism about propositional attitudes must explain the link in terms of principles connecting a non-normative attitude ascription with a normative commitment. It is argued that such explanations are unsatisfactory because they cannot do justice to the peculiar character of our relation to our own current intentions and beliefs. Under dispositionalism, it would be possible to adopt a purely contemplative attitude to our current intentions and beliefs just as it is possible to adopt such an attitude to our character traits. Such an attitude to our current beliefs and intentions is not intelligible and we can make better sense of how we stand in relation to those beliefs and intentions if we assume that ascriptions of beliefs and intentions are implicitly normative.

The explanatory insight provided by rationalizing explanations is causal and tied to appropriate generalizations. Because of this, it is not clear what rationalizing adds to such explanations. It is argued that the problem is not solved merely by having causal connections among propositional attitudes and actions mirror appropriate reason-giving connections. Among other things, this approach does not deal with messy rationalization — the sort implicated when people believe things or do things for reasons that are bad on grounds other than the falsity of the considerations that constitute the reasons. The problem is addressed by invoking two plausible assumptions: (a) that belief or action for a reason is belief or action on the understanding that the relevant reason-constituting considerations are relevant normative reasons; (b) that normative considerations themselves — not just people’s acceptance of such considerations — play an explanatory role.

People are normally encouraged to engage in premeditation—to think about the potential consequences of their behavior before acting. Indeed, planning, considering, and studying can be important precursors to decision-making, and often seem essential for effective action. This view of premeditation is shared by most humans, a kind of universal ideal, and it carries an additional interesting implication: Even the hint that premeditation occurred can serve as a potent cue indicating voluntary action, both to actors and observers. In legal and moral contexts, for example, actors are seen as especially culpable for the consequences of their actions if those consequences were premeditated, whether or not the premeditation influenced the decision. In this chapter, we review evidence indicating that even irrelevant premeditation can lead people to believe that an action's consequences were under personal control. We present research exploring how various forms of premeditation—including foresight, effortful forethought, wishful thinking, and the consideration of multiple possible outcomes of action—may lead actors to prefer and to feel responsible for action outcomes even when this premeditation has no causal relation to the outcomes.

Sensory systems are automatic sorting machines which assign external sensed objects (distal stimuli) to classes on the basis of useful commonalities found in them. The results of a system=s sorting activities are made available to the perceiver in the form of a sensation, which can be held in memory or later recalled. Appearance thus follows classification as the record thereof. It follows (a) that sensory qualities are prior to experience and hence cannot be defined in terms of it, and (b) that all variations in the appearance of the stimulus are representationally significant (but not that all phenomenal variation is representationally significant).

This essay defends Wittgenstein’s ‘use-theory’ of meaning against Kripke’s critique of ‘dispositionalism.’ It reviews the distinction between two conceptions of truth: the traditional view and the deflationary view. It examines Kripke’s argument against the reduction of meaning-facts to facts about dispositions of use. It then shows that Kripke’s argument can be saved by a fallacy of equivocation only by presupposing an inflationary conception of truth.

This chapter compares role functionalism with other forms of color relationalism that have attracted philosophical adherents and argues that these alternative forms of relationalism all have serious drawbacks. Specifically, these forms include color dispositionalism, ecological relationalism, and sensory classificationalism. The author argues that dispositionalism either collapses onto role functionalism or rests on an implausible account of the relationship between dispositions and their bases. Ecological relationalism, on the other hand, falls prey to worries about multiple realization and is committed either to an unacceptable form of idealism or mislocates colors. Lastly, sensory classficationism links too tightly the perceptual classificatory responses of organisms and their subsequent epistemic or non-epistemic actions. With these contentions at hand, this chapter asserts that the role functionalism is the most promising species of relationalist color ontology.

This chapter examines the major objections encountered in developing the theory of powers. One argument is that ontological seriousness about irreducible powers empties the world of something that it contains; another is that it imports into the world something that does not exist. The chapter discusses vicious regress in relation to space occupancy, conditionals, and lack of qualities. It evaluates dispositionalism and states that the ‘always-packing’ argument is ineffective. It also examines the position of Hume's distinctness where only contingent connections exist between distinct objects, properties, and relations in a world.

I argue that Stroud's nonreductionism about meaning is insufficiently motivated. First, given that he rejects the assumption that grasp of an expression's meaning guides or instructs us in its use, he has no reason to accept Kripke's arguments against dispositionalism or related reductive views. Second, his argument that reductive views are impossible because they attempt to explain language “from outside” rests on an equivocation between two senses in which an explanation of language can be from outside language. I offer a partially reductive account of meaning which appeals both to speakers’ dispositions to produce and respond to utterances in naturalistically specifiable ways, and to the normative attitudes they adopt, in so doing, to their own behavior. This account is supported, I argue, by Stroud's early treatment of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations and in particular of the agreement in primitive judgments or reactions which Wittgenstein takes to be required for linguistic communication.

Edwards's theology is like a symphony with many parts. The problem with existing interpretations is that they capture one or another part of the symphony yet fail to construe the sound and flow of the whole. This chapter outlines five constituents of the whole: Trinitarian communication, creaturely participation, necessitarian dispositionalism, the divine priority in all of reality, and harmonious constitutionalism. The chapter also describes Edwards's intellectual style as venturesome, unfettered, self‐critical, and developmental. He used a method of investigation and discovery by writing, subsuming insights into ever‐expanding and more general categories, and connecting ideas that might ordinarily be thought of as disconnected. The result was an unusual combination of traditionality and originality. The last section of the chapter provides snapshots of the themes that run throughout this analysis of the Edwards corpus—from spirituality to world religions.

