Ability

Abilities are powers an agent has to perform various actions. Some abilities are very common among human agents, like the ability to walk or to speak. Other abilities are only possessed by a few, such as the ability to perform a double backflip or to prove Gödel's incompleteness theorem. While all abilities are powers, the converse is not true, i.e. there are some powers that are not abilities. This is the case, for example, for powers that are not possessed by agents, like the power of salt to dissolve in water. But some powers possessed by agents do not constitute abilities either. For example, the power to understand French is not an ability in this sense since it does not involve an action, in contrast to the ability to speak French. in contrast to mere behavior, like involuntary reflexes. In this sense, abilities can be seen as intelligent powers. Various terms within the semantic field of the term "ability" are sometimes used as synonyms but have slightly different connotations. Dispositions, for example, are often equated with powers and differ from abilities in the sense that they are not necessarily linked to agents and actions. Abilities are closely related to know-how, as a form of practical knowledge on how to accomplish something. But it has been argued that these two terms may not be identical since know-how belongs more to the side of knowledge of how to do something and less to the power to actually do it. They are often used to express that a certain set of abilities can be acquired when properly used or trained. Abilities acquired through learning are frequently referred to as skills. The term "disability" is usually used for a long-term absence of a general human ability that significantly impairs what activities one can engage in and how one can interact with the world. In this sense, not any lack of an ability constitutes a disability. The more direct antonym of "ability" is "inability" instead. == Theories of ability ==

Various theories of the essential features of abilities have been proposed. The conditional analysis is the traditionally dominant approach. It defines abilities in terms of what one would do if one had the volition to do so. For modal theories of ability, by contrast, having an ability means that the agent has the possibility to execute the corresponding action. Other approaches include defining abilities in terms of dispositions and potentials. While all the concepts used in these different approaches are closely related, they have slightly different connotations, which often become relevant for avoiding various counterexamples. Conditional analysis The conditional analysis of ability is the traditionally dominant approach. It is often traced back to David Hume and defines abilities in terms of what one would do if one wanted to, tried to or had the volition to do so. It is articulated in the form of a conditional expression, for example, as "S has the ability to A iff S would A if S tried to A". On this view, Michael Phelps has the ability to swim 200 meters in under 2 minutes because he would do so if he tried to. The average person, on the other hand, lacks this ability because they would fail if they tried. Similar versions talk of having a volition instead of trying. But it is often argued that this is different from having a free will in the sense of the capacity of choosing between different courses of action. This approach has been criticized in various ways, often by citing alleged counterexamples. Some of these counterexamples focus on cases where an ability is actually absent even though it would be present according to the conditional analysis. This possibility is often understood in terms of possible worlds. On this view, an agent has the ability to perform a certain action if there is a complete and consistent way how the world could have been, in which the agent performs the corresponding action. This approach easily captures the idea that an agent can possess an ability without executing it. In this case, the agent does not perform the corresponding action in the actual world but there is a possible world where they perform it. Another approach sees abilities as a form of potential to do something. This is different from a disposition since a disposition concerns the relation between a stimulus and a manifestation that follows when the stimulus is present. A potential, on the other hand, is characterized only by its manifestation. In the case of abilities, the manifestation concerns an action. == Types ==

Whether it is correct to ascribe a certain ability to an agent often depends on which type of ability is meant. General abilities concern what agents can do independent of their current situation, in contrast to specific abilities. To possess an effective ability, it is sufficient if the agent can succeed through a lucky accident, which is not the case for transparent abilities. General and specific An important distinction among abilities is between general and specific abilities, sometimes also referred to as global and local abilities. General abilities concern what agents can do generally, i.e. independent of the situation they find themselves in. But abilities often depend for their execution on various conditions that have to be fulfilled in the given circumstances. In this sense, the term "specific ability" is used to describe whether an agent has an ability in a specific situation. So while an expert piano player always has the general ability to play various piano pieces, they lack the corresponding specific ability if they are chained to a wall, if no piano is present or if they are heavily drugged. For example, a student in the first grade is able, in a weaker sense, to recite the first 10 digits of Pi insofar as they are able to utter any permutation of the numerals from 0 to 9. But they are not able to do so in a stronger sense since they have not memorized the exact order. The weaker sense is sometimes termed effective abilities, in contrast to transparent abilities corresponding to the stronger sense. Usually, ability ascriptions have the stronger sense in mind, but this is not always the case. For example, the sentence "Usain Bolt can run 100 meters in 9.58 seconds" is usually not taken to mean that Bolt can, at will, arrive at the goal at exactly 9.58 seconds, no more and no less. Instead, he can do something that amounts to this in a weaker sense. == Relation to other concepts ==

The concept of abilities is relevant for various other concepts and debates. Disagreements in these fields often depend on how abilities are to be understood. In the free will debate, for example, a central question is whether free will, when understood as the ability to do otherwise, can exist in a world governed by deterministic laws of nature. Free will is closely related to autonomy, which concerns the agent's ability to govern oneself. Another issue concerns whether someone has the moral obligation to perform a certain action and is responsible for succeeding or failing to do so. This issue depends, among other things, on whether the agent has the ability to perform the action in question and on whether they could have done otherwise. The ability-theory of concepts and concept possession defines them in terms of two abilities: the ability to discriminate between positive and negative cases and the ability to draw inferences to related concepts. Free will The topic of abilities plays an important role in the free will debate. The free will debate often centers around the question of whether the existence of free will is compatible with determinism, so-called compatibilism, or not, so-called incompatibilism. Free will is frequently defined as the ability to do otherwise while determinism can be defined as the view that the past together with the laws of nature determine everything happening in the present and the future. It can be ascribed both to individual agents, like human persons, and to collective agents, like nations. Autonomy is often understood in combination with a rational component, e.g. as the agent's ability to appreciate what reasons they have and to follow the strongest reason. Robert Audi, for example, characterizes autonomy as the self-governing power to bring reasons to bear in directing one's conduct and influencing one's propositional attitudes. Autonomy may also encompass the ability to question one's beliefs and desires and to change them if necessary. Some authors include the condition that decisions involved in self-governing are not determined by forces outside oneself in any way, i.e. that they are a pure expression of one's own will that is not controlled by someone else. As a consequence of this principle, one is not justified to blame an agent for something that was out of their control. According to this principle, for example, a person sitting on the shore has no moral obligation to jump into the water to save a child drowning nearby, and should not be blamed for failing to do so, if they are unable to do so due to Paraplegia. The problem of moral responsibility is closely related to obligation. One difference is that "obligation" tends to be understood more in a forward-looking sense in contrast to backward-looking responsibility. But these are not the only connotations of these terms. A common view concerning moral responsibility is that the ability to control one's behavior is necessary if one is to be responsible for it. This is often connected to the thesis that alternative courses of action were available to the agent, i.e. that the agent had the ability to do otherwise. But some authors, often from the incompatibilist tradition, contend that what matters for responsibility is to act as one chooses, even if no ability to do otherwise was present. So a person is usually able to attend a meeting 5 minutes from now if they are currently only a few meters away from the planned location but not if they are hundreds of kilometers away. This seems to lead to the counter-intuitive consequence that people who failed to take their flight due to negligence are not morally responsible for their failure because they currently lack the corresponding ability. One way to respond to this type of example is to allow that the person is not to be blamed for their behavior 5 minutes before the meeting but hold instead that they are to be blamed for their earlier behavior that caused them to miss the flight. As such, they play a central role for most forms of cognition. A person can only entertain a proposition if they possess the concepts involved in this proposition. They tend to defend alternative accounts of concepts, for example, as mental representations or as abstract objects. == References ==