A Computational Theory of Dispositions

A disposition may be interpreted is a proposition which is preponderantly, but not necessarily always, true. In this sense, birds can fly is a disposition, as are the propositions Swedes are blond, snow is white and slimness is attractive.An idea which underlies the theory described in this paper is that a disposition may be viewed as a proposition with implicit fuzzy quantifiers which are approximations to all and always, e.g., almost all, almost always, most, frequently, usually, etc. For example, birds can fly may be interpreted as the result of suppressing the fuzzy quantifier most in the proposition most birds can fly. Similarly, young men like young women may be read as most young men like mostly young women. The process of transforming a disposition into a proposition with explicit fuzzy quantifiers is referred to as explicitation or restoration.Explicitation sets the stage for representing the meaning of a disposition through the use of test-score semantics (Zadeh, 1978, 1982). In this approach to semantics, a proposition, p, is viewed as a collection of interrelated elastic constraints, and the meaning of p is represented as a procedure which tests, scores and aggregates the constraints which are induced by p.The paper closes with a description of an approach to reasoning with dispositions which is based on the concept of a fuzzy syllogism. Syllogistic reasoning with dispositions has an important bearing on commonsense reasoning as well as on the management of uncertainty in expert systems. As a simple application of the techniques described in this paper, we formulate a definition of typicality and establish a connection between the typical and usual values of a variable.