“Primitivist dispositionalism” combines the basic insights worth saving from dispositionalism and primitivism, by taking color to be an “appearance property,” such as your aunt’s looking young, her youthful appearance. Chapter 6 argues that to see a color is to see an appearance property, just as to see your aunt’s youthful appearance is to see an appearance property. A model for appearance properties is outlined here, the metaphysical implications of primitivist dispositionalism are addressed, and it is shown that the apple does indeed look like it was in Eden, namely, “gloriously, perfectly, and primitively red” (Chalmers 2006, 49). The resulting account of color is dispositional, in that there is nothing to being red beyond looking red. Nevertheless, by giving due credit to the phenomenology of color experience that makes primitivism appealing, it offers a way for us to remain on Earth, yet feel like we’re in Eden.

Some compatibilists are attracted to a theory which accounts for freedom in terms of sensitivity to reasons. But reasons-responsiveness appears to conflict with another common compatibilist thesis: that the freedom pertinent to moral responsibility can be found in a Frankfurt example. The problem seems to be that in a Frankfurt example, an agent is not reasons-responsive insofar as, if she had reason to do otherwise, she would not do otherwise. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, have attempted to overcome this problem by focusing upon an agent’s “mechanism” of action operative in a Frankfurt example. Unfortunately, theorizing about freedom in terms of mechanisms of action leads to several difficulties. This chapter examines the compatibilists’ prospects for salvaging a mechanism-based account of reasons-responsiveness in light of these difficulties, and it is considered whether theorists committed to a reasons-responsive view should return to an agent-based rather than a mechanism-based view.

Dispositional Pluralism is more consistent with our dispositions talk than more monolithic views. Our evidence for extrinsic, ungrounded, and non-natural dispositions is comparable to that of intrinsic, grounded, and natural ones. Dispositional Pluralism has wide applicability to various philosophical issues. Secondary qualities, such as colors, can be given a dispositional account. Thinking of character traits as dispositions sheds light on the debate over Dispositionalism Situationism in moral psychology. One can give an account of gender identity as a cluster of behavioral dispositions. Finally, the potentiality of an embryo or a patient is best understood as an extrinsic dispositional property.

A plausible candidate for a norm of science is that the more data the better, for theory generation, for example. Such a norm would be supported if causal inferences were inductive, for instance. This view is in tension, however, with the thesis that causation is singular and intrinsic, relying on no repetition elsewhere even though in some cases it is capable of producing it. From a singularist perspective, there are at least some instances where causal understanding comes from deep knowledge of single cases rather than superficial knowledge of many cases. At the same time, it seems clear that there can be a diminishing epistemic return in the gathering of more and more evidence of the same kind.

This chapter further elaborates the contention that an agent’s free will consists in her possessing abilities and opportunities, specifically the opportunity to exercise her abilities of reflective self-control in more than one way. It is argued that an agent’s abilities nomologically supervene on her intrinsic properties and that her opportunities nomologically supervene on her intrinsic-cum-extrinsic properties. With these analyses in hand, the No Opportunity Argument is given to show that free will and moral accountability are incompatible with determinism because the opportunity to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism. The chapter closes by considering and rejecting two compatibilist counterproposals. The first is the new dispositionalism, which maintains that free will solely consists in an agent’s abilities. The second is Kadri Vihvelin’s account of free will. It is argued that both accounts are implausible as they, unwittingly, imply that addicts and phobics possess free will.

One argument against the existence of robustly collective cognitive states such as group belief and group knowledge is that there are no collective representations, i.e., representations held by groups rather than individuals. Since belief requires representation, so the argument goes, there can be no collective belief. This chapter replies to that argument. First, the chapter scrutinizes the assumption that belief requires representation and points out that it is in fact a substantive and controversial issue whether belief indeed requires representation and, if it does, how so. Secondly, the chapter argues that even if we grant the above assumption, the argument can be resisted, since there is a natural way to make sense of collective representations. By drawing on the ideas of the extended mind and distributed cognition hypotheses, this chapter outlines how we can conceive of collective representations and thereby undermine the argument against group cognitive states.

This chapter presents a response to Mark Johnston’s ‘Subjectivism and Unmasking’, which was directed at the author’s book, The Quest for Reality. Johnston defends an ontological account of what colours are and explains how, on that view, it could be true that no colours belong to the everyday objects we perceive in the world. The author’s resistance to the subjectivity of colour perceptions and beliefs turns rather on the proper understanding of colour terms as predicates ascribing colours to objects, and not as names or terms referring to the colours. The chapter explains the main assumptions of the ‘Ramsey/Lewis’ theory of colour. It also considers how the complex relations we understand to hold among the contents of perception, thought, and belief stand as a challenge to all forms of dispositionalism.

The chapter introduces the view to be developed in this book: dispositionalism about modality. Some motivation for the view is provided, against the background of the recent surge in ‘anti-Humean’ metaphysics, and contrasting it with possible-worlds-based accounts of modality. The chapter then outlines the three main constraints for a convincing dispositionalist view—formal adequacy, extensional correctness, and semantic usefulness—and gives a first glimpse of how the notion of a disposition needs to be developed in order to meet those constraints, resulting in a conception that is more aptly called ‘potentiality’.