Philosophic disposition

I believe it is possible [he said] to establish in the realm of the imagination, a law ofthejbur elements which classifies various kinds of material imagination by their coimections with fire, air, water or earth. .. A material element must provide its own substance, its particular rules and poetics. It is not simply coincidental that primitive philosophies often made a decisive choice along these lines. They associated with their formal principles one of the four fundamental elements, which thus became signs of philosophic disposition. 

There is a twofold death the one indeed universally known, in which the body is liberated from the soul but the other peculiar to the philosophers [alchemists] in which the soul is liberated from the body nor does one entirely follow the other. That which nature binds, nature also dissolves that which the soul binds, the soul likewise can dissolve nature indeed, binds the body to the soul, but the soul binds herself to the body. Nature therefore liberates the body from the soul, but the soul may also liberate her self from the body. That is to say, if she know how, and have the right disposition awarded, she may dissolve her own conceptive vehicle, even the parental bond, and return consciously (the elementary principles remaining, nor yet... 

Notwithstanding Tukulti s experience, the primary cause of air pollution for most of history has been wood or coal fires, especially in crowded urban communities. The streets of Rome, for example, were notorious for their terrible, smoky character, caused by thousands of wood and coal fires. In 61 c.E. the Roman philosopher Seneca described how this foul air affected his mood "As soon as I had gotten out of the heavy air of Rome and from the stink of the smokey chimneys thereof, he once wrote, "... I felt an alteration of my disposition. ... 

One of the first people to apply science to medicine was the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 b.c.e.). Influenced by the idea that the world is composed of four substances—earth, air, fire, and water—as taught by the Greek philosopher Empedocles (ca. 495-435 b.c.e.), Hippocrates proposed that four fluids are critical in determining a person s state of health. These fluids, known as humors (from a Latin term for moisture), were called blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. According to Hippocrates, an imbalance in these humors caused disease. Later, people associated a specific temperament or personality with these humors, a theory that was one of the earliest attempts to explain moods and emotions. Blood, for example, was associated with an optimistic disposition, while black bile corresponded to depression. 

He thus reclaimed and lenified, set him to his task, but be sure thou have a watchful eye over him, lest any matter unfortunately crossing his now mild disposition, should unhappily move him to impatience, and so in fury, he might happen to set the forge and all on fire, and then wert thou undone. But if thou canst like a philosopher, keep him in a mild and temperate mood, then shaft thou see his continued temperance show itself in the orderly process of they work. 

In departing from the sun light strikes the dense bodies, the celestial as well as the terrestrial it places their faculties in movement, carries them with it, reflects them and diffuses them in the upper Air as well as in the lower. Air having a disposition to mix with the Water and the Earth, becomes the vehicle of these faculties, and communicates them to the bodies which are formed of them, or which are by analogy most susceptible of them. These are the faculties which are called influences. Many natural philosophers deny their existence, because they do not know them. 

The Philosopher expects it when the body, dissolved by a natural Resolution, is submitted to the action of putrefying heat. Distillation and Sublimation have been invented only in imitation of these processes of Nature in regard to the Elements, the inclination or disposition of which to become rarified and to ascend, and to become condensed and to descend, causes all the mixtures and productions of Nature. 

William Irvine was a native of Glasgow, matriculating at the university at the age of thirteen in 1756. Black soon noticed his interest in chemistry and his disposition to apply mathematics in his studies. Like Black, Irvine s main lines of communication for his work were through his students and the occasional excursion before the local Philosophical Society. Working as Black s assistant, Irvine helped in his professor s determination of the latent heat of steam and contributed values of that quantity for melting tin, zinc and spermaceti and beeswax. He also worked with Black on establishing experimentally the specific heats of various substances. However, Irvine became very much his own man. Andrew Kent puts it colourfully ... 

DISPOSITION — A Philosophical Confection so-called by Maria, but Trevisan terms it Weight or Proportion, and others name it Composition. It is a synthesis of the three principles philosophically combined. In his Vade Mecum, Philalethes says that we must take one part of the red or the white body, which answer to the male, two or three parts of arsenic, which fulfils the office of the female and four parts or more, up to twelve, of the sea-water of the Sages the whole, being well mixed, must be placed in the vase, which must be well sealed, and the vase placed in the athanor, where it must be subjected to the required regimen. 

Philosophical it is for this reason that it has been omitted in the writings of the philosophers, though success depends thereon. The second is the Philosophical Preparation of the Agents, which the Philosophers call the First Preparation, and Philalethes, the Imperfect Preparation. The third is the Preparation of the Elixir, or the Complete and Perfect Preparation. But the successive philosophical preparations are only one operation repeated, so at least is the declaration of Morien, who terms them Dispositions. 

WIDTH — The philosophers suppose Three Dimensions in their Matter, just as Geometers assume in ordinary bodies. The Philosophical Length is the preparation of the Matter, by means of which they compose a Medicine. The Philosophical Height is its manifest part, while the Width or Breadth is the method which they employ to educe what is concealed therein. Height was regarded as cold and moist, and Width succeeded by a change of disposition, namely, to dry and cold, because the manifest always conceals its opposite. 

Lange, M. 1994. "Dispositions and Scientific Explanation." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 75 108-132. 

The reader will be apt to exclaim here "Very fine All this is well but how shall the seed of metals be procured, and whence comes it that so few know how to gather it " To this it IS answered that the philosophers have hitherto industriously kept that a profound secret some out of a selfish disposition, though otherwise good men. Others, who wished only for worthy persons to whom they might impart it, could not write of it openly, because covetousness and vanity have been governing principles in the world ... 

SUPPOSING such dispositions in the artist as have been previously laid down, and the work well performed hitherto, for his direction herein we shall describe the changes which our subject undergoes during the second part of the process, commonly called the Great Work of the Philosophers. 

The disposition sought after by the philosophers, O Son, is but one in our egg, but this in the hen s egg is much less to be found. But lest so much of the Divine Wisdom as is a hen s egg should not be distinguished, our composition is, as that is, from the four elements adapted and composed. Know, therefore, that in the hen s egg is the greatest help with respect to the proximity and relationship of the matter in nature... 

Prior, E. (1985). Dispositions. Scots Philosophical Monographs. Aberdeen University Press. 

Despite that, it would necessitate a fundamental and main teaching course as we will see in the course of this chapter. This didactical and academic approach could have many reasons. A general one may be the philosophical and psychological disposition to put our attention more on objects rather than concepts, matter over processes. 

Among philosophers of mind, it is common to assume that at least some mental properties are functional in nature (Putnam 1975 Jacob 1997 Kim 1992,1998 van Gulick 2001 Block 1997,2007, forthcoming). Basically, a functional property is a property that is to be characterized, or that is characterizable in functional terms. The idea that functional properties are functional in nature, or that they are role-properties raises subtle issues about the nature of dispositional properties, their connection to multiple realizability and to functionalism. Suffice it to say that on all these views, a functional characterization is, to some extent, transparent with respect to the so described property s nature (for a discussion, see van Riel 2012). Here are two ways to conceive of characterizations in functional terms. The first is obtained from Lewis (1972), the second can be found in Block (2007), building on Putnam (1975). To give an idea of how to conceive of functional properties, it will prove useful to talk freely about theoretical terms. Theoretical terms are conceived of as terms that can be defined by the Ramsey-sentence of the theory in which they occur. A functional characterization of a property is, then, a characterization of a property in terms of the relevant Ramsey-sentence, obtained from a psychological theory. 

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