Workshop: The Value in Abilities
The Value in Abilities: Capacities and the Good
25th–26th July 2024
We are excited to announce the Workshop on ‚The Value in Abilities‘, as part of the DFG project ‚Capacities and the Good‘ (Projectnr. 439616221).
Abilities (and their kin: competences, skills, virtues, capacities) have come to play an increasingly central role in (meta)normative projects. In particular, they have been employed across a number of subdisciplines to answer questions of value. Knowledge is especially valuable, according to Virtue Epistemology, because it is an exercise of epistemic skill, virtue or ability. Action is morally valuable, according to virtue ethics, because it stems from the agent’s virtues; and good actions are morally worthy, according to some, if they manifest the agent’s normative competences. Finally, the value of (normative) achievement more generally, a category these examples arguably belong to, is often explained as stemming from the exercise of abilities.
While the idea that the possession or exercise of abilities confers value is promising, many important questions remain open. How exactly are we to understand the relevant types of abilities? Is their possession inherently valuable, or is their exercise crucial as well? And how do the supposed mechanisms of “value conferral” work? In this workshop, we bring together researchers in the relevant subdisciplines to answer these and adjacent questions.
Interested participants are kindly requested to email heeringdavid@gmail.com to register.
Schedule:
Thursday, 25th July
- 09:30 – Welcome
- 09:45-11:05 – Maria Alvarez: How to Specify Abilities
- 11:05-11:25 – Coffee Break
- 11:25-12:45 – Christian Kietzmann: Constitutivism, the Possibility of Bad Action, and Generics
- 12:45-14:30 – Lunch
- 14:30-15:50 – Samuel Boardman: The Agentive Achievement of Acceptance
- 15:50-16:20 – Coffee Break
- 16:20-17:40 – Erasmus Mayr & Barbara Vetter: Adaptive Abilities and the Value of Knowledge
Friday, 26th July
- 10:00-11:20 – Ulrike Heuer: Reason-Responsiveness and Responsibility for Failure
- 11:20-11:40 – Coffee Break
- 11:40-13:00 – David Heering: There is no Ability to Act for Normative Reasons
- 13:00-14:40 – Lunch
- 14:40-16:00 – Sophie Kikkert: Valuing Ability, Valuing Disability
- 16:00-16:30 – Coffee Break
- 16:30-17:50 – John Hyman: Action and Two-Way Powers
Organisers: Erasmus Mayr & David Heering
Location and Date: Room 1.059, Kochstraße 4, Erlangen, 25th-26th July 2024
You can find the event poster (PDF) here.