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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | (1) \(A \to \Diamond A.\) | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Informally, (1) expresses the principle that if an agent performs an action, then she has the ability to perform this action. This is, Kenny argues, false of ability. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | (2) \(\Diamond(A \lor B) \to (\Diamond A \lor \Diamond B).\) | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Informally, (2) expresses the principle that if an agent has the ability to perform one of two actions, then she has the ability to perform either the first action or the second action. This is, Kenny argues, false of ability. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Let us begin with (1). Kenny claims that this principle is false in light of cases like the following: ‘A hopeless darts player may, once in a lifetime, hit the bull, but be unable to repeat the performance because he does not have the ability to hit the bull’ (Kenny 1975, 136). This kind of ‘fluky success’ has been extensively discussed in the philosophical literature — perhaps most famously in Austin (1956) — in order to make a variety of points. Kenny’s insight is to observe that these simple cases tell against the modal analysis of ability, as they violate an axiom of many modal logics, namely any system as strong as the system T. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | A simple response to this point is to deny that T (or any stronger logic) is the correct logic for ability. To deny this is still to allow for a treatment of ability within the framework of possible worlds. Notably, the modal logic K is one that fails to validate (1). A natural response to Kenny’s first point, then, is to say that K, rather than T or some stronger system, is the correct modal logic of ability. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | This response is not available, however, in response to Kenny’s second objection. Recall that objection was that (2) is true of possibility but not of ability. Here the retreat to weaker modal logics will not work, since (2) is provable on the weakest standard modal logic, namely K. Yet the parallel claim does not seem true of ability. Kenny gives the following example: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | This then appears to be a case where S has the ability to A or B but lacks the ability to A and lacks the ability to B. So it appears that (2) is false of ability. In light of this Kenny concludes that ‘if we regard possible worlds semantics as making explicit what is involved in being a possibility, we must say that ability is not any kind of possibility’ (Kenny 1975, 140). | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | To appreciate Kenny’s conclusion, it is instructive to work through why precisely this is a counterexample to (MA). Consider an agent S who has the ability to pick a red card or a black card, but does not have the ability to pick a red card or the ability to pick a black card. According to (MA), S has the ability to A iff S does A at some world (or set of worlds) satisfying condition C. Consider the case where (MA) appeals to a single world, not a set of worlds. If S has the ability to pick a red card or pick a black card, then by (MA) there is a world w satisfying condition C where S picks a red card or black card. Then either S picks a red card at w or S picks a black card at w. Then, applying (MA) now in the other direction, S has the ability to pick a red card or S has the ability to pick a black card. But that, by assumption, is not the case. Since (MA) is the only substantive premise appealed to that argument, (MA) must be rejected. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Note that this argument turned essentially on adopting the version of (MA) which appealed to a single world, rather than a set of worlds. So one way of responding to this objection is by appealing to sets of worlds in the modal analysis of ability. This is precisely the proposal of Mark Brown, who argues that, if we take accessibility relations to hold between a world and a set of worlds, then we may capture talk of ability within a possible worlds framework that is broadly in the spirit of standard views (Brown 1988; see also Cross 1986). Alternatively, we may take this sort of point to militate in favor of a return to hypothetical theories of ability, since, at least on Lewis’s view of subjunctive conditionals, it may be that a disjunction follows from a counterfactual claim without either of its disjuncts following from that claim (Lewis 1973, 79–80). Modal accounts that appeal to sets of worlds are ‘non-normal’ in the sense that they do not satisfy the axiom K, but they remain true to the letter of (MA) as well as the spirit of modal analyses generally, insofar as they avail themselves only of possible worlds and quantification thereover. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | In the material mode, the modal analysis gives an account of what it is to have an ability in terms of quantification over possible worlds. In the formal mode, it gives a semantics for the ascription of ability — paradigmatically, sentences involving ‘can’ or ‘is able to’ — in terms of quantification over possible worlds. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | This formal aspect of the modal analysis has been prominent in the philosophical and linguistic literature because the standard semantics for ability ascriptions is an explicitly modal one. This is the view developed in a series of papers by Angelika Kratzer (Kratzer 2012). Kratzer treats expressions such as ‘S can A’ and ‘S is able to A’ as possibility claims. That is, ‘S is able to A’ is true just in case there is a possible world w meeting certain conditions at which S does A. The conditions are that (i) w be accessible given some contextually-specified set of facts (the modal base) and (ii) that w be at least as good, according to a contextually-specified ranking of worlds (the ordering source), as any other accessible world. The Kratzer semantics is thus an instance of the modal analysis on its semantic formulation: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | A number of objection have been brought against the modal analysis in this latter, formal, aspect. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | One objection prominent in the recent literature (Mandelkern et al. 2017; Schwarz 2020) is that Kratzer’s semantics, or any analysis of the form of (MAsemantic), appears to have trouble marking an intuitive distinction between what someone is able to do and what it is possible for her to do. Let us say that an unskilled darts-player is about to throw a dart. She utters: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Intuitively, what she says is false: she is not able to hit the bullseye, as she is a poor darts-player. Yet there is an accessible and perfectly good possible world w at which she hits the bullseye — which is just to say, in the object language, that it is possible for her to hit the bullseye. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | This case suggests the Kratzer semantics lacks the resources to capture the distinctively agentive force of a sentences such as (3). There are, in addition, a number of other outstanding empirical problems for Kratzer’s semantics for ability modals. One is the problem of accounting for ‘compulsion’ modals such as ‘I cannot but tell the truth’ (Mandelkern et al. 2017). Another is that of accommodating the ‘actuality entailment’ whereby, in many languages, certain ability sentences entail that the act in question was actually performed (Bhatt 1999; see also Hacquard 2009). Whatever our verdict on (MAsemantic), the semantics of ability-ascriptions remains an unresolved and potentially rich issue at the boundary of linguistics and the philosophy of action. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | The foregoing has indicated serious concerns about the adequacy of the orthodox approaches to ability and its ascription: the conditional analysis (CA), and the modal analysis (MA), of which (CA) is arguably just a special case. This raises the question of what a non-hypothetical and non-modal account of ability and its ascription might look like. