Keya Maitra

TheGovernancerole of public practical reasoning in good governance chapter seeks to establish the role of practical reason in good governance, the aim of which is to bring about a better society where this could be understood as a more fair and just society than what we find today. Stating the principles of good governanceGovernanceprinciples of good governance, it seeks to show that justice is the normative value of good governanceGovernancenormative value of good governance and that although the idea of an ideally just society is probably an ‘utopia’, good governance does help in reducing the injusticesInjustice that abound in society. In this contextContexts, the chapter delineates the role of public practical reasoning that underlies good governance. A distinction is outlined between reason, reasoning and reasonablenessReasonableness with the claim that what public policy should aim at is ‘being reasonable’ and not necessarily being the ‘most rational policy’ to hold. In that respect, it emphasizes the seven parameters of Social Choice TheorySen AmartyaSocial Choice Theory as admitted by Amartya Sen. The chapter presents an account of the dominant and alternativeAlternatives ethical frameworks wherein public policy needs to be framed and evaluated. It closely examines the steps involved in the framing of public policyPublic policysteps in public policy framing while showing how normative ethics is involved at each step. It concludes by stating the limits of the role of ethics in policy formation.

This chapter focuses on outlining some of the ethical perspectivesFeminism/Feministperspective often excluded in a typical Western ethical primer, including virtueVirtuevirtue ethicsethicsFeminism/Feministethics, feministCarefeminist care ethics care ethicsCareethics, Buddhist ethicsBuddhismBuddhist ethics, Hindu ethicsHinduismHindu ethics and a few indigenous and African ethical conceptsAfrican ethical concepts. It thus allows us to decolonize our moral landscape by including perspectives originating from positionalities considered to be the margins. Our aim is not only to showcase the breadth of the ethical theories especially when we take non-Western theories into account. The views discussed in this chapter also help us identify and highlight a number of factors that are important to take into account beyond the dominant theories in Western normative ethics. This will enable us to fashion an expanded toolbox that offers more comprehensive and creative options in policy makingPolicy design/Policy making and executive decision making.

In the area of Applied Ethics, the ethics of governance raises some pertinent questions. What is the relation between ethics and governance? Should there be a deep engagement between ethics and governance making the former indispensable to the latter? Or, can the interest in ethical questions be only peripheral to the tasks of governance? The chapter seeks to understand the relation between the two in the light of the distinction between applied philosophy and engaged philosophy and that between applied public policy ethics and engaged public policy ethics. Further, how the book proposes to delineate this relation is briefly spelt out in chapter summaries presented in this introductory chapter.

CriticizingHuman well-beingthe economic growthEconomic growthmodelDevelopment modelseconomic growth model, the social welfare and humanHuman rightsrightsCapability approachcapabilities and human rights model, the capability approach championed by Amartya Sen and Martha NussbaumCapability approachNussbaum, Martha heralds a new paradigm of understanding social justice. This chapter discusses the core ideas of ‘functionings’, ‘capabilities’Capability approachcapabilities and functionings and the notion of ‘positive freedomFreedom’ (well-being and agencyFreedomfreedomsCapability approachagency-freedom) as spelled out by Sen and Nussbaum. Acknowledging human diversity and its effects in converting primary goods into capabilities, the chapter delves into the finer nuances of a new metric of interpersonal comparisons of capabilities, which is also more gender sensitive. It emphasizes the idea that people’s socio-economic entitlements and capabilities are as important as their other interests and thus the state must endorse policies in favor of the disadvantaged groups in education, employment and political participation. In short, providing infrastructure to enhance people’s capabilities to lead the life they value should be the aim of good governance. It looks into Nussbaum's view of a cross-culturally agreeable list of human capabilities that would contribute more substantively to a theory of global social justice. Besides its pervasive influence on the language of public policy and discussion, the capability approach has also spawned policy proposals, some of which have been discussed here along with the difficulties that this approach presents in its application.

