Aspectos para implementar exitosamente la hora del juego libre en los sectores

I will return to those problems in the next section. In this one, I lay out the metaphysics of capacities and the structure of possibility that comes with it. As with the rest of the paper, I cannot consider questions and objections. I shall just present the aspects of this metaphysics needed in order to explain the conditions of agency and the theses about our agency.

A capacity is a potentiality, but not all potentialities are capacities. A mark of a capacity is that its actualizations divide into the good and bad, the successful and unsuccessful, the perfect and defective,

the complete and incomplete. The actualization is something that its bearer does, not something that happens to her. Only some things can be active in the relevant sense, and nothing is active with respect to everything that can happen in its history. For example, I have the capacity to act but not the capacity to be blown up by the bomb even though I am potentially blown to bits by the bomb, and I have the capacity to breathe but not the capacity to suffocate even though I am potentially suffocated. The primary use of ‘capacity’ picks out the capacities of living beings, with a derivative use picking out the capacities of artifacts. The concept lacks application with respect to non-living non-artifactual stuff. It is inactive, and the manifestation of potentialities thereby do not divide into the good and bad, the perfect and imperfect, the complete and incomplete. They just are.

‘Capacity’ thus encompasses what a long tradition calls active and passive powers, where an active power gives form to its object while a passive one takes form from its object. My capacities to hear and see are passive powers, my capacities to digest and act active. Both kinds of powers differ from my disposition to dissolve in lye and my disposition to fall to the Earth at the rate of the gravitational constant. In my terminology, ‘potentiality’ picks out the genus of which ‘capacity’ and ‘disposition’ are species, and ‘capacity’ picks out the genus of which ‘active power’ and ‘passive power’ are species.

A capacity allows for a manifold of particular bearers. A few billion human beings have the same capacity to act, with no upper bound. It is not like the stock will run dry and some must go without. Though resources are finite and can only support so many of us, the capacity itself does not limit the number of its bearers in the way that the number of seats in Senate limits the number of senators. Likewise, we can exercise the same capacity indefinitely many times. I exercise my capacity to act many times each day, with no in principle upper bound. I cannot exhaust the stock of exercises and be left

running on empty in the way that I can exhaust the number of attempts to enter my password and be left locked out of my account. Although we can only do so much in a day, in a life, the capacity itself does not limit the number of its exercises. A capacity allows for a manifold of exercises by a manifold of bearers.

A capacity is such that a single principle describes its nature and is thereby normative for its development and exercises. ‘Capacity’ thus picks out a type of kind whose members establish normative standards for their particulars. This type of relationship does not hold with respect to all kinds. While the nature of squares establishes standards for whether something is a square, it does not establish standards for whether something is a good or bad square. Likewise for potentialities that are not capacities. The idea of an internal normative standard does not make sense here. Not so with respect to capacities.

A capacity is a potentiality to do something, and its principle distinguishes it from others by describing an activity. My capacity to walk is different from my capacity to jump given how the way that we walk differs from the way that we jump. Those differences thereby distinguish the standard for developing and exercising the former from the standard for the latter. Each of them, though, is a more determinate version of my capacity to act. Walking and jumping are particular ways of acting.

To understand this determinable/determinate relationship, think about my capacity to speak. I am born with it. I develop it by learning to speak at least one language, and I exercise it by speaking a language. The only way to develop and exercise the determinable capacity is to develop and exercise at least one of its determinates. One way to think about this stuff is to treat ‘German’, ‘English’, and the others as adverbial modifications of ‘speak’ in ‘my capacity to speak’. In the same way, ‘slowly’ and ‘quickly’ can modify ‘walk’ in ‘my capacity to walk’. My capacity to speak, walk, jump, and others are likewise determinate versions of my capacity to act. After all, I can only develop and exercise my capacity

to act by developing and exercising capacities to act in various ways. As with my capacity to speak, one way to represent this determinable/determinate relationship is to treat ‘walking’, ‘jumping’, ‘speaking’, and the like as adverbial modifications of ‘act’, as in ‘my capacity to act by walking’.

