Detail príspevku/publikácie

Abstrakt

Dispositions are unobserved properties of objects that may or may not manifest under certain conditions. These properties can be described using dispositional predicates, which typically require the use of conditional clauses. In this paper, I focus on the confounding nature of indicative and counterfactual conditionals. The first part addresses terminological issues in Czech philosophy, particularly those stemming from the uncritical adoption of the English linguistic framework. The second part provides a brief overview of the analysis of dispositional predicates in Anglophone philosophy, tracing its development from the 1930s to the 1970s. In the third part, I explore how the linguistic intuitions of native English and Czech speakers differ when discussing dispositions. In part four, I place these conflicting intuitions about modality within the broader context of linguistic relativity. Finally, I reflect on some of the reasons for the prevalence of counterfactual reasoning in philosophy.