This chapter gathers together various ethical tools included in the toolbox that has been fashioned in previous chapters. It seeks to place in perspective and examine these different tools in their application to case studies while also making a candid submission that there is always scope to add more nuanced/finer tools that newer, ‘not encountered before’ moral policy dilemmas may demand. We conclude that serious deliberation on ethical questions in the realm of governance offers no easy answers to them; however, the decision that a policy analyst needs to make is best made by taking all stakeholders on board. The process of framing policies by engaging in public practical reasoning with the concerned stakeholders will enable policy analysts to draw up a policy that will, in all probability, not be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but ‘reasonable’ to adopt in a given situation at a given time, where a reasonable policy is the outcome of an engagement with the ethicist and practitioner. It is this fact of not being able to arrive at a clear black or white answer to a moral policy dilemma, that constitutes the moral limits of policy decisions in governance. Finally, this chapter reflects on how the toolbox might help us understand some policy decisions around the COVID-19 pandemic.

This chapterConsequence-based ethics discusses various forms of one of the dominant ethical theories in the history of Western ethical discourse, namely, Consequentialism. Traditionally, the socio-economic method of ‘cost-benefit analysisCost-benefit analysis’ has been adopted in deciding the best course of action to take among various choices open in areas of governance, particularly in aspects of policy and executive decision-making. Such a method argues from the ‘good ends’ or favorable consequences that certain courses of action would deliver to concluding that those actions are ‘right’. The consequentialistConsequentialismconsequentialist principles underlying such an approach draw from ancient and many modern sources. The main proponents have been celebrated utilitarian philosophers such as Jeremy BenthamBentham, Jeremyand John Stuart MillMill, John Start. In the hands of these philosophers, the hedonistic idea of ‘individual pleasure maximizationPleasuresmaximization’ evolved to become the idea of ‘good’ for the whole society implying ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’ and integrating further into the concepts of human and environmental ‘wellbeing’.

The Sardar Sarovar Project, the CPCSEA guidelines on animal experimentation and the reservation policy in India represent contemporary governance challenges that necessitate ethical reflection. In this chapter, we analyze these cases by using the ethical toolbox developed in the earlier chapters. Policy decisions are subject to the contextsContexts they are taken in, including the philosophical, more specifically, the ethical debates that surround them. The attempt in this chapter is to shed light on the ethical underpinnings of decisions taken in the public interest by applying an expanded set of ethical tools and values some of which have been conventionally sidelined but are very valuable as we shall see. It also affords an opportunity to reflect on the possible ways of enriching policy decisions.

Ranging from damming of rivers for development, the treatment of non-human animals, specifically in terms of their use in scientific experimentation, and affirmative actionAffirmative action to combat forms of historical deprivation, the chapter offers a descriptive account of three case studies from India that warrant ethical inquiry, and presents significant governance challenges in the contemporary world. Relevant facts and figures about the cases are placed before the reader to raise ethical questions of significance to public policy and governance. These case presentations are designed to reveal the normative assumptions, values and ethical reasoningEthical reasoning that underpin the evolution of the dam-driven development paradigm, moral status and rights of non-human animals as well as the rationale of affirmative actionAffirmative action in contemporary democraciesDemocracy.

Does a good end—the larger social good/welfare of the majority justify neglecting the rights of minorities? In the backdrop of this question, the chapter examines some dominant principle-based ethical theories, both Western and Indian, in the contextContexts of individual and institutional moralityMortalityindividual and institutional morality. Beginning with individual morality, Immanuel Kant’s absolutist conception of duty is contrasted with the relativistic conception of duty in the Bhagavad Gita to draw out a feasible understanding of duty in public service. How Kant’s lofty ethical principles justify public policy is highlighted with relevant examples expressing Kant’s idea of human rationality, autonomy and equality. In the contextContexts of institutional morality the theories of John Rawls (liberal egalitarianism) and Robert Nozick (libertarianism)Nozick, Robertlibertarianism are juxtaposed to bring out their contrasting positions with regard to the duties of the state vis-ầ-vis its people. Rawls’ idea of the welfare stateRawls, Johnwelfare state guided by his Difference Principle brings his views close to M. K. Gandhi’s approach to social justice. Through examples and case studies, an attempt has been made to show how while upholding the philosophy of a welfare state is important for good governance, free enterprise also has its advantages in promoting the good of the state. Lastly, whether the scope of ethical principles can extend to resolve global issues, with or without a world government, is also discussed in respect of different forms of cosmopolitanism while considering global policies within these realms.

