Dispositional Qualities The fourth type of quality which...

Dispositional Qualities The fourth type of quality which philosophers have taken to be in the category of quality is that of dispositional quality ( imkān isti‘dādī ; isti‘dād , lit. preparedness), which they have defined as follows: a quality by means of which the appearance of a specific phenomenon gains preponderance in a subject.

Sometimes it is called dispositional contingency, opposed to other kinds of contingency, such as essential contingency ( imkān dhātī ) and occurrent contingency ( imkān wuqū‘ī ),1 because other meanings of contingency are secondary philosophical intelligibles, and non-whatish concepts, contrary to dispositional contingency, which is taken to be a whatness belonging to the category of…