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.

Speakers:

Maria Alvarez, King's College London

Samuel Boardman, Technische Universität Dresden

David Heering, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Ulrike Heuer, University College London

John Hyman, University College London

Christian Kietzmann, Universität Leipzig

Sophie Kikkert, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München

Erasmus Mayr, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Barbara Vetter, Freie Universität Berlin

A programme can be found here.