| Summary: | What I am able to do matters. It matters whether I am able to defuse the bomb: if I am able to defuse the bomb, then I ought to do so. It matters whether I was able to attend my spouse’s birthday party: if I was able to attend, then I should have attended. On the other hand, if I was really unable to attend, then my spouse should not resent me for having failed to do so. This dissertation explores three ways in which our abilities have been thought to matter: 1. What I am able to do bears on what I know how to do. 2. What I am able to do bears on what my options are. 3. Whether I am able to justify an action to another bears on whether that action is permissible. ϕ ϕ Chapter 1 concerns the relationship between abilities and know-how. Know-how often seems to go hand-in-hand with ability. If I tell you that I know how to swim, you can generally assume that I am able to swim (and vice versa). One naïve way of encoding this relationship is as a simple biconditional: I know how to if and only if I am able to . Unfortunately, this naïve account of know-how historically suffers against two major objections, one against each direction of its biconditional. This chapter defends a revised version of the naïve ability theory of know-how against these twin objections. Chapter 2 concerns the relationship between abilities and options, where an option is a potential object of the subjective ought. Ordering take-out for dinner is an option for me. Making dinner at home is, too. However, singlehandedly fixing world hunger is not. Why not? Traditional approaches to options impose an ability constraint on options. They say that whatever options are, they must be the kinds of things I’m able to do. In this chapter, I reject the ability constraint on options. I develop a theory of options which does not require abilities. Chapter 3 concerns a particular kind of important ability: justifiability. Justifiability is central to contractualist theories of ethics such as ex ante contractualism, where an action’s permissibility depends on whether I am able to justify it to those affected. This chapter presents a puzzle for ex ante contractualism. In particular, I argue that whether or not I am able to justify an action to an individual sometimes depends on the description under which I conceive of that individual. In cases involving competing descriptions, ex ante contractualism seems to give conflicting permissibility judgments depending on which description we prioritize. This chapter is dedicated to resolving that puzzle. I argue that attention to second-personal modes of description can help.
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