Representing the relationship between my capacity to act as such and my capacity to act in some way as a determinable/determinate relationship is not mere scholasticism. The determinable restricts its determinates. Take my capacity to walk forward, itself a determinate of my capacity to walk, itself a determinate of my capacity to act. If to walk forward is in part to put one foot in front of the other, the principle of any determinate of it must include this aspect. This principle can modify the first one in various ways—‘put one foot in front of the other at a leisurely pace’ is a different determinate than ‘put one foot in front of the other at a cautious pace’. But it must stay true to the determinable. This is why strutting, slinking, and sauntering are determinates of my capacity to walk but walking while remaining still or walking forward backward are not.

Once again, one way to represent this relationship is to treat the descriptions of the determinate activities as adverbial modifications of the determinable. Only certain adverbs attach to the infinitive to walk to yield a semantically well-formed verb phrase. ‘Slowly’, ‘quickly’, ‘forward’, ‘backward’, ‘quickly forward’, ‘quickly backward’, ‘slowly forward’, and ‘slowly backward’ do. ‘Quickly slowly’, ‘forward backward’, ‘while remaining still’, and ‘in a zero gravity environment without mechanical aid’ do not. These phrases try to describe an activity that is internally contradictory in one way or another and hence is not a real activity, or at least not a human activity. We cannot have a capacity to act in these ways. To set off so to act is to automatically fail in the way that to set off to square the circle using only compass and straightedge is to automatically fail. Just try to make a go of it. I would then be exercising my

determinable capacity to act in a way doomed to failure because I in principle lack the determinate capacity to act in that way. Given the nature of a capacity, then, only certain determinates of it are possible.

The principle of our capacity to act likewise restricts its determinates. If this principle includes moral, prudential, and rational content, determinates of it obey moral, prudential, and rational requirements. A capacity to act immorally, imprudently, or irrationally would be as impossible for us as a capacity to walk forward backward. The phrases ‘act immorally’, ‘act imprudently’, and ‘act irrationally’ would try to describe activities that are internally contradictory in one way or another and hence are not real activities, or at least not human ones. We cannot have a capacity to act in these ways. To set off to so act is to automatically fail in the way that to set off to sail to the edge of the earth is to automatically fail. Again, it is not that I am not exercising my determinable capacity to act. It is instead that I am exercising it in such a way that success is impossible because I in principle lack the capacity to act in this way. Just as I can be on the boat sailing while not possibly succeeding in sailing off the edge of the earth, so I can be disregarding necessary means and undermining my good and yours as well while not possibly succeeding in acting irrationally, imprudently, or immorally. While I shall not here argue that the principle of our capacity to act as such in fact establishes these requirements, this metaphysics of capacities explains the possibility of such requirements on our action as such.

Two sorts of possibility come with any capacity. Human beings, like all of the living, are not passive in the face of the world. Of all the happenings in my life, some are my doings. A capacity is a potentiality to do something. To exercise it is to be active in the broad sense that includes seeing, hearing, digesting, and acting. Take my capacity to walk. Because I have developed this capacity, I can

walk. I am in this way differ from other organisms. No being without a capacity to walk can walk. No being without a human capacity to walk can walk as we do. In this way, a capacity makes possible its exercises, which are subject to normative standards that its nature establishes. It also makes possible characteristic defects or imperfections in its exercises. If I can walk, I can trip, slip, stumble, or tumble. Any being who can walk can err in these ways, and only a being who can walk or act in a similar way can err in these ways. Walking is doing what I have a capacity to do. Tripping and the like are deviations or imperfections in walking. They constitute failures of those exercises if they are severe enough. A walk to the store in which I get to the store by walking is successful though imperfect if it includes a stumble and other imperfections along the way. A walk that ends with me flat on my face with a fractured ego and an even worse leg is a failed exercise of that capacity.

Whereas walking is something that I can do because I have a capacity to walk, stumbling is something that can happen because I have that capacity. My capacity to walk thereby brings with it two sub-classes of what is possible with respect to it, what I can do because I have it and what can happen

because I have it. This terminology is a bit uncomfortable for two reasons. First, active and passive powers are capacities, and yet I am in general the patient, not the agent, of a causal relation when I exercise a passive power. This explains the awkwardness of saying that hearing, say, is something that I do or is an activity. Second, ‘what can happen’ might sound like it only picks out things that come from outside the exercise of the capacity, not things that can be done deliberately. Both of these impressions are misleading. ‘What I can do because I have a capacity’ picks out the aspects of the exercises that realize the nature of the capacity and contribute to a successful exercise of it. It picks out the way that things can go well with respect to the capacity. ‘What can happen because I have a capacity’ picks out the aspects of

exercises that interfere with realizing the nature of the capacity and contribute to a failed exercise of it. It picks out the way that thing can go badly with respect to the capacity. What I can do because I have a capacity are the perfections, what can happen the imperfections, of an exercise of that capacity. Imperfections can come from outside the exercise itself as when a tornado ends my walk to the store. They also can be internal aspects of the exercise, as it were, in the way that the imperfection of swimming to the bottom of a volcano comes from inside the exercise.

