DOES success entail ability?

Abstract

Imagine a great wave is rising and I have dashed into the sea with my surfboard. You know nothing about me: perhaps I am one of the world’s great surfers; perhaps I am a fool. What would it tell you about my abilities, if I were ride into the coast on that wave? Would it mean I am able to surf a wave like that? Does success entail ability? Call the principle that it does Success.1 When we focus on successful action, Success is compelling. Austin (1961) said that “it follows merely from the premise that [a golfer sinks a putt], that he has the ability to do it, according to ordinary English”. And indeed when someone succeeds in something, like sinking a putt or surfing a wave, one is forced to concede they were able to do that. This is what Success would lead us to expect. But when success is not yet assured, the lesson seems different. When said before the fact, the claim that I can surf that wave is strong — it says that surfing that wave is within my control. This intuition, call it the control intuition, drives against Success. Just doing something does not demonstrate it is within my control: flukes do happen. So, if the control intuition is right, success should not demonstrate ability. ∗Thanks to the participants of the Rutgers Language Workshop, and Fabrizio Cariani, Justin Khoo, Jeff King, Annina Loets, Matthew Mandelkern, Milo Phillips-Brown, Robert Stalnaker, and Barbara Vetter. Special thanks to Ginger Schultheis for comments on multiple drafts. 1I will focus exclusively on whether Success is valid for specific ability attributions which concern whether an agent is able to perform an action at a particular time (generally in the future), like lifting 200 pounds right now or hitting a bullseye on this throw. These are to be contrasted with general or generic ability ascriptions, which say that an agent has the ability to perform an action, not at a specific time, but rather in general. Mandelkern et al. (2017) argue that the semantics for generic ability ascriptions is derived by simply embedding a specific ability ascription under a generic operator.