{"id":100028,"date":"2016-03-18T09:55:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T13:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=100028"},"modified":"2017-11-03T14:27:21","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T18:27:21","slug":"what-i-mean-when-i-say-disposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2016\/03\/18\/what-i-mean-when-i-say-disposition\/","title":{"rendered":"What I mean when I say: ‘Disposition,’ with Lauren Ashwell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lauren<\/a>

Lauren Ashwell is an associate professor of philosophy at Bates. (Sarah Crosby\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

When Lauren Ashwell, associate professor of philosophy, uses the word \u201cdisposition,\u201d she often means:<\/p>\n

“An object\u2019s potential, in a metaphysical sense. For example, a glass vase may have a disposition<\/em> to break under stress, and in some sense, this is about what would<\/em> happen in certain potential circumstances.<\/p>\n

“This raises a puzzle about how we can ascribe a quality to the vase while seeming to say nothing about the way the world actually is; the glass might never be stressed, and never break.<\/p>\n

“Thinking about dispositions might help us to understand a whole host of different phenomena, such as laws of nature, metaphysical chance, mental states \u2014 and perhaps even what it is to have freewill.”<\/p>\n

Lauren Ashwell, who chairs the Program in Digital and Computational Studies, is one of 21 scholars to receive a prestigious ACLS Burkhardt Fellowship<\/a> for 2016-17.<\/em><\/p>\n

The series \u201cWhat I Mean When I Say\u201d explains terms and phrases used by Bates professors in their teaching and research.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philosopher Lauren Ashwell puts a metaphysical spin on an everyday term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":100051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,166],"tags":[10801,6982,10116],"class_list":["post-100028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-humanities-history","tag-lauren-ashwell","tag-philosophy","tag-what-i-mean-when-i-say"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100028"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106454,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100028\/revisions\/106454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}