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Since abilities are, as noted in Section 1.1, a kind of power, one natural idea is to analyze abilities in terms of some other kind of power. This appeal may proceed in different ways. One is by appealing to dispositions, and by analyzing abilities in terms of this purportedly better-understood kind of power. Another is by departing more radically from the standard ontology of recent metaphysics, and analyzing ability in terms of some new and distinctive variety of power. We will consider these approaches in turn in Sections 5.1 and 5.2. Finally, in Section 5.3, we will turn to miscellaneous alternative approaches to ability, which reject the conditional and modal analyses, but which do not purport to analyze abilities in terms of powers either. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | In recent years several authors have revisited the thought that we may give a broadly hypothetical account of ability, without endorsing the problematic claim (CA). This is the view of ability that has been defended by Smith (2003), Vihvelin (2004, 2013), and Fara (2008). Following Clarke (2009), we may label this view the ‘new dispositionalism.’ | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | What unifies the new dispositionalists is that they return to the conditional analysis of ability in light of two thoughts. The first thought is one already noted: that there is a variety of power, dispositions, that is similar in many respects to abilities. The second thought is that there are well-known problems of giving a conditional analysis of dispositions, in light of which many authors have been inclined to reject the long-assumed link between dispositions and conditionals. Taken together, these thoughts yield a promising new line on abilities: that though we ought to reject the conditional analysis of abilities, we may yet defend a dispositional account of abilities. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Why ought we reject the conditional analysis of dispositions? Consider the following analysis of the disposition to break when struck: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Despite the intuitive appeal of (CD), there appear to be at least two kinds of counterexamples to it. First, consider a crystal glass that, if it were about to be struck, would transform into steel. This glass is disposed to break when struck, but it is not true that it would break if struck—the transformation renders this false. This is a case of finking, in the language of Martin 1994. Second, consider a crystal glass stuffed with styrofoam packaging. This glass is disposed to break when struck, but it is not true that it would break if struck—the packaging prevents this. This is a case of masking, in the language of Johnston 1992. In light of such cases, it seems we ought to reject (CD). | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | The bearing of these points on our earlier discussion of the conditional analysis is the following. There appear to be quite general problems for giving a conditional analysis of powers. So it may be that the failures of the conditional analysis of ability were not due to any fact about abilities, but rather to a shortcoming of conditional analyses generally. One way of overcoming this problem, if this diagnosis is correct, is to analyze abilities directly in terms of dispositions. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Such an analysis is proposed by Fara 2008, who argues: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | The similarity of this analysis to the hypothetical analyses canvassed earlier are clear. This raises several immediate questions, such as whether this analysis can overcome the problem of sufficiency that plagued those approaches (see Fara 2008, 851–852 for an affirmative answer, and Clarke 2009, 334–336 for some doubts). What is most striking about the new dispositionalists, however, is how they bring this sort of account of ability to bear on certain familiar cases. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Consider how the new dispositionalism bears on so-called ‘Frankfurt cases.’ These are cases due to Frankfurt 1969, where an agent chooses to and performs some action A while at the same time there is some other action B such that, had the agent been about to choose B, an ‘intervener’ would have altered the agent’s brain so that the agent would have chosen, and performed, A instead. One question about such cases is whether the agent, in the actual sequence of events, had the ability to B. Frankfurt’s intuition, and that of most others, is that she did not. Given the further claim that the agent is nonetheless morally responsible for doing A, this case appears to be a counterexample to the what Frankfurt calls the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP): an agent is morally responsible for Aing only if she had the ability to perform some action other than A. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | The new dispositionalists disagree. Let us focus on Fara’s diagnosis of the case. The question of whether the agent had the ability to B turns, for Fara, on the question of whether she was disposed to B when she tried to B. Fara claims that she does have such a disposition. The presence of the intervener is, on Fara’s view, like the aforementioned styrofoam packaging in a crystal glass. It masks the disposition of the glass to break when struck, but does not remove that disposition. Similarly, Fara argues, the presence of the intervener masks the agent’s disposition to B when she tries to B, but does not remove that disposition. (There is some disagreement among the new dispositionalists about whether this is a case of finking or masking; see Clarke 2009, 340 for discussion). So, pace Frankfurt, the agent does have the ability to B after all. And so we have, in this case at least, no counterexample to PAP. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | A natural worry at this point is that the new dispositionalist has simply changed the subject. For it seems clear that, in a perfectly ordinary sense of ability, Frankfurt’s agent lacks the ability to do otherwise. An account of ability which denies this seems to be speaking of some other concept altogether. One way of bringing out what is missing is the idea that there seems to be a connection between my abilities, in the sense of ability that is relevant to free will, and what is up to me. Clarke claims that this sort of connection fails on the new dispositionalist view of ability: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Thus the objection is that, while the new dispositionalist has perhaps offered a theory of something, it is not a theory of ability. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | How should the new dispositionalist respond? One thought is that we are here again encountering the distinction between general and specific abilities. The new dispositionalist might contend that, while the agent in a Frankfurt case may lack the specific ability to do otherwise, she has the general ability to do otherwise, and that it is this general ability of which the new dispositionalist is giving an account. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | This response, however, postpones a crucial and much broader question. The question is this: should ‘ability’ in (PAP) be understood as general ability, or specific ability? If general ability is what matters, then Frankfurt cases may indeed not tell against (PAP), for the agent retains the general ability to do otherwise. If it is specific ability that matters, however, the challenge to (PAP) stands (see also Whittle 2010). This is a vital question for understanding the purported connection between agents’ abilities and questions of moral responsibility, whatever our verdict on new dispositionalism itself. (See Cyr and Swenson 2019 for a helpful recent discussion of these issues). | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | As noted in Section 1.1, dispositions are simply one member of the broader family of powers, albeit one that has figured prominently in recent metaphysics. An alternative account of abilities might give an account of abilities in terms of some other kind of power, perhaps one better-suited to the distinctive aspects of abilities. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | One account of this kind is developed in a series of works by Barbara Vetter (especially Vetter 2015). Vetter proposes that our basic modal notion should be potentiality. On a traditional view (which Vetter rejects) dispositions involve a dyadic relation between a stimulus and a manifestation (for example: a glass is disposed to break when struck). In contrast, potentials involve a monadic relation to a manifestation (for example: a glass has the potential to break). This makes potentials especially well-suited to give an account of abilities, which also appear to involve a monadic relation to an act, namely the act denoted by the complement of an ability-ascription (for example: I am able to play tennis). To have an ability, Vetter argues, is simply to have a certain kind of potentiality. Vetter also provides an explicit semantics for agentive modality in terms of the ascription of potentiality (Vetter 2013), which constitutes a systematic alternative to (MA). | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Yet another view is suggested by recent work by Helen Steward emphasizing the traditional idea of a ‘two-way power’ (Steward 2012, Steward 2020; see also Alvarez 2013). Steward argues that actions are exercises of two-way powers — ‘powers which an agent can exercise or not at a given moment, even holding all prior conditions at that moment fixed’ (Steward 2020, 345). These are to be contrasted with one-way powers, which manifest whenever their manifestation conditions are realized, as a fragile glass breaks whenever it is struck. Unlike both the new dispositionalists on the one hand and Vetter on the other, Steward sees a fundamental asymmetry between agents, who are bearers of two-way powers, and mere objects, who are are bearers only of one-way powers. It is natural then to think that what it is to have an ability is to have a two-way power of a certain kind, and that a theory of ability should follow from an account of agency and the two-way powers. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | We thus have at least three ‘power-based’ views of abilities: the new dispositionalism, Vetter’s potentiality-based view, and Steward’s two-way power-based view. It is instructive to consider how these three accounts differ with respect to two larger philosophical projects. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | One is the project of giving an analysis of modal language, including ability-ascriptions, in terms of possible worlds. The new dispositionalist rejects (CA) and (MA) but she is still, in principle, sympathetic with that project, insofar as she allows that disposition ascriptions themselves may be ultimately understood in terms of quantification over possible worlds. This kind of view is explicitly endorsed, for instance, by Smith (2003). In contrast, Vetter is explicitly opposed to this project, while Steward’s view appears neutral on this question. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Another is the project of arguing that agents’ abilities are, or are not, compatible with the possibility of determinism. This is a question we touched on briefly in Section 5.1. As noted there, the new dispositionalists are motivated, in part, by the project of arguing for compatibilism. In contrast, Steward is explicitly concerned to defend incompatibilism. (Vetter appears to be neutral on this question.) The question of how the analysis of ability bears on the free will debates looms over many of these discussions, and we will confront it directly and at some length below in Section 6. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Still other approaches to ability reject (CA) and (MA) while rejecting also the thought that some appeal to power — be it a disposition, a potentiality, or a two-way power — is needed to account for abilities. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | One recurrent thought is that, despite the various challenges that have been brought against it, ability is still intimately connected to some kind of relation between an agent’s volitions (tryings, intendings) and her actions. One semantically sophisticated development of this thought is Mandelkern et al, 2017, which proposes to take as basic a notion of ‘practically available actions,’ and to develop in terms of these a semantics for agentive modality, one on which conditionals linking volitions to actions continue to play an essential role. Another approach, in a recent book-length treatment of ability (Jaster 2020), proposes that abilities should be thought of in terms of proportions of cases where an agent successfully does what she intends to do (compare the approach to dispositions advocated in Manley and Wasserman 2008). Both of these approaches are explicit in their denial of (CA), but they share — with the new dispositionalists — the thought that the analysis of ability should somehow appeal to a pattern of dependence between volition and action. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | This is not surprising. The conditional analysis is a redoubtable proposal, endorsed by many of the major figures in English-language philosophy. In light of that, it seems reasonable to try to discard the letter of (CA), but retain its spirit. For it may be that the historical failure of (CA) is due to difficulties and oversights that our perhaps firmer grasp of technical issues allows us to overcome. This is a sensible and well-motivated project, though it remains to be seen whether it will be, in the end, a successful one. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | There remain still other accounts that do not fit easily into the taxonomy provided here. These include primitivist proposals, which take ability or some closely related notion as analytically fundamental. One development of this idea is Maier 2015, who proposes, contrary to most authors, that specific ability is fundamentally prior to general ability. He argues that we should give an account of general ability in terms of specific abilities, which he calls ‘options’: roughly, an agent has the general ability to A iff she normally has A as an option. Options, in turn, are primitives. Much here will hang on saying more about options, and in what sense they figure as primitives in the theory of agency. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Finally, an outline of a proposal by David Lewis (dated to 2001 but only recently published as Lewis 2020) offers an altogether different approach to ability. Lewis is motivated, like many proponents of (CA), by the goal of defending compatibilism, but he takes (CA) to be unsatisfactory. He therefore proposes a non-conditional analysis of ability. His analysis, roughly, is that S has the ability to perform an action B just in case there is some basic action A such that (i) S’s doing A would cause or constitute S’s doing B and (ii) there is no obstacle to S’s doing A. The problem of giving a theory of ability then becomes the problem of giving a theory of obstacles, something at which Lewis, in his outline, makes a beginning. (See Beebee et al 2020 for additional discussion). | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Lewis’s proposal is an inspiration for further research in at least two ways. First, it indicates that Lewis, a systematic philosopher of modality, saw the problem of giving an analysis of ability as a significant outstanding project. Second, it demonstrates that genuinely novel approaches to ability remain available, and the project of giving a theory of ability may yet be in its early stages. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Thus far our questions about abilities have been formal ones: we have been asking what it is to have an ability without concerning ourselves with the substantive work that a theory of ability might have to do. But there is much work to be had for a theory of ability: abilities have figured as unexplained explainers in a range of philosophical theories, for example in accounts of concepts (Millikan 2000), of knowledge (Greco 2009, Sosa 2007), and of ‘knowing what it’s like’ (Lewis 1988). Perhaps the most prominent substantive role for a theory of ability has been the uses to which accounts of ability have been put in the free will debates. So let us close with a brief survey of what work a theory of ability might be expected to do in those debates. