ABSTRACT
Are dispositions equivalent to conditionals? Does ‘x is fragile’ mean the same as ‘if x were dropped it would break’?
Hugh Mellor and I agree that disposition predicates are truly or falsely predicable of objects or systems. Whether a particular glass is fragile or not is a question of fact (once various ambiguities are set to one side). On the other hand, I follow Ramsey in thinking that conditionals like ‘if x were dropped, it would break’ are neither true nor false. One cannot be in suspense coherently whether it is true or false. One cannot assign coherently a (subjective) degree of probability to its being true.