While Nyaya texts seldom address the topic of concepts directly, it is my contention that Nyaya system can accommodate a sustained notion of concepts and clarifying its parameters can help us with a debate in Nyaya epistemology of perception that has been popular in contemporary discussion of Indian philosophy. This debate focuses on the exact nature of nirvikalpaka perception and its viability within Nyaya direct realism. One of the central questions in this regard is the role of concepts in our perception. Using an account of concepts developed in contemporary Western philosophy by Millikan as a template I will articulate a few aspects of Nyaya theory of concepts. One of the outcomes of this undertaking will be that Nyaya theory of concept as developed here will not preclude nirvikalpaka perception.

Authored with Melissa Burchard. The two authors have shared for nearly twelve years a dialogue regarding maternal matters, and ambivalence is at the heart of many of them. What we have come to believe is that maternal ambivalence is heavily shaped by socio-cultural factors lying outside/beyond a mother’s will. This leads us to challenge recent discussions in philosophy which characterize ambivalence in terms of unresolved conflict among one’s desires and thus a problem of will, or as insufficient coherence in one’s identity. Drawing from our personal experiences of maternal ambivalence, colored as they are by our socio-cultural backgrounds, we argue that socio-cultural factors shape not only the experience of maternal ambivalence but the very phenomenon. We approach this issue through a feminist project of actively shared knowledge construction, privileging personal and conversational narrative as a ground for theorizing. After framing the issues, we offer a set of dialogues between us that explicitly reflect the issues of ambivalence we have pursued over the years. This enables us to demonstrate the profoundly situated nature of our understanding of maternal ambivalence as it emerges through the stories and conversations we relate, on questions ranging from whether to have children or not and which children to have (adopting), to how being a (good) mother differs for Indian and American women who are also philosophers. We believe this is important methodologically as well as for its content, as dialogical construction of knowledge is appropriate for feminist investigations as much as dialectical process is for philosophical ones. Further, the interplay of our quite different perspectives offers unique insights, as we engage in both comparative and constructive analyses at the same time. The most significant implication of our discussion is that maternal ambivalence cannot be adequately theorized or responded to without direct attention to situatedness because of the many features of both mothering and ambivalence that are affected by particularities. So, for example, we argue that in some cultural discourses of mothering, admitting ambivalence is a betrayal of cultural/maternal values, whereas other cultures have at least some room for expressing ambivalence without serious censure. Ultimately, we conclude that although maternal ambivalence itself is often seen as an indicator of failure or wrongness in mothering, it is more reasonable to see it as an ordinary response to a complex, layered and demanding experience, and an indicator of the difficulties of mothers’ situations and depths of self-reflection.

A feminist theory of content allows us to appreciate the nuanced role that historical and socio-cultural forces play in shaping the content of many of our terms. In this chapter, Maitra first shows how the classic articulation of externalism in literature is ineffective for feminist purposes. She then identifies two important ingredients that a feminist theory of content requires, namely, accounts of how the social and physical world shape content and what is required to transform that content. The final part of her argument develops the first approximation of a feminist theory of content drawing from Ruth Millikan’s “consumer” account of meaning and mental representation. Using as an example José Jorge Mendoza’s analysis of how the history of U. S. immigration and citizenship law has shaped the term ‘whiteness,’ this chapter argues that feminist theorizing and activism stand to benefit from the possibility of a feminist theory of mental content that makes explicit how the contents of many terms with social and political import are determined and held stable.

Philosophy of The Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction presents a complete philosophical guide and new translation of the most celebrated text of Hinduism. While usually treated as mystical and religious poetry, this new translation focuses on the philosophy underpinning the story of a battle between two sets of cousins of the Aryan clan. Designed for use in the classroom, this lively and readable translation: - Situates the text in its philosophical and cultural contexts - Features summaries and chapter analyses and questions at the opening and end of each of the eighteen chapters encouraging further study - Highlights points of comparison and overlap between Indian and Western philosophical concepts and themes such as just war, care ethics, integrity and authenticity - Includes a glossary allowing the reader to determine the meaning of central concepts Written with clarity and without presupposing any prior knowledge of Hinduism, Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction reveals the importance and value of reading the Gita philosophically.

