NEIL EDWARD WILLIAMS
STATIC AND DYNAMIC DISPOSITIONS
ABSTRACT. 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 ten-
dency, our notion of causation is one that is inherently dynamic, as if the maintenance of the
status quo were merely a given. Contrary to this position, I argue that a complete concept
of causation must also account for dispositions whose manifestations involve no changes
at all, and that a causal theory that fails to include these ‘static’ dispositions alongside the
dynamic ones renders static occurrences miraculous.
Sometimes things happen: birds sing, cars crash, fireworks explode, and
so on. Likewise, sometimes very little or nothing happens: everything, or
very nearly everything, stays exactly as it was and nothing moves or makes
a sound. Clearly, it is occurrences of the first kind that we tend to notice
the most. It is not at all surprising that a loud explosion of colourful light
against a dark backdrop of night sky – as happens when fireworks go off
– should impress itself upon the mind with more force and vigour than
when a small table sits silent and motionless in the corner of the room.
However, once epistemological considerations are put to one side, the two
kinds of events have a lot more in common than we had originally noticed,
or so I will argue. In fact, it seems that both kinds of occurrence warrant
a similar causal explanation, and that our causal theories run the risk of
being incomplete if they ignore examples of the second kind.
What I shall argue is that an object’s dispositions, or capacities, or
powers, or whatever you prefer to call them, are not just for manifesta-
tions that involve changes, but are also for manifestations that involve no
changes at all. That is so to say that amongst an object’s dispositions are
those whose manifestations involve bringing about some different state of
affairs than was previously the case, as well as others whose manifestations
simply involve the maintenance of the status quo. Any theory of causality
that fails to account for such humdrum manifestations is lacking in some
important ontological sense, and is unlikely to be an adequate theory of
causation.
In order to argue that this is the case, I want to introduce a distinction
between what I shall call ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ dispositions.
1
Dynamic
dispositions are those dispositions whose manifestations result in some
Synthese (2005) 146: 303–324 © Springer 2005
DOI 10.1007/s11229-004-6212-8
304 NEIL EDWARD WILLIAMS
kind of change within a world. This could be a change in a particular
object’s properties, a change in the arrangement of the objects in a world,
or even a change in the number of objects in a world, but must involve
bringing about a state of affairs that is clearly different from that which
obtained prior to the manifestation of the disposition.
2
Static dispositions,
on the other hand, will be those whose manifestation does not involve any
change. The manifestations of this kind of disposition simply result in a
maintenance of the status quo, and for this reason typically go unnoticed.
Now, to have introduced a distinction is not yet to have argued for it.
And, in what follows, that is exactly what I intend to do. It is my hope
that the defence of the distinction should make apparent the need to take
seriously those dispositions whose manifestations are involved in ‘merely’
keeping things as they are, and that the existence of such dispositions will
be recognised. In order to argue for the distinction I will begin with a short
discussion of the dynamic dispositions, but for the most part I will assume
that we are all familiar with dispositions of this type. Next I will go on
to discuss the static dispositions – those whose nature is far less obvious,
but which I will argue are nevertheless just as common, if not more so.
The discussion will cover three different types of static dispositions, all of
which are tied to manifestations that we tend to overlook. This includes:
(1) those dispositions involved in an object’s persistence, and maintaining
the object’s intrinsic properties; (2) those dispositions involved in main-
taining an object’s extrinsic properties; and (3) those dispositions involved
in threshold situations.
3
Before turning to the static/dynamic distinction, I
want to make some quick comments regarding the nature of dispositions.
‘Disposition’, as I shall use the term, means nothing more than a ca-
pacity, power, or propensity of an object to act in some particular way in
some particular set of conditions. I shall assume throughout the paper that
a form of dispositional realism is true – in other words that dispositional
ascriptions capture genuine states of objects in virtue of the properties they
possess, and are not just statements about past or possible behaviour.
4
That
being said, I shall remain neutral concerning the kind of properties required
as truthmakers for our dispositional ascriptions. My tendency is to think
that properties themselves are at least partly dispositional in nature, and
are capable of supporting numerous dispositional states of their bearers,
but nothing hangs on this. My claims would be the same if I thought that
dispositions could be explained in terms of non-dispositional properties
and physical laws. Hence, for those who insist that dispositions be reduced
to non-dispositional properties, I would ask that you keep in mind that
the dispositional realism I defend here is weak enough to allow for such
a view, though it is not my own.
5
Despite my preferences, with regards
STATIC AND DYNAMIC DISPOSITIONS 305
to the present discussion, I consider a theory that posits a network of dis-
positional properties to be no better or worse than one that offers a set
of relations or law-like entities to do the same work. All I ask is that for
sake of simplicity we make use of Ockham’s razor, and allow that there
be either networks of dispositional properties or sets of laws. An ontology
that postulates both kinds of entity is somewhat superfluous, and is in need
of a little trimming.
That being said, I do want to offer a word of caution regarding my
understanding of dispositionality. That is that dispositions as I understand
them should not be confused with their manifestations. There is another
use of disposition in the literature that ties dispositions to their manifesta-
tions essentially, effectively reducing dispositions to behaviours. This can
either be in terms of present behaviour or tendencies for behaviour, where
the tendency is ascribed to the object on the basis of past behaviours, and
not because of any present state or property of the object.
6
On that view, to
claim that an object has some disposition or other is to claim that it, or other
objects like it, has produced some specific type of manifestation in the
past, and that the object is such that it will tend to do so again. The concept
of disposition discussed here is still closely connected to the concept of
manifestation but, unlike the other kind, the dispositions I consider need
never be manifested. I make the static/dynamic distinction according to
the different types of manifestation a disposition can give rise to, but no
assumptions are made as to whether or not it actually will. A disposition
can, and will, continue to be a very real component of an object, even if
the manifestation, which the disposition happens to be for, never obtains.
