finkish

Term due to the contemporary Canadian philosopher C. B. Martin, to describe powers with the uncomfortable habit of failing to operate just as the occasion for their manifestation comes about. Thus intuitively a glass might be fragile, but also be protected by a guardian angel, who steps in and saves it when some accident is about to break it. So no normal manifestation of fragility ever arises. The possibility of finkish properties (or finkish situations) casts doubt on the plausible equation between an object having a dispositional property, and it being true that if such and such a situation arises, the normal exhibition of that property follows.