Bhagavad-gītā: A Critical Introduction is a collection of ten original chapters authored by nine scholars of the Gītā. While no single theme runs through all the chapters, they all revolve around the hermeneutics of the Gītā, especially in the exegetical and commentarial traditions. The first three chapters focus on the questions of structure of the text, both in terms of its organizational form and the coherence of its content. Chapters 4 through 6 focus on the Gītā's commentarial and exegetical history especially within the Vaiṣṇava tradition. Chapters 7 through 9 focus on the socio-religious and cultural impacts of the Gītā that expand the scope of its influences. Finally, chapter 10 brings the focus back to...

Consciousness is a central topic in Hindu philosophy. This is because this philosophy understands reality in terms of brahman or atman (typically translated as the self), and consciousness is conceived as the essential marker of self. The prominent Hindu text Bhagavad Gita offers an exception. Self is conceived in the Gita not in terms of its essential identity with pure or transcendental consciousness. But the question remains, does the Gita still offer us a theory of consciousness? The goal of my paper is to show that the Gita can be taken as offering an interesting empirical theory of consciousness. My paper focuses on determining the nature of attention in the Gita's understanding of yoga, and to articulate the role of such attention in the Gita's theory of consciousness. My working conclusion is that what differentiates an ordinary person's consciousness from a yogi's consciousness is the nature of their attention both in terms of its manner and its object. I argue, further, that exploring the Gita's theory of consciousness, especially in conjunction with the nature of attention, is immensely fruitful because it allows us to see the Gita's potential contribution to our contemporary philosophical discussion of consciousness and attention. This is because bringing the Gita into discussion allows us to appreciate a dimension of the metaphysics of attention–namely, the dimension of manner of attending and its cultivation, and the moral and social implications in the proposed redirection of one's attention--not often recognized in the contemporary Western discussion.

The Ethics of Governance: Moral Limits of Policy Decisions offers a toolbox drawn from normative ethics which finds applications in public governance, primarily focusing on policy making and executive action. It includes ethical concepts and principles culled from different philosophical traditions, ranging from more familiar Western theories to non-Western ethical perspectives, thereby providing a truly global, decolonized and expanded normative lens on issues of governance. The book takes a unique and original approach; it demonstrates the use of the ethical toolbox in the context of actual examples of governance challenges. Taking three major case studies each representing an aspect of human-human and/or human-nature and/or human-animal relationship, the book attempts to show the significance of public practical reasoning in policy decisions with the aim of arriving at reasonable responses. Acknowledging the challenges that policy makers often face, the book highlights the fact that policy making is hardly an exercise yielding a black-or-white solution; rather it involves finding the most reasonable normative outcome in a given situation, especially employing an expanded understanding of values including well-being, sustainability, interdependence and community. This effort that helps bridge the gap between ethical theorists and policy practitioners exemplifies the necessary role of ‘engaged philosophy’ in public governance. In the major case studies, Boxes offer facts and figures along with pertinent ethical questions that have been raised and discussed. Aiming to aid the engagement of a diverse audience including non-philosophy readers, each chapter also includes Boxes containing examples, shorter case studies, at-a-glance charts, and tables with comprehensive ethical tools for a quick recap.

"This collection is the first book to focus on the emerging field of study called feminist philosophy of mind. Each of the twenty chapters of Feminist Philosophy of Mind employs theories and methodologies from feminist philosophy to offer fresh insights and perspectives into issues raised in the contemporary literature in philosophy of mind and/or uses those from the philosophy of mind to advance feminist theory. The book delineates the content and aims of the field and demonstrates the fecundity of its approach, which is centered on the collective consideration of three questions: What is the mind? Whose mind is the model for the theory? To whom is mind attributed? Topics considered with this lens include mental content, artificial intelligence, the first-person perspective, personal identity, other minds, mental attribution, mental illness, perception, memory, attention, desire, trauma, agency, empathy, grief, love, gender, race, sexual orientation, materialism, panpsychism, and enactivism. In addition to engaging analytic and feminist philosophical traditions, essays draw from resources in phenomenology, philosophy of race, decolonial studies, disability studies, embodied cognition theory, comparative philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology"--

