characteristic of inheres in disposition capability to consent A cognitive capability inhering in some agent, which may be realized in an Act of Consent. J. Neil Otte Note: Capability-talk is fraught and so attention to this particular, somewhat stipulative notion is necessary. First: Capabilities are BFO:Dispositions. Hence, we’re not talking about institutional power, which will be represented separately using deontic roles. This is compatible with institutional rules requiring a particular capability. Second: Like roles, capabilities can have other capabilities as parts. Thus, the capability to consent requires, as part, the capability to understand information, the capability to appreciate the consequences of one’s actions, and other capabilities related to a basic, agential capacity to be reasons-responsive. These capacities may be realized in other sub-parts of the informed consent process, and they may be identified in processes of cognitive assessment. Third: Capabilities may be assessed along a scale, with some having a greater capability to consent and some having a lesser ability to consent. The same capability at the same degree may pass muster in some jurisdictions but fail to pass in others. When it does succeed in passing some legal requirement, then the bearer of the capability has a Consent Power Role and their capability to consent now counts as a competency. Fourth: Capabilities are cognitive dispositions. As such, the class ‘capability to consent’ is not intended to be a catch-all for all the necessary conditions for legal consent. For instance, being under the age of 18 is not part of an instance of a capability to consent, but the capability to understand risks and benefits may be. Fifth: A capability that is so low on the scale as to not pass any tests is no longer a capability but a liability. The distinction between capabilities and liabilities may not be vague ontologically, but may be quite difficult to suss out epistemologically. More to the point: This is perhaps the most revisionist aspect of this reading of capabilities, for it requires that in some particular legal context, we might need to say that someone has a capability to consent that is sufficiently low as to not qualify as a competency within that legal context. Since ‘capability’ is often also used in a bi-valent, non-scalable manner (i.e. one either is capable or one is not capable) the notion here involves some stipulation. For this bi-valent notion, we use ‘competent’ (i.e. one either is competent or incompetent). In addition as of this writing (July 2018): There is work on capabilities occurring presently within the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR), so this reading of capabilities may need revising as that work moves forward. agent