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Questions about abilities have figured most prominently in debates over compatibilism. ‘Compatibilism’ is used in many ways, but let us understand it here as the thesis that the ability to perform actions one does not perform is compossible with the truth of determinism, which we may take to be the view that the facts about the past and the laws jointly determine the facts about the present and all future moments. (We should sharply distinguish this view, which we might call classical compatibilism, from more recent views such as the ‘semi-compatibilism’ of Fischer and Ravizza 1998). Insofar as compatibilism, so understood, has been explicitly defended, these defenses have made appeal to theories of ability, notably the conditional analysis and its variants, as well as the dispositionalist analysis favored by the new dispositionalists. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | In the discussion of the conditional analysis, we distinguished between global and local counterexamples to hypothetical theories of ability, where the former appealed to the fact that any such theory would render ability compatible with determinism which, according to the objector, it is not. There we noted the dialectical limitations of such counterexamples, namely the contentiousness of their main premise. But compatibilists have often been guilty of what seems to be the opposite mistake. Namely, they have offered theories of ability which show abilities to be compatible with determinism, and have argued from this to the claim that such abilities are indeed compatible with determinism. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | The shortcomings of this strategy are nicely diagnosed by Peter van Inwagen. After surveying the local counterexamples that arise for various hypothetical theories of ability, van Inwagen imagines that we have arrived at the best possible hypothetical theory of ability, which he labels ‘the Analysis’. van Inwagen then writes: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | van Inwagen’s point is that, provided the incompatibilist has offered arguments for the claim that such abilities are incompatible with determinism—as, in van Inwagen’s presentation, the incompatibilist has—the production of an analysis is as yet no answer to those arguments. For those arguments are also arguments, inter alia, against the compatibilist’s favored account of ability. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | There are, then, several obstacles for the compatibilist who wishes to appeal to an account of ability in defense of compatibilism. First, there is the general difficulty of actually giving an extensionally adequate theory of ability. In addition, we have now turned up a couple of more specific challenges to the compatibilist. There is van Inwagen’s point just outlined, namely that arguments for the incompatibility of abilities and determinism are, inter alia, arguments against any theory of ability that is congenial to the compatibilist. And, finally, there is the point that we encountered in our discussion of the new dispositionalism in Section 5.1, which is that certain platitudes about ability — in particular, those involved in certain judgments about moral responsibility — may be recalcitrant to compatibilist treatments. Taken together, these points seem to pose a serious obstacle to any theory of ability that is both compatible with determinism and in accord with our ordinary judgments about what ability requires. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | What is the compatibilist to say in light of these obstacles? One response is to make a distinction between two kinds of compatibilist project. (Compare Pryor 2000 on responses to skepticism). One project is to convince someone moved by the incompatibilist’s arguments to retreat from her position. Call this ambitious compatibilism. For precisely the reasons van Inwagen gives, it is doubtful that any theory of ability will suffice for a defense of ambitious compatibilism. There is another project, however, that the compatibilist might be engaging in. Let us say that, for some reason or other, she herself is not convinced by the incompatibilist’s argument. She is still left with an explanatory burden, namely to explain, if only to her own satisfaction, how it could be that abilities are compatible with the truth of determinism. Here the compatibilist’s aim is not to convince the incompatibilist of the error of her ways, but simply to work out a satisfactory conception of compatibilism. Let us call this modest compatibilism. This distinction is not often made, and it is not always clear which of these projects classical compatibilists are engaged in. If the latter project is indeed part of classical compatibilism, then we may grant many of the above points while still granting the theory of ability a central place in defenses of compatibilism. For it may be that, though a theory of ability is of no use to the ambitious compatibilist, it has a crucial role to play in the defense of modest compatibilism. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Even these compatibilist aspirations, however, may be overly optimistic, or at least premature. For in surveying theories of ability we have turned up serious difficulties, for both hypothetical and non-hypothetical approaches, which do not appear to turn on issues about determinism. So it may be that the best hope for progress is to pursue theories of ability while setting to one side the problems raised in the free will debates. For given the difficulties posed by abilities, and given the significance of theories of ability for areas of philosophy quite removed from the free will debates, there is something to be said for pursuing a theory of ability while embracing, if only temporarily, a certain quietism about the puzzles that determinism may pose. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | action | compatibilism | conditionals | dispositions | incompatibilism: arguments for | knowledge how | logic: modal | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | I am very grateful to the many people who have provided feedback on this entry since its initial publication in 2009. I would like to particularly thank the editors of this entry for their work: Luca Ferrero (2020), and John Martin Fischer (2009, 2014). For additional feedback on the most recent revision (2020), I would like to thank: Vanessa Carr, Romy Jaster, Simon Kittle, and Barbara Vetter. I unfortunately do not have a comprehensive record of people who provided thoughts on earlier versions, but they include: John Bengson, Helen Steward, Kadri Vihvelin, and Ann Whittle. Thanks finally to the SEP Editors and Michael Nelson for their assistance. | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Copyright © 2020 by John Maier <john@jmaier.net> | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | View this site from another server: | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2022 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abilities/ | Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054 | abilities |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Abner of Burgos (Alfonso de Valladolid; c. 1260–1347) was perhaps the most important philosopher in the stream of Jewish Spanish rabbi-apostates in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the first part of his life, Abner was an Aristotelian Jewish philosopher. However, at the age of 60 (if Pablo de Santa Maria is a reliable source) after years of hesitation, he became a Neo-Platonic Christian, making him one of the very few philosophers (much less philosopher-rabbis) to change his philosophical opinion (and religion) during the Middle Ages. The majorities of his works are primarily polemical, and try to convince his former fellow Jews to become Christian, as he did. However, in his polemical writings, Abner built an original philosophical critique of both traditional Judaism and the Aristotelian (and Maimonidean) philosophical interpretation of Judaism. Another part of his philosophical aim was a very radical interpretation of Christianity aimed at convincing his Jewish audience that his Christianity was superior to traditional and philosophical Judaism. Abner was one of the first philosophical and scientific critics of Aristotle, as well as one of the more radical Neo-Platonic thinkers of Christianity during the Middle Ages. His works had a very important impact on Jewish philosophy at the latter end of the Middle Ages, and some of his opinions influenced, through Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, general Western philosophy. