The poss-ability principle states that each of an agent’s abilities must be witnessed by a possible exercising thereof; i.e., if S is able to φ, then there must be some possible world in which S (exercises her ability and) φs. As we will see, quite a lot turns on whether the poss-ability principle is true. The poss-ability principle is a premise in some of the main arguments for incompatibilism, a consequence of the leading analyses of ability, and often an unstated but critical assumption working in the background. The thesis that an object is visible (or knowable) only if there is some possible world in which the object is seen (or known) relies, implicitly, on the possability principle, as does the widely held thesis that ‘ought’ implies ‘it is metaphysically possible that’. In this paper I argue against the poss-ability principle by introducing and developing a novel class of counterexamples. I claim that an agent might be able to do what it is metaphysically impossible for her to do. In fact, somewhat more surprisingly, I claim that an agent might be able to do what it is metaphysically impossible tout court to do.

中文翻译：

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能做不可能的事

可能性原则指出，代理人的每一项能力都必须通过其可能的锻炼来见证；即，如果 S 能够 φ，那么一定存在某个可能的世界，其中 S（行使她的能力和）φs。正如我们将看到的，很多事情都取决于可能性原则是否正确。可能能力原则是一些不相容论主要论点的前提，是对能力的主要分析的结果，并且通常是在后台工作的未说明但关键的假设。一个对象可见（或可知）的论点只有在某个可能世界中对象被看到（或已知）时，隐含地依赖于可能性原则，正如广泛持有的“应该”意味着“它”的论点一样。在形而上学上是可能的'。在本文中，我通过引入和开发一类新颖的反例来反对可能性原则。我声称代理人可能能够做她在形而上学上不可能做的事情。事实上，更令人惊讶的是，我声称代理人可能能够做在形而上学上不可能在法庭上做的事情。