Perception and Inference

This chapter examines whether dispositions deserve the status of properties. It also draws upon Tetens's work and the concept of information associated with teleology that further substantiates against functional characterization of dispositions. He has emphasized the fundamental importance of information in modern science in the same way as energy is important in the conceptual framework of causal process explanation. Dispositions are the behaviour of things in certain circumstances and such a description is different from identifying the cause of such a behaviour. But, when one talks of dispositional property one is talking of a causal power that gives rise to such a behaviour and this is different from the behaviour itself. For an essentialist like Ellis, dispositional properties are there to explain the manifest behavioural dispositions. Ellis's idea of giving the status of property to dispositions fundamentally rests on the premise that such properties perform an explanatory role.