CONCEPT
Dispositional Analysis
Ryle's <em>central analytical method</em>: treating mental concepts as descriptions of tendencies to behave in certain ways under certain conditions, rather than as names for hidden inner events.
Dispositional analysis is Ryle's systematic alternative to the Cartesian picture of mind. To say that sugar is soluble is not to say that it is currently dissolving, but that it is the kind of thing that dissolves under certain conditions. Solubility is a dispositional property — it specifies what would happen under specified circumstances, whether or not the circumstances currently obtain. Ryle extended this analysis to mental concepts: to call a person intelligent is not to report a hidden inner event but to characterize her as disposed to behave in certain ways — to notice relevant features, correct errors, respond flexibly to novel problems. The analysis dissolves the pseudo-problem of how mental events cause physical behavior, because mental 'events' turn out not to be inner events at all but patterns of behavior described under certain aspects.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The power of dispositional analysis, for the AI question, is that it does not require settling the hard problem of consciousness. It asks only that behavior be
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