The Ontology of Events, Powers and Dispositions

THE ONTOLGOY OF EVENTS, POWERS AND DISPOSITIONS

July 20-21, 2009

Faculty: Randall Dipert and Neil Williams (University at Buffalo)

Two-day Course organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology.

This course will be a two part course:

Day 1: EVENTS (TBD)

Day 2: POWERS AND DISPOSITIONS This part of the course will provide an introduction to the debates concerning dispositional properties. Three major issues to be discussed are:

(i) How should we distinguish dispositional properties from non-dispositional properties?

(ii) Can dispositions be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals?

(iii) Are dispositions reducible?

Literature

Bird, Alex. (2007). Nature’s Metaphysics. Oxford University Press, New York.

Molnar, George. (2003) Powers. Oxford University Press, New York.

Mumford. Stephen. (1998). Dispositions. Oxford University Press, New York.