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | There are not many sources on the life of Abner. The majority of the sources are autobiographical passages in his works (especially Mostrador de Justicia). Abner was born around 1260, probably in the Jewish community of Burgos, one of the major communities in Castile. While still Jewish, Abner worked as a book trader, a rabbi, and he may have been a physician as well. During this time he was the head of a yeshiva (Jewish academy) in Burgos, but we do not know if this yeshiva was a public institution or just a private group of students that met in his home. We know from a former pupil, Rabbi Isaac Pulgar, and from the sources that he utilizes in his works, that during the Jewish period of his life, Abner was a philosopher, being a part of the Maimonidean-Averroist trend of Jewish philosophy at the time. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | In spite of the majority opinion of modern scholars,[1] Abner probably was not a Kabbalist before his conversion to Christianity. This mistake is based essentially on two sources: the fact that some of Abner’s arguments for the Trinity and Incarnation can be interpreted as deriving from Kabbalistic sources, and the existence of another Rabbi Abner (not a common name for Jews of his time), a Kabbalist whom Rabbi Isaac of Acre cited many times. In my opinion, Abner’s argument for the Trinity and Incarnation is not based on Kabbalistic sources, but stems from his Neo-Platonic and standard Christian scriptural background.[2] Additionally, Abner (the apostate) did not use many important Kabbalistic sources.[3] His opinions are not the same as the other Rabbi Abner’s (the one that Rabbi Isaac of Acre quotes), and we can see that the two authors do not share the same background, nor do they use the same sources, with Abner utilizing almost entirely sources taken from the Jewish philosophical and traditional rabbinic corpuses.[4] almost all of Rabbi Abner’s sources are taken from the commentary of Nahmanides to the Torah, a book that Abner the apostate almost never quoted. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | The beginning of Abner’s doubts about Judaism began with the incident of a false messiah in Avila in 1295. According to Abner, the Jews of the community, which is in North Castile, went outside the city to welcome the messiah, but instead of the messiah they received a rainfall of crosses that stuck to their clothes. Some of the Jews who witnessed the miracle went to Abner for advice. This event instilled in Abner some doubts about the question of the reason for the ongoing exile of Israel and the truth of Judaism. After twenty-two years of feeling ambivalent (i.e., around 1317) Abner wrote about his first revelation in a dream.[5] In his dream he saw a man that told him to be “a teacher of righteousness” (mostrador de justicia, not coincidentally the name of Abner’s main book) and to bring his people to freedom from exile. This dream just accents the uncertainty of the Jewish Rabbi. After three more years of studies he had a second dream wherein he had the same revelation, this time noticing that on the clothes the man wore were crosses like the cross of Jesus the Christian. This dream prompted him toward his final conversion around 1320/1321. After his conversion, Abner became the sacristan of the collegiate church of Valladolid and devoted himself to the propagation of Christianity amongst his former fellows Jews (he had come to the conclusion that conversion to Christianity was the only way to be saved from the Exile). We know he wrote an extended polemicist oeuvre and that he took part in the anti-Jewish polemic effort in North Castile around 1336–1339. There was a public disputation between Abner and a rabbi that occurred probably around 1335–1336 on the subject of the prayer of the Jews against the apostates. This dispute was the main reason for the decree against this part of the Jewish prayer (birkatha-minim) by Alfonso XI in 1336. Abner probably died in 1347 or later. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Abner’s works may be divided into three different categories: polemic, scientific and philosophic. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Polemic works: Mostradorde Justicia is the earliest and most important work of those writings of Abner that have survived. Only a translation (probably by Abner himself) in Castilian exists today, whereas the original Hebrew was lost. The book starts with a brief introduction wherein Abner writes about the reasons for his conversion (the incident in Avila and his two dreams). The main part of the book is a debate between a Christian (the master) and a Jew (the rebel). In contrast to other works similar to this type of polemic debate, in the Mostrador, the rebel does not become a Christian, and despite his losing the debate, the Jew continues to believe in his ostensibly false religion. The book is divided into ten chapters, with each chapter being subdivided into a number of paragraphs. Each paragraph is a speech by one of the protagonists of the debate.[6] | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Summary of the chapters: | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Responses to the Blasphemer (Teshuvot la-Meharef): this book survived both in the original Hebrew[7] and in a Castilian translation.[8] This book is a response to the different letters that Abner’s only known student, Rabbi Isaac Pulgar, wrote against his determinist and Christian writings.[9] Abner did not divide this book into formal sections, though the book contains four main subjects presented in a contiguous fashion: (1) an introduction wherein Abner attacks his former pupil on his philosophical position and other personal matters between the two; (2) the Trinity and how it can be based on philosophy, scripture and quotes from the Jewish rabbinic literature; (3) the necessary existence of the incarnation of divinity in the world; and (4) a proof of the aforementioned Christian beliefs derived from scripture and other Jewish sources (Talmud and Midrashim). In this last part, which takes up almost half the book, Abner argues that the messiah had already come and that Christianity is true. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | While Abner’s arguments regarding the Trinity and Incarnation are generally more developed in Mostradorde Justicia, the philosophical importance of this work resides with his critique of the Jewish philosopher. Here Abner distinguishes between the regular Jewish people (that have some hope to become Christian and to be saved) and Jewish philosophers (like Pulgar). The latter are hopeless and are left with no religion, mostly due to their opinions that only the people who attain scientific knowledge have some kind of existence after death. Due to their feeling elevated over others, these philosophers have no hope of improving and accepting the truth of Christianity. Parts of Abner’s critique of Jewish philosophers in this book most probably influenced Crescas. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Libro de la Ley (Book of the Law). This work survived only fragmentally[10] in Castilian. The major argument of Abner in this book is that the Jewish people forgot the secrets of the Torah, which are manifested by the Christian doctrines, especially the Trinity. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Sefer Teshuvot ha-Meshubot (The Book of Responses to the Apostasies) exists only in Hebrew.[11] There are three polemic letters[12] that deal especially with scriptural arguments on the subject of the coming of the messiah.[13] | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | The two major subjects of the philosophical polemical works of Abner are the Trinity and Incarnation. Abner had an original view on the Trinity. In his opinion, one can prove philosophically the reality of the Trinity.[14] He claimed that only the division of the divine source of the world can explain the diversity of the world. The infinite force of God (the father) would burn the finite matter of the world if it were not for some “transformer” that adapted the divine force to the finitude of matter (the son). Abner distinguished between two parts of the son. The superior son is part of the transcendent divinity. The inferior son is the divine essence in all the different parts of the world. The transformer of the divine force and essence is the superior son. