Chapter 2 surveys phrases with the verb boulomai that describe the ability to do “whatever one wishes” or to live “however one wishes” as freedom in order to demonstrate that democratic freedom was understood as the ability to bring one’s will to fruition. These phrases are found in a wide range of genres, including history, philosophy, oratory, drama, and epigraphy. By defining themselves as free in contrast to slaves, Athenians perceived their actions and decisions as emanating from themselves rather than a master. Freedom was thus defined as not simply a prerequisite status for citizenship, in contrast to birth or wealth, but a personal capacity for action. This positive freedom was a central aspect of citizen identity, rendering scholarly accounts focused on negative freedom incomplete. The distinctive feature of democratic freedom was the insistence on the self as master of action; as a citizen, one did what one wished. Positive freedom gave rise to procedural components in Athenian administration and law, notably voluntarism and accountability, as well as served as a distinctive core marker of identity in contrast with other states, such as Sparta and Persia.

I propose to understand knowledge in the context of action, refocusing epistemology in order to make it more suitable for engaging with actual practices in science and other realms of life. What I call ‘active knowledge’ is a matter of ability; active knowledge is a prerequisite of propositional knowledge, and propositional knowledge contributes to it. I offer an analysis of active knowledge as operative in ‘epistemic activities’ and ‘systems of practice’ carried out by purposive epistemic agents. The quality of active knowledge consists in ‘operational coherence’, which is a matter of doing what makes sense to do in order to achieve our aims. Inspired by Dewey, I see inquiry as an effort to increase operational coherence, a process in which no aspects of our activities are immune from revision. Generally my thinking is inspired by pragmatism, which I take as a relentless kind of empiricism, which insists that the full lived experience of epistemic agents is the only source of any learning, including learning in logic, methodology and metaphysics.

Modals and conditionals play a starring role in philosophical and linguistic research. The ability to think modally distal thoughts is central to the human capacity to plan and choose; and the ability to express such thoughts is central to the human capacity for collective action. Modals and conditionals have yielded a rich bounty of puzzles about logic, semantics, and pragmatics. I organize this chapter around three topics: the interpretation of epistemic modals, particularly how they interact with their local information; the interpretation of conditionals, with a focus on logical questions; and, finally, practical modality, with discussion of a potentially unified perspective on practical modality as essentially involving reference to actions.

This chapter discusses the practice of measurement in psychological research. Here, where we cast doubt on the basic assumptions and endeavours underlying the act of measuring in mainstream psychology. Next, we introduce the processual alternative, which stresses the study of activity as situated and coupled with an environment. This chapter explains how a process approach to ‘measurement’ is thus fundamentally different from the standard one, and can remedy existing issues related to non-ergodicity and the ecological fallacy. These ideas are illustrated by means of the concept of intelligence, which is undoubtedly one of psychology’s show-pieces of measurement.

This chapter describes the development and advantages of capability-based planning. It allows for a range of effective tactical responses, regardless of the cause or timing of the disaster.

Mary Wollstonecraft challenges the social disablement of women by promoting a vigorous and curative feminism that establishes women’s qualifications for equality by virtue of their capacities. She associates female weakness with inutility and social degradation and promotes bodily and physical independence as ideals. Misogynistic cultures weaken the bodies and minds of women, Wollstonecraft asserts, and she petitions for women to develop (and be permitted to develop) their physical and intellectual abilities rather than to perpetuate a culture that is focused on the aesthetics of women’s bodies. Significantly, she suggests that it is absurd that weakness is treated as something aesthetically desirable in women. She concludes that society cannot maintain women’s social inutility as an aesthetic, as it is detrimental to social progress. Wollstonecraft’s implied theory of deformity (which links it to moral degradation) is articulated through its acknowledged opposite, beauty. These views are, however, incompatible with the compassion, sympathy, and sensibility Wollstonecraft expresses when considering deformity more directly.

The idea of capacity is central to Godwin’s political theory. In spite of his assurance that equality is unrelated to physical or intellectual ability, Godwin makes individual and social liberty contingent upon the types of contributions one’s capacities allow. His political system inevitably produces exceptions (those who do not or cannot contribute to the general good) for which he needs to devise additional measures. People who lack the right kinds of mental and physical capacities prove to be an intractable difficulty. In his fiction, Godwin centralizes the idea that the mind should work in concert with the body, and sees incapacity in either of these as socially and personally problematic. We see this in his repeated use of automata, dolls, and characters who disengage from their bodies in various ways; and in his fictional use of rejuvenation and cure. Godwin speculates that when reason governs society, illness and incapacity will no longer be present. His attitude towards deformity is quite separate from his views on capacity. Deformity, in Godwin’s fiction, is usually a visual sign of an evil character, and he does not articulate the prodigious phase of disability.

Some things are more difficult to know than others. For example, proving the Poincaré conjecture is certainly more difficult than coming to know what does 2 + 2 equal. However, as obvious as it seems, explaining that knowledge can be difficult in familiar epistemological terms (e.g., in evidentialist or simple reliabilist terms) is less straightforward than one could initially think. The aim of the chapter is to show that virtue reliabilism (unlike virtue responsibilism) provides a promising framework for accounting for the relationship between difficulty and knowledge. However, it argues that virtue reliabilism first needs to get rid of the problematic assumption that cognitive abilities are reliable dispositions to form true beliefs in appropriate conditions. The reason is that this idea not only prevents the theory from explaining how knowledge relates to difficulty, but also renders its main tenet – the thesis that knowledge requires the manifestation of cognitive ability in appropriate conditions – false. To amend this problem, the chapter connects the virtue reliabilist framework with recent work on the notions of achievement and difficulty. It then advances a positive proposal: the view that knowledge is a special kind of challenge with varying degrees of difficulty.

Moving from the grand and abstract theme of international constitutionalization to the more tangible and observable process of international rule making, Chapter 5 analyzes states’ motives for cooperating over international rules that form the unintended basis of international constitutionalization. It lays out the logic of democratic power, according to which states that are both democratic and powerful (democratic powers) combine the willingness and ability to promote international rules. Because democracies are rule–based, they understand the value of operating through rules and doing so is consistent with their domestic operations. Insofar as they are also powerful, democracies are able to advance their rule–based approach at the international level to shape rules according to their interests and values, which makes it easier for them to commit to and follow those rules. Democratic powers are thus decisive for international rule–based cooperation. States that lack either one or both of these prerequisites are less supportive of institutionalized cooperation and thus constitutionalization in world politics.

The chapter argues that ELF users do not create new modal expressions; they rely on the rich repertoire that the English language offers to them. But those English modal expressions do not necessarily reflect the mindset of ELF users with different L1s. Rather they reflect the mindset of native speakers of English. So an attempt is made to explain the interplay of these two factors in the use of modal expressions by ELF interlocutors. It is argued that modal use in ELF is motivated by three important factors: language learning experience, effect of L1 and immediate communicative needs.