Questions: Dispositions, Manifestations, and Stimulus Conditions

Question 1

A fragile glass sits on a shelf undisturbed for a century and never breaks. Which claim best captures the correct philosophical understanding of this situation?

• A. The glass was never truly fragile, since fragility requires at least one manifestation to be a real property
• B. The glass was fragile: it is true in nearby possible worlds that had it been struck with sufficient force, it would have broken — fragility is a modal property that can be unmanifested
• C. We cannot know whether the glass was fragile without testing it, so fragility is not a genuine intrinsic property
• D. The glass lost its fragility gradually over the century since dispositions decay when unexercised

Answer: (B)

Dispositions are modal properties: they are characterized by counterfactual conditionals ('would break if struck'), not by actual events. The fragile glass that is never broken is still genuinely fragile — in nearby possible worlds where the stimulus condition (being struck) obtains, it breaks. This is the philosophical importance of the possible-worlds analysis: an unmanifested disposition is still real. The error in option A is treating a disposition as if it requires actualization to exist.

Question 2

Why is the concept of a 'manifestation partner' philosophically important for understanding how dispositions work?

• A. It shows that every disposition must have a categorical physical basis in the bearer's intrinsic properties
• B. It reveals that dispositions are inherently relational: the manifestation of a disposition requires cooperation from an entity or condition external to the disposition's bearer
• C. It proves that dispositions reduce to causal relations between distinct objects rather than properties of individual things
• D. It demonstrates that stimulus conditions and manifestations are always simultaneous rather than sequential

Answer: (B)

The partner structure is easy to miss: fragility is a property of the glass alone, but the manifestation (breaking) requires cooperation from something outside the glass — a striking force. The disposition is unilateral; the manifestation is bilateral. This relational structure means dispositions are not self-contained triggers waiting to fire autonomously. They are poised within a network of possible interactions with partner entities, which has consequences for how we understand causation and the ontology of powers.

Question 3

A disposition can manifest largely on its own, without any external stimulus or partner entity contributing to the outcome.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Every disposition requires a stimulus condition (the trigger) and a manifestation partner (the co-contributor to the outcome). Fragility alone does not cause breaking — it requires a striking force as partner. Solubility requires a solvent. Even seemingly self-contained dispositions involve an environmental condition that plays the partner role. This relational structure is a core feature of dispositions, not a contingent fact about particular cases.

Question 4

A glass that is never struck during its entire existence might still genuinely have the disposition of fragility.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Dispositions are modal properties grounded in counterfactual conditionals. The fragility of a glass is the truth of 'it would break if struck with sufficient force' — this can be true even if the glass is never actually struck. The categorical basis (molecular structure) that grounds the disposition is present regardless of whether the manifestation ever occurs. Confusing 'never manifested' with 'not genuinely possessed' is a category error.

Question 5

Explain why dispositions are described as 'modal properties' and what this means for a disposition that is never manifested — such as the fragility of a glass that survives intact for a century.

Model answer: Dispositions are modal because they are characterized by what would happen under certain conditions, not what does happen. They are grounded in counterfactual conditionals: 'the glass is fragile' means 'if it were struck with sufficient force, it would break.' This is a claim about possible worlds — specifically, about what happens in nearby worlds where the stimulus condition obtains. A glass that is never broken can still be genuinely fragile: the relevant counterfactuals are true of it even though the actual-world manifestation never occurs.

The modal analysis connects dispositions to possible-worlds semantics: to say something has a disposition is to say that in the closest possible worlds where the stimulus condition holds, the manifestation occurs. This is why unmanifested dispositions are philosophically unproblematic — their truth is determined by nearby possible worlds, not by the actual history of the object. The debate about categorical bases concerns what makes these counterfactuals true in the actual world.