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Regarding the theory of the divine attributes, Abner also had an original opinion. He distinguished between the attributes that are the essence of God and the attributes that are essential to God. The attributes of the essence of God divide themselves only within the personas of the Trinity. The rest of the attributes are only essential to God (and could be attributed to any one of the personas). This division of the divine attributes influenced Rabbi Hasdai Crescas,who later influenced Spinoza. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Abner’s opinion on Incarnation was also very original. According to Abner, the essence of God is in the entire world. The world is composed only of corrupted matter and of divine essence in different degrees of purity. Even the most corrupted matter has inside itself some divine essence. The divine essence gives the corporeal form to matter and produces in it its dimensions. The uniqueness of a human being is the capacity to purify one’s matter, thereby reaching a higher degree of divine essence. According to Abner, what made Jesus unique was that he was born of the highest matter, enabling him to unite with the highest degree of divine essence that a human can attain. Abner thought that the superior son does not incarnate in this world. Jesus was only the highest degree of the inferior son that is present in the essences of the entire world. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | The opinion of Abner on Incarnation is closely related to his view of the doctrine of Original Sin. In Abner’s opinion, the reason for the original sin was Adam’s lack of comprehension. Adam thought that his intellect, which is an incarnation of divinity in people, was God, and he therefore wrongly concluded that he was God. In order to fix Adam’s error, humanity needed the Torah of Moses, which emphasized the unity of God in an exaggerated form and therefore explained (somewhat inaccurately) that God does not incarnate in the World at all. Only after this critical step, humanity was able to understand that, though there is divinity in humans, this divinity is not an independent God, but rather a part of the divine essence in the whole world. The Law of Moses that came to purify the world from idolatry has some problems. It does not enable the full emancipation of humanity from sin and error. Abner claimed that the negation of the incarnation of God in the world leads to negating the possibility of life after death. The possibility of life after death comes from understanding the incarnation of divinity in all humans. Negating life after death causes immorality. The Torah has to put up with all these inaccuracies in order to achieve its main goal, which is taking humanity out of the sin of idolatry (by believing that God is one). The outcome, though better than its predecessor, is ultimately a lost situation which humanity cannot overcome on its own. For that reason, God sent Jesus (who was born with a higher degree of matter and divine essence). Due to the divinity within Jesus, his miracles and his resurrection, people are able to understand that within everything in the world there is some divine essence that is part of the inferior son, and that the origin of all the divinity in the world is the superior son. This understanding enables salvation from the original sin and represents a true understanding of the relation between God and the world. The role of the sacramentental Mass is to remind us of the divine aspect of Jesus’ essence, as well as of all the miracles that Jesus performed and to continue their influence in our present time. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | We see that this opinion regarding the Trinity and Incarnation contradict the official dogma of the Catholic Church at the time of Abner. In his opinion, the incarnation of divinity in Jesus did not bypass the regular process of the emanation of the divine essence in the world. Rather, the manifestation of Jesus represented the pinnacle of incarnation of divinity, which, though indeed present in the entire world, yet in Jesus occurred in the purest form possible. This opinion of Abner, similar to his other philosophical views, was a part of the radical Neo-Platonic interpretation of Christianity. The difference between him and the other Neo-Platonic Christian philosophers, like Master Eckard, is the different sources from which they were influenced. Abner did not utilize the traditional Neo-Platonic Christian sources, like Dionysius the Areopagite. We do not see in any part of his work that he was aware of the existence of these sources. On the other hand, Abner did utilize some Arabic and Jewish sources. The origin of his uncommon position on Christianity is found in his opposition to the common Aristotelian-Maimonidean-Averroist trend of Jewish philosophy. Abner, similar to Spinoza after him, thought that the explanations of these thinkers on the question of the creation of the world by a perfect God were not sufficient and ultimately inaccurate. In place of these responses, Abner proposed his radical interpretation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, an interpretation that was uninfluenced by the theological Christian tradition. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | One of the more important philosophical opinions of Abner was his deterministic view.[15] Abner devoted his book Ofrenda de Zelos (Minhat Kena’ot in the original lost Hebrew text), along with other works that have since been lost, to the question of determinism and free will.[16] In the beginning of this book, Abner describes the opinion of his former pupil Rabbi Isaac Pulgar, who denies God’s foreknowledge of human decisions. After the explication of this opinion and its negation, Abner explains his deterministic opinion. Abner believed that people have free will in a limited sense, but act in a determined way in the broader sense. People are free in their relation to themselves, meaning that if a person is separated from the causes that influence him or her (e.g., education, society’s influences) while debating between two options, one is then really free to choose either of the two options. In this specific case a person can then utilize his or her will and choose freely between the two options. However, if one takes into account all the causes that influence his or her will, we may conclude that these causes limits that person’s will to only one of the two options. In the opinion of Abner, people are like wax, as follows: Wax may be melted and sculpted into many different shapes. However, the person who sculpts the wax determines its present form as only one of those options. The same is true about people: In themselves, they have the ability to choose between different possibilities, but their relation to the outside world determines their choices. We can see from this example how strong the determinist view of Abner was. It is important to note that Abner defines the will of people as an accord between the attractive force and the imagination, two forces common to humans and animals. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Abner explains in the same way the meaning of possibility and accident. Things are only possible in their relation to themselves. In relation to the entire world and its causality, everything is truly determined. Accidents are only accidents relative to the seeming unlikelihood of their occurrence. However, relative to all the causal processes of the world, we see that even in the most unusual of circumstances the occurrence of what appears to be an accident in fact had to happen. In short, there are no accidents (according to the popular meaning of accident) for Abner. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | This deterministic description of the world (based on rational arguments) resolves the theological problem of the contradiction between the free will of people and the foreknowledge of God. In the opinion of Abner free will does not really exist. For him, God is the first cause; He knows all the laws of the world and therefore knows everything that He has determined. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | This deterministic description leads to two theological problems. The first is why God sent commandments to people who cannot truly decide whether to obey them or disobey them. The second question that arises is how people can receive reward or punishment for actions and decisions that they do not really have any control over? Abner answers the second question by explaining that forbidden things are naturally bad. The punishment of the sinner is not a special act of divine providence; rather it is the natural consequence of his bad action. This leads us to the answer to the first question. According to Abner, the goal of the Torah is to influence people to do what is right. The Torah and prophets (and God who sent them) act in the world in conformity to His nature. The only way to influence someone to do something is to give him enough causes to do it. The Torah is only another cause that influences people to do what is good. Abner compares reward and punishment to a father that obligates his son to take medication. The medicine will always work even if the son takes it unhappily. The same is true with regard to all actions of people. When people do what is right, they believe they will receive a reward, while if they do what is wrong, they believe they will receive a punishment—even if they do not essentially have the choice to do anything else. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | It is interesting to note that this philosophical book that Abner wrote at the end of his life, more than twenty years after his conversion, is almost without Christian references.[17] In spite of this, the book is full of references to Jewish sources, including the Talmud and quotations of Jewish authorities like Maimonides.[18] We see that Abner, even many years after his conversion, wrote to the Jewish community and was part of the internal Jewish debate about the question of determinism. In fact, Abner is the first medieval Jewish philosopher to argue for a deterministic explanation of the world. His opinion influenced Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (who paraphrased an important part of Ofrenda de Zelos in his major philosophical work The Light of the Lord[19]), and through him, Spinoza. Some Jewish philosophers, like Rabbi Isaac Pulgar, Rabbi Mosses from Narbonne, and Rabbi Josef Ben Shem Tov[20] respond explicitly to the determinist opinion of Abner, such that there is no doubt that his opinion had a major influence on the internal Jewish debate on the question of free will throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | As we stated before, the major work of science of Abner (the New Philosophy) is lost. We can still try to reconstruct some of his scientific opinions through some parts of his other works, specifically the existing work Meyasher Aqob, Rabbi Isaac Pulgar’s brief summary of the lost work, and some scientific passages in Mostrador de Justicia.[21] | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | The first interesting opinion of Abner is his view on prime matter. Abner denied a necessary link, which the Aristotelians affirmed, between bodies and accidents (magnitude, weight, quantity, etc.), maintaining that a body untainted by all these accidents can nonetheless have actual existence. He explicated his view in the dogmatic context of the question of the rite of Mass.[22] The rebel’s main philosophical arguments against the Mass are as follows: (1) How can several bodies occupy the same place? (2) How can Jesus’ body be in the bread and wine without changing them? (3) How can the same body be two different materials at the same time? (4) How can one debase Jesus by eating and digesting him? At the start of his answer Abner emphasizes that the Mass is miraculous. Nevertheless, he does go on to offer a scientific explanation of transubstantiation. For Abner, everybody has a layer of pure divine existence, to which are superadded other forms and accidents; but if the body is stripped of all of these accretions it will be reduced to the original divine substance only. In this state the body will have no boundary, quantity, or weight to occupy the universe, and consequently is infinite. This body is the foundation of the entire material world, and normally—with the exception of the sacrament of the Mass and Incarnation—it does not exist without accidents (at least not in the sublunary world). This matter is identified with the flesh of Jesus, which has divine existence only, which means that Jesus’ body is identified with prime matter. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | The above description eliminates for Abner all of the difficulties posed by the rebel. The problem of the co-presence of two bodies in one place is eliminated, because all bodies, once they have been stripped of their form and accidents, incorporate the infinite body of Jesus, which fills the entire universe. After these forms have been removed, the bread and wine are identified with Jesus’ body. The very same principle eliminates the problem of the simultaneous existence of Jesus’ body in several places, since his body fills the entire universe and transcends all definitions of place. Because his body also transcends the definition of quantity, the problem of limited quantity is removed as well. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Another subject about which Abner critiques Aristotelian science is the definition of place and the relation between place and body. In the thought of Aristotle, the definition of place is ‘the limit of the encompassing body’. In his opinion, place has an important role in movement. The definition of a natural movement is the movement of a body to its natural place in the world. Aristotle explains that both the natural place attracts the body and that the body moves on his own to its natural place. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Abner distinguishes between the physical object and extension or dimension. According to Abner, dimension is “a simple and subtle quantity detached from all movable bodies”; in other words, it is space, independent of any physical body. Dimension is measurable per se, and is not linked to what occupies it. Nevertheless, Abner’s definition of place is still associated with body: “place” is the dimension occupied by a body, and it is the body that turns it into “place.” According to Abner, the movement of bodies is not due to their being attracted to some place where they must rest before resuming their movement; rather, they move because of the interaction of several forces, quite independent of any particular place. A body that is thrown upward rises, but if it suddenly begins to fall because of an opposing force, there would not be a moment of rest between the two opposing motions. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Thus Abner dismisses Aristotle’s concept that a body is attracted to its natural place. Different places are not characterized by different qualities (inasmuch as all places are equal and are merely points in space). Hence a body has no cause to move to a particular place and no place is a final cause of its motion. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | We know from Rabbi Isaac Pulgar that Abner also criticized the opinions of Aristotle on the possibility of a void and argues for the existence of voids in his lost scientific book The New Philosophy. Because of the influence of Abner on Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, we can assume that his criticism is closely related to the criticism of Crescas in the beginning of the first speech of Or Hashem | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Abner wrote his criticism of Artistotelian science at the beginning of the 14th century, approximately the same time that Ockham wrote his criticism of this science. In the writing and the thought of Abner we do not see any kind of influence of Ockham or of other late scholastics (the only scholastic philosopher that he cites is Thomas Aquinas and there are no quotations from Christian sources on a scientific subject). It is interesting to note that the systematic criticism of Aristotelian science started approximately at the same time in the Jewish milieu (with the writings of Abner) and in the Christian milieu, with probably no relation one to the other. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Abner’s criticism of Aristotelian science had an important influence on Crescas’s thought, and through him to Pico Della Mirandola and general Western philosophy. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | One must distinguish between two kinds of influence Abner had. Abner influenced with his polemical works the Jewish-Christian debate until the end of the Middle Ages. Some born-Christians, like Alfonso de Espina, and especially Jewish apostates, like Pablo de Santa Maria, utilized his polemical works. Against this trend, there are more than five Jewish polemicist works that explicitly answer the polemical arguments of Abner.[23] Despite the utilization of Abner in debates, his works had almost no philosophical influence on Christian theology because the Christian participants in the debates utilized the quotations of the Jewish sources by Abner and not his theological arguments as such, which in their content were very different from the official Catholic dogma. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | The second way in which Abner had lasting influence was on the purely philosophical plane. It should be noted that the direct philosophical influence of Abner was only on the Jewish community. In fact we do not see that any Christian philosophers read the works of Jewish apostates in any other forum apart from the purely polemical one. By contrast, in the Jewish community the works of Abner had an important impact until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. The deterministic opinion of Abner is with no doubt one of the major causes to the extensive number of works written on this subject in the 14th and 15th centuries by Jewish philosophers. For the most part, these works were against the opinion of Abner. The most impressive philosophical influence of Abner was on Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (died in 1410/1411). Crescas was the main Jewish philosopher during the end of the Middle Ages. Despite their opposite positions in the Jewish-Christian debate (Crescas wrote one of the more philosophical anti-Christian works),[24] Crescas borrowed some of the major original philosophical opinions of Abner, including determinism, the difference between the attributes of the essence and the attributes that are essential, and the criticism of Aristotelian science. With regard to this entire subject, Crescas molded his opinion using Abner combined with other sources. In spite of this important change, we can clearly see signs of the philosophy of Abner in the writing of Crescas, and these signs constitute nearly all the post medieval influence of Abner on Jewish and general Western philosophy. | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | [Please contact the author with suggestions.] | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Aristotle, Special Topics: natural philosophy | Crescas, Hasdai | determinism: causal | free will: divine foreknowledge and | God: and other ultimates | Maimonides | Meister Eckhart | Neoplatonism | Ockham [Occam], William | Spinoza, Baruch | trinity | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Copyright © 2020 by Shalom Sadik <navitshalom@hotmail.com> | abner-burgos |
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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2021 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abner-burgos/ | Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054 | abner-burgos |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/ | Judah Abrabanel (ca. 1465–after 1521), also known as Leone Ebreo, is an important transitional figure in the history of Jewish philosophy. Common to any transitional figure, however, is the problem of contextualization. In the case of Judah Abrabanel, do we regard him as the last of the medieval Jewish philosophers or the first of the early modern ones? His work, for example, is certainly in conversation with a number of themes found in Renaissance Platonism and Humanism. Yet at the same time he freely draws upon the cosmology and metaphysics of his Jewish and Islamic predecessors. | abrabanel |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/ | Abrabanel’s magnum opus, the Dialoghi d’amore (“Dialogues of Love”) belongs to the genre of the trattato d’amore (“treatise on love”) that was intimately connected to both the Renaissance and the development of the Italian vernacular. Although Abrabanel’s dialogue provides one of the genre’s most important philosophical discussions in this, it nonetheless is confined to its literary and stylized form. The work itself consists of three dialogues, with the third one providing the longest and most sustained philosophical discussion. Some contend that Abrabanel originally composed an introduction to the work and a fourth dialogue, neither of which survives.[1] In essence, the Dialoghi offers the transcript of a conversation between two individuals, Philo and Sophia, two courtiers, who discourse on the nature of love as both a sensual and cosmic principle. Philo, the male character, is portrayed as an accomplished philosopher, and Sophia, the female character, as a student of philosophy. Despite this, Sophia is not just a convenient textual strategy, but becomes a character in her own right, someone who significantly contributes to the philosophical unfolding of the work. Moreover, many of the dialogic exchanges that take place between Philo and Sophia are very playful, with Philo, on one level, either answering Sophia’s questions about love or responding to her criticisms; yet, on another level, he physically desires Sophia and wishes to consummate this desire. Philo’s desire for Sophia, thus, reflects the same desire of God (the superior) for the world (the inferior). As a Renaissance artist, then, Abrabanel cleverly and artfully weaves the philosophical principles of love, beauty, and desire into the very literary structure of his Dialoghi. | abrabanel |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/ | There exists a large debate in the secondary literature concerning the place and role of Jews in Renaissance culture. One group envisages a synthesis between Jewish culture on the one hand, and the ideals of the Renaissance on the other.[2] Jews, according to this interpretation, could quite easily remain Jewish while still sharing in the values and culture of non-Jewish society. Another group, however, maintains that such a synthesis is historically untenable because Jews remained a small, persecuted minority left to the whims of various local governments.[3] These two approaches leave us with radically different conceptions of Renaissance Jewish philosophers. According to the first approach, a Jewish intellectual could quite easily partake of the ideals and categories of Renaissance Humanism and Neoplatonism. According to the second approach, however, such a synthesis could never occur, and, as a result, most Renaissance Jewish thinkers were more indebted to the legacy of Maimonides than the various trajectories of Renaissance thought. A more productive approach, however, exists between these two: The Italian Renaissance provided certain elite Jews with new literary genres, intellectual categories, and educational ideals with which to mine the depths of their tradition. | abrabanel |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/ | Judah Abrabanel was born in Lisbon, Portugal, sometime between 1460 and 1470. He was the firstborn of Don Isaac Abrabanel (1437–1508), who was an important philosopher in his own right. In addition to their intellectual skills, the Abrabanel family played an important role in international commerce, quickly becoming one of the most prominent families in Lisbon. | abrabanel |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/ | Despite the conservative tendencies in the thought of his father, Don Isaac insured that his children received educations that included both Jewish and non-Jewish subjects. Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham ibn Hayoun, the leading rabbinic figure in Lisbon, was responsible for teaching religious subjects (e.g., Bible, commentaries, and halakhic works) to Judah and his brothers. As far as non-Jewish works and subjects were concerned, Judah, like most elite Jews of the fifteenth century, would have been instructed in both the medieval Arabo-Judaic tradition (e.g., Maimonides, Averroes), in addition to humanistic studies imported from Italy.[4] | abrabanel |