Agents’ Abilities

Berlin, New York: De Gruyter (2020)
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Abstract

In the book, I provide an account of what it is for an agent to have an ability. According to the Success View, abilities are all about success across possible situations. In developing and applying the view, the book elucidates the relation between abilities on the one hand and possibility, counterfactuals, and dispositions on the other; it sheds light on the distinction between general and specific abilities; it offers an understanding of degrees of abilities; it explains which role intentions and performances play for the having of an ability, how abilities relate to success and failure, and gives an outlook at how the view might be applied to the free will debate and time travel.

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Author's Profile

Romy Jaster
Humboldt-University, Berlin

Citations of this work

Know-how as Competence. A Rylean Responsibilist Account.David Löwenstein - 2017 - Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Collective moral agency and self-induced moral incapacity.Niels de Haan - 2023 - Philosophical Explorations 26 (1):1-22.
Ability’s Two Dimensions of Robustness.Sophie Kikkert - 2022 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 122 (3):348-357.

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References found in this work

The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans - 1982 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Henry McDowell.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.Nelson Goodman - 1965 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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