This paper discusses the prospects of a dispositional solution to the Kripke–Wittgenstein rule-following puzzle. Recent attempts to repair dispositional approaches to this puzzle have appealed to the ideas of finks and antidotes – interfering dispositions and conditions – to explain why the rule-following disposition is not always manifested.We argue that this approach fails: agents cannot be s...

This paper develops two ideas with respect to dispositional properties: (1) Adapting a suggestion of Sungho Choi, it appears the conceptual distinction between dispositional and categorical properties can be drawn in terms of susceptibility to finks and antidotes. Dispositional, but not categorical properties, are not susceptible to intrinsic finks, nor are they remediable by intrinsic antidote...

It is generally agreed that dispositions cannot be analyzed in terms of simple subjunctive conditionals (because of what are called ‘‘masked dispositions’’ and ‘‘finkish dispositions’’). I here defend a qualified subjunctive account of dispositions according to which an object is disposed to U when conditions C obtain if and only if, if conditions C were to obtain, then the object would U ceter...

When it comes to scientific explanation, our parsimonious tendencies mean that we focus almost exclusively on those dispositions whose manifestations result in some sort of change – changes in properties, locations, velocities and so on. Following this tendency, our notion of causation is one that is inherently dynamic, as if the maintenance of the status quo were merely a given. Contrary to th...

Many opponents of free-will libertarianism argue that libertarian free agency is unintelligible. The aim of my talk is to answer them by suggesting that a coherent conception of libertarian freedom is possible if (and, possibly, only if) we adopt dispositionalism as the explanatory framework of human agency. My argument proceeds as follows. First, I classify the existing explanations of human a...