| In a message dated 10/4/2002 10:00:27 PM Central Daylight Time, cowan@ccil.org writes: << > Not, then, a color (irrelevant) nor a particular type of candy >> OK. But I see that you got the distinction, which is all I care about. << I think that conclusion is more than doubtful. Twenty years ago, I was comparing food notes with an acquaintance. I liked cheese (but only of varieties A, B, and C). She did not like cheese (except for varieties A, B, and C). Obviously the difference is purely subjective. >> See later in the message -- it is a matter of enough varieties. That *may* be subjective, but wiht, I think, a fairly high degree of intersubjective agreement -- short of giving numbers (i.e., on cases). << > But I can't get by with no cases at all, and I can't get by > with only special cases (my birthday, wrapped around my favorite goody, etc.) Agree with the first; disagree with the second. >> I think it would be odd to say that someone like chocolate tout court if he only liked it on his birthday cakes. I would then say "he likes chocolate birthday cakes but otherwise does not like chocolate." << > In general again, lacking some other general law (which I > don't think there is), this dispositional claims requires being put to the > test from time to time -- actually presenting the person with the object -- Again, I don't think so. "Soluble" is plainly dispositional, but salt block X is water-soluble even if it remains in the salt mine forever and is never dissolved at all. If "like" is really dispositional, it would have to apply even when never tested, provided (epistemologically) there is some other reason to think so. E.g. everyone who likes X likes Y, A is known to like X, we can conclude that A likes Y even if he never tries it. >> Salt is, of course, precisely a case where there is a general rule, so hardly a counterexample to this claim, which starts "lacking some other general law." But in general, remember that what we are about here is practical truth conditions -- how we would find out whether something is true. There may be some general law that covers the chocolate case, but we don't know it and so we are forced back to actual tests. the point is that I know of no such general law -- nor soes anyone else I have ever heard of. |