We often take an interest in abilities. Am I able to catch the next S-Bahn? What will LLMs be able to do in 5 years? Did the defendant have the ability to refrain from committing the crime? How are humans able to acquire a language from so little data?
But claims about abilities are philosophically puzzling. They seem to go beyond what actually happens, concerning what could or would happen. What, then, makes such claims true or false? And how could we know whether they are true? And, if the universe is governed by inviolable laws of nature, how could anyone ever be able to do something they don't actually do?
The aim of this seminar is to try to understand what abilities are and how we can know about them. This will involve introducing tools and ideas from several subdisciplines of theoretical philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language.
Die Veranstaltung wurde 20 mal im Vorlesungsverzeichnis WiSe 2025/26 gefunden:
