Call for Abstracts

Workshop “Normative Capacities”

Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Human Abilities”, FU and HU Berlin, 4–5 July 2022

Confirmed speakers:

• Maria Alvarez, King’s College London
• Joseph Cunningham, University of Nottingham
• Maria Lasonen-Aarnio, University of Helsinki
• Errol Lord, University of Pennsylvania
• Susanne Mantel, Universität des Saarlandes
• Eric Marcus, Auburn University
• Erasmus Mayr, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Organizers: David Heering and Benjamin Kiesewetter, Berlin

Human agents possess normative capacities – capacities to act and believe in response to normative considerations. The project of understanding what the possession and exercise of these capacities amounts to faces a number of challenges and questions situated in the overlap between metaethics, the theory of action, and the metaphysics of abilities: What is it to act or believe for a reason? What type of control is involved in exercising normative capacities, and is it the same for both acting and believing on the basis of reasons? What are the implications of our understanding of normative capacities for the so-called basing relation and the relation between normative and motivating reasons? How is exercising normative capacities tied to normative success and error?

In this workshop, we will discuss these and other questions concerning normative capacities. There are two slots for contributed papers. Please submit an abstract suitable for a 30–40 minutes presentation as a PDF file to human-abilities@hu-berlin.de, using the subject line Normative Capacities Workshop. The abstract should be prepared for blind review and be 500-1000 words in length, including all notes (but not references). The deadline is April 8^th, and authors of accepted papers will be notified by May 16^th. We will provide accommodation for speakers of accepted papers and may be able to subsidize travel costs in case their home institutions do not provide support.

If you have any further questions, please send an email to heeringdavid@gmail.com