Analysis Advance Access originally published online on July 8, 2009
Analysis 2009 69(4):677-684; doi:10.1093/analys/anp098
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
The non-identity of the categorical and the dispositional
University of Reading Reading RG6 6AA, UK d.s.oderberg@reading.ac.uk
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1. Consider a circle. It has both a radius and a circumference. There is obviously a real distinction between the properties having a radius and having a circumference. This is not because, when confining ourselves to circles,1 having a radius can ever exist apart from having a circumference. A real distinction does not depend on that. Descartes thought that a real distinction between x and y meant that x could exist without y or vice versa, if only by the power of God. But Descartes was wrong. Separable existence is a sufficient but not necessary condition of there being a real distinction. The difference between a real and a conceptual distinction derives from medieval philosophy. Aquinas, for one, held that things can be really distinct even though not separable (the form and matter of a material substance or its essence and existence, for example).2
For a merely