Although these sub-classes of what is possible with respect to a capacity are a package deal, they are not on a par with each other or with respect to their relationship to the capacity. A capacity is a potentiality to do something. Its nature depends on what it is a potentiality to do. What differentiates my capacity to walk from my capacity to sing is, after all, the difference between walking and singing. Because of the nature of walking, tripping and the like are possible imperfections in exercises of my capacity to walk. Because of the nature of singing, my voice cracking and not holding the tune are possible imperfections in exercises of my capacity to sing. If any of these imperfections are severe enough, I fail in those exercises. The perfections of exercises of the capacity are in this way prior to the characteristic imperfections in and failures of those exercises. Walking is an actualization of my capacity to walk, whereas tripping is an imperfection or defect in its exercise that is possible because of the nature of walking. Tripping is a defect in walking. It is in this sense derivative of walking and understood in terms of walking. A capacity to walk is, after all, a capacity to walk, not a capacity to walk and also to trip, be run over by a bus, and every other way for its exercise to be imperfect. A capacity thus distinguishes what I can do because I have it from what can happenbecause I have it. What can happen depends on what I can do because what can happen are interferences with, interruptions in, and other imperfections

of what I can do.21

Many capacities do not come fully formed. I am not at birth able to do everything that I have a capacity to do. I am not able to speak, walk, or act at birth even though I have these capacities. I need to develop them if I am to exercise them, through growth, education, training, reflection, and everything else that goes into a life. In order to account for this aspect of capacities, the metaphysics must include the state of development of the capacity in addition to the capacity and its exercises. To put the same point a different way, this metaphysics must distinguish two ways of having a capacity. In one sense, I have a capacity because I am a being of a certain kind. I have a capacity to walk because I am a human being.22 _{If I were a member of another species, I would have a different capacity to walk or none at all. I} have a capacity in a different sense when I have developed it such that I am able to exercise it in at least some of the ways appropriate to it. It is the same capacity at a specific stage in its development. This tripartite distinction between the capacity, its state of development, and its exercises is crucial for understanding the conditions of agency. Let me explain it in more detail.

Consider the baby. A human infant has the capacity to walk but not the capacity to fly. Everyone recognizes this distinction, or at least everyone recognizes a difference between her relationships to

21. In addition to errors in the exercise of a capacity, I can also fail to exercise a capacity. The metaphysics of capacities thus must explain how a capacity brings with it standards for when to exercise it in addition to standards for how to exercise it. However, I ignore this aspect of capacities because it does not matter for the conditions and theses of interest.

22. In a sense, every capacity that I can possess comes with being a member of a species since they are all determinates of my basic capacities. In another sense, only certain capacities come with being a member of a species. I by nature have a capacity to act and the more determinate capacity to walk. I do not by nature have the capacity to play video games even though I can train into that activity given my basic capacities. I do not have an account of which determinates come with our nature and which do not. The important question is whether failing to develop the determinate constitutes a deprivation or defect. A rough test is to think about whether the activity in question is something that any of us must be able to do in order to live a human life well. This test is not foolproof. It relies on a conception of our kind of life as present in the many ways we live that distinguishes the essential and non-essential aspects of those ways of life. I do not have a procedure to recommend for answering these questions other than ‘think hard and carefully’.

walking and flying. Of course, she cannot yet walk. If you ignore the ‘yet’, her relationships to walking and flying are similar. That ‘yet’, though, is all important. Although she cannot yet walk, she will be able to walk if the normal course of development takes place. She will be in that position because she is a human being or, in other words, because of her nature. This capacity by nature develops in her over time. Not so with flying. You need wings or something like them for that.

Any view of capacities needs these three elements. To see why, try to get by with two. If a single principle describes the nature of a capacity and is thereby normative for its exercises, what principle describes the baby’s capacity to walk? If it describes the current state of that capacity, it hardly is a