7
Of course, due to our perceptually constrained epistemic limitations, we
only come to recognise the existence of particular dispositions through
their manifestations. However, it would be a grave mistake to assume that
the only dispositions an object has are the ones we have observed in man-
ifestations, as if an object’s capabilities were somehow a product of our
perceptions of them.
Each and every disposition is such that it will ‘lie in wait’ for the
appropriate conditions for its manifestation; conditions which include
the appropriate reciprocal disposition partners as well as the appropriate
spatio-temporal arrangement of those partners. But regardless of whether
or not those conditions are ever met, the disposition will nevertheless be
present and waiting. In fact, the disposition will lie forever in wait, as real
as anything else, even if the conditions for its manifestations are such that
they have never and will never obtain. For instance, consider a lock that has
never been opened, the original key for which has been lost. Now, further
imagine that the lock is cast down a well, and years later the well is covered
306 NEIL EDWARD WILLIAMS
and the lock becomes buried under miles of dirt. Even though that lock
will never be opened, it is still true of the lock that a key – of the correct
shape and hardness, and turned with the appropriate force – will open the
lock. The lock’s disposition for opening continues to be present, even if the
conditions for its manifestation are not. In fact, the dispositional base of the
lock is so deep that it is capable of the mutual manifestation of opening not
just with actual objects (such as the key that was lost) but also for possible
objects as well (there are infinitely many ‘keys’ which, if made in the right
shape and hardness, would open the lock if turned with the appropriate
force), in numerous arrangements, possible or actual.
8
Of course, a good
many of the lock’s dispositions will also be for manifestations in which the
lock does not open, as failing to open for the wrong key is just as much a
manifestation of the lock’s dispositions as opening is, even if it is not the
manifestation with which we are typically concerned.
1. SYNAMIC DISPOSITIONS
With this background in place, we are now ready to consider the first half
of our distinction: the dynamic dispositions. As I say above, dynamic dis-
positions are those whose manifestations involve some sort of change in
a world. This could be a change in an object’s properties, a change in the
arrangement of the objects in the world, or even the creation or annihila-
tion of objects, but in all cases a full description of the world before and
after the manifestation of the disposition cannot differ only in that they
are temporally distinct – some kind of substantive change must have taken
place.
For the most part, dispositions of this type are the ones we are most
familiar with. It is dynamic dispositions that lead to warning labels, child
safety caps on bottles, protective wrapping, and so on. For instance, try
taking a quick nip of cyanide. Most likely, the cyanide’s disposition to
poison you when swallowed, along with your reciprocal disposition for
being poisoned when having swallowed the cyanide, will result in the
mutual manifestation of your poisoning, and your untimely death. This
is clearly a case where the manifestation of the disposition brings about a
change in the world. But changes need not be quite this obvious – most
dynamic dispositions will result in manifestations that are far more subtle,
and typically far lass fatal.
Consider a piece of litmus paper, and imagine what would happen if
we dipped it into a small test tube containing a weakly acidic solution. The
paper should, assuming it possesses the appropriate disposition, undergo
a change in colour from white to red. The manifestation of the dynamic
STATIC AND DYNAMIC DISPOSITIONS 307
disposition in this case has resulted in a change in the object’s properties.
The once white paper is now red. Hence, before the experiment took place
the litmus paper had the dynamic disposition to change its colour from
white to red in the presence of an acidic solution, and the acidic solution
had the reciprocal dynamic disposition for turning the litmus paper from
white to red.
An example of a dynamic disposition whose manifestation involves a
rearrangement of the objects in a world would be the gravitational force
exhibited by those celestial bodies that are sufficiently large or dense. Our
very own planet is such that it possesses the dynamic disposition to attract
smaller bodies, made evident by the meteors that periodically bombard its
surface. These collisions are the end result of a prolonged mutual mani-
festation of the Earth’s gravitational field (a dynamic disposition for the
attraction of smaller bodies) and the meteors’ reciprocal dispositions for
attraction. Because of the Earth’s gravitational disposition, smaller celes-
tial bodies will be drawn towards the planet’s surface when they enter that
gravitational field. The result of the attraction is a new arrangement of the
objects in the universe.
Finally, the ability to add or remove objects to or from the universe can
be found in the reciprocal dispositions of two smallish lumps of clay to
combine to form one larger lump of clay. This union would result in a new
state of affairs which could equally well be described as either creating
a new large lump of clay or annihilating two smaller lumps of clay.
9
Ac-
cording to a certain way of counting, after the reciprocal dispositions are
manifested there are no longer two objects present, only one. Each of the
lumps is such that it is dynamically disposed for the mutual manifestation
of cohesion with the other lump of clay, to form a larger conjoined whole.
I have described a number of dispositions which I characterise as dy-
namic, and which, as I said, we are typically quite familiar with. Because
we have a more or less reasonable sense of what our environment is like,
we tend to notice when it changes. If these changes happen often enough,
or are drastic enough (the potentially fatal disposition of cyanide is not
something that requires repeated manifestation to make itself apparent),
then we are likely to become aware of many of the dynamic dispositions
possessed by the objects around us. In fact, an argument could easily be
made to the effect that our very survival depends on it. Moreover, it is
probably some type of survival cum evolutionary story that explains why
it is that dynamic dispositions are so familiar to us, whereas static ones go
virtually unnoticed. It might go a little like this:
We are finite beings with vast mental capabilities but extremely limited
energy, mental or otherwise. Therefore, a kind of economy demands that