This paper explores the role of Buddhist mindfulness in developing a feminist conception of self-consciousness. I will open with a discussion of the role and function of self-consciousness within feminist consciousness. Although largely unrecognized in the literature, feminist self-consciousness is an essential component of feminist consciousness and, as such, the political activity of feminist consciousness-raising is dependent on the development of a distinctively feminist self-consciousness. Mindfulness is understood in terms of certain meditative practices to attain an altered consciousness that provides a better awareness of one’s bare subjectivity. In Buddhism successful mindfulness results in a cessation of suffering and pain and finally of the self itself as ordinarily understood (anatman). I will argue that similar meditative practices can play a role in articulating feminist self-consciousness. Techniques used to cultivate mindfulness can help us articulate and attain a feminist self-consciousness that takes into account the particular situations, contexts, and positions of individual women and does not homogenize them in one group in an essentialist fashion. What makes the comparative relevance of Buddhist thinking on self-consciousness to feminism interesting is their shared suspicion of essentialism and shared interest in finding ways to liberation. One of the central points of this paper is that meditative practices associated with attaining mindfulness could provide a perspective to attain self-consciousness in many feminist contexts. At first glance, this comparative engagement may seem far-fetched and at best forced. One might argue that while the Buddhist engagement with liberation is motivated by an other-worldly concern, feminist conception of liberation is fundamentally this-worldly. Even with this difference, however, it seems worthwhile to explore how understanding mindfulness and its associated meditative practices can illuminate our understanding of feminist self-consciousness. Especially if meditative practices are understood not as a means to withdraw from the world but to engage with it with a better understanding of reality, then that kind of self-knowledge can certainly be useful to understanding and raising feminist consciousness.

In her 2007 book Epistemic Injustice Miranda Fricker identifies testimonial injustice as a case where a hearer assigns lower credibility to a speaker due to “identity prejudice.” Fricker considers testimonial injustice as a form of epistemic injustice since it wrongs the speaker “in her capacity as a knower.” Fricker recommends developing the virtue of “testimonial justice” to address testimonial injustice. She takes this virtue to involve training in a “distinctly reflexive critical social awareness.” The main goal of this article is to argue that Fricker's proposed training falls short of the target and that a cultivation of the capacity of being present—the ability to be mindful—would be necessary to develop the critical social awareness that Fricker requires. I want to explore the impact of compassion and open‐mindedness—virtues cultivated in mindfulness training—on testimonial justice specifically and virtue epistemology generally. In attempting to develop an epistemic account informed by mindfulness—a mindful epistemology—my primary goal is to bring Buddhist insights on how to anchor the mind by training it to be fully present and attentive into the focus of mainstream Western philosophy. More specifically, I argue that doing so allows us to appreciate the crucial role that a prediscursive level of cultivation plays in the development of testimonial justice.

Vrinda Dalmiya's Caring to Know is an exciting, impressive, and above all important work on caring in ethics and epistemology. Its central focus is to articulate what Dalmiya calls "care-knowing"—which proposes care as a basic intellectual virtue. In developing its dual aspects—caring as a process and caring as a disposition—Dalmiya offers a systematic argument that defends the viability and efficacy of care-knowing. The early chapters set the stage by offering a "thumbnail" account of the main moves in the literature on care ethics and virtue epistemology. All the building blocks are then assembled to develop the central concept of the book, namely the virtue of "relational humility," a...

This paper examines the often-mentioned similarity in comparative moral philosophy between the Hindu Text Bhagavad-Gita’s notion of duty and Kant’s notion of duty. It is commonly argued that they are similar in their deontological nature where one is asked to perform one’s duty for the sake of duty only. I consider three related questions from Gita’s and Kant’s perspectives. First, What is the source of our duties: Self or Nature; second, How do we know that an act x is our duty, and third, What would be an acceptable example of a duty. In all these three cases I show that their respective answers diverge quite clearly and conclude by arguing that the reason for this divergence lies in their respective contexts: while the ideal of Kantian morality is to become a member of the ‘kingdom of ends’, the aims of the Gita’s system of duties are the sustenance of the social order and the realization of one’s identity with the Supreme Self.

The "incompatibility charge" argues that externalism fails to explain "self-knowledge" or the privileged knowledge that we ordinarily take ourselves to enjoy in relation to at least some of our own mental states. This dissertation attempts to provide an externalist reply to this charge. First, I suggest that the "compatibility debate" needs to be reoriented. This is because the mere internality or externality of determining factors cannot by itself explain how one can know the content determined by those factors. Thus the task of explaining self-knowledge is one of explaining how we come to make these claims and where do they derive their privileged status from. Further, a story about the underlying epistemology of these claims has to be told not only by the externalists but also by the internalists. ;Chapter One introduces a distinction between two ways of understanding the epistemic privilege, namely, between "privilege in access", that consists of the way in which these claims are made and validated, and "privilege in authority", that consists of their infallibility. I argue that the epistemology underlying the phenomenon of self-knowledge can be best understood in terms of the privilege in access. ;Chapter Two turns to the incompatibility charge. I argue that the exchanges of arguments that have been taken place between the incompatibilists and the compatibilists in the literature rely on the implicit presupposition that a concept must always have an univocal and unambiguous referent and this fact should be discoverable a priori. I argue that a thorough going externalist should reject this questionable presupposition. ;Chapter Three criticizes the internalist argument that the internalists' job in accounting for self-knowledge is different from the externlaists' job. I conclude by noting that the internalist accounts have as much, if not more, difficulty in accounting for self-knowledge. ;Chapter Four suggests an externalist account of self-knowledge from the perspective of Sellars. The uniqueness of the Sellarsian account lies in the fact that it offers an interesting way of understanding the privilege of self-knowledge claims according to which though these claims enjoy non-inferential privilege, they are nonetheless defeasible and also justifiable from an independent source

Our claims of knowledge about our own mental states are considered epistemically privileged. This paper deals with the issue of whether there is a feature that is most typical of this epistemological phenomenon. I will first introduce a distinction between two kinds of privilege that a knowledge claim can enjoy, namely, in epistemic access and in epistemic authority. While privilege in epistemic access (P-access) deals with how we make these claims, privilege in epistemic authority (P-authority) deals with the certainty that these claims enjoy. I will term the trend popular in the traditional and contemporary literature to understand self-knowledge in terms of P-authority as the ‘P-authority thesis.’ The point of this paper is to pose a challenge that the proponents of P-authority thesis have to meet. The challenge is to show that P-access necessarily entails P-authority in all or most cases of self-knowledge claims. I will then point out some of the problems in meeting this challenge. In further defense of this point I will consider and reject an argument presented by Burge and others in support of the P-authority thesis. I will conclude by noting that if this challenge can’t be met then P-access would have to be accepted as the default position to understand the epistemic privilege of self-knowledge claims.

In the Discourse on Metaphysics Leibniz writes, 'Our perceptions are always true, it is our judgments that come from ourselves that deceive us' (section 14). Leroy Loemker in his 'Leibniz's Doctrine of Ideas' criticizes this account of error. His main worry can be presented in the form of the following syllogistic argument, which he derives from Leibniz's doctrine of ideas: (a) There cannot be a false perception; (b) All judgments are perceptions; and therefore (c) There cannot be a false judgment. However, in this paper I argue that Leibniz can distinguish between a perception and a judgment in their semantic aspect. The sense in which a perception turns out to be false (or true) for Leibniz is different from the sense in which a judgment turns out to be false (or true). This is because, while a perception, understood in Leibniz's terms, lacks truth-conditions, a judgment, in being representational, has such conditions. Thus while a perception remains true always, a judgment can be false. Pointing to the equivocal use of 'false' in (a) and (c) above, I conclude that (c) does not follow from (a) and (b).

Chandra Mohanty, in introducing the phrase “feminism without borders,” acknowledges that she is influenced by the image of “doctors without borders” and wants to highlight the multiplicity of voices and viewpoints within the feminist coalition. So the question of agency assumes primary significance here. But answering the question of agency becomes harder once we try to accommodate this multiplicity. Take, for example, the practice of veiling among certain Muslim women. As many third-world feminists have pointed out, although veiling can't simply be perceived as an expression of women's oppression, it can't be perceived as an expression of “free agency” either since what is required for true feminist agency is women's ability to “formulate choices” and not simply to make choices. In this paper I argue that this ability includes two related abilities: first, to develop a perspective of self that acknowledges and accepts its own grounding in its given intersectionalities; second, to realize that its interdependencies and interconnectivities enable a sense of continuity and solidarity that works collaboratively toward consensus without sacrificing or stifling all differences. My main argument is that feminist self-consciousness informed by Buddhist mindfulness gives us opportunities to articulate clearly and to cultivate both of these abilities