This chapter shows why defining “fake news” is worthwhile and what a suitable definition of “fake news” might look like. It begins by introducing the authors’ definition of “fake news” (§2) and employs it to set fake news apart from related phenomena that are often conflated with it (§3). It then extracts seven potential dimensions of the concept of fake news from the literature (§4) and compares the most representative definitions that have been proposed so far along those dimensions (§5). The chapter’s primary aims are (i) to enable a systematic evaluation of prevalent definitions with respect to their extensional scope, practical utility, and conceptual transparency, (ii) to demonstrate that there is more widespread agreement than one would think at the outset, and (iii) to show (in §6) that defining “fake news” is not only far from futile, but of vital importance to confront the epistemic threats posed by fake news.

for this book was finished along time before the book eventually came out.F or carrying me through the dark passageinbetween Iwant to thank the Gorgonzola Club;m yd earest friends Sanja Dembić,P hilip Faigle, Simon Gaus, Kathrin Hasenburger, JanH empelmann, and Christian Kobsda.Y ou were an army. Ialso want to thank Simon Gaus and Max Seeger for tirelesslydiscussingthe arguments in this book with me and for joining me in thinkingmore about abilities than anys ane person should. Thanks to BarbaraV etter,whose brain Iwould sometimes like to borrow;to Christian Nimtz, who is thankfullyn ever content before thingsa re exactly right; to Geert Keil, who has been an extraordinarilybenevolent and thorough critic of the success view;a nd to everyone who has givenm ea ny kind of feedback throughout the last few years. This book is for my moma nd for the djuns. Contents Introduction 1  Methodology 16 . Adequacy condition1 :E xtensional adequacy 17 . Adequacy condition2 :G eneral and specific abilities 19 . Adequacy condition3 :D egrees andc ontext sensitivity 23 . Adequacy condition4 :A gentive vs.n on-agentivea bilities 28 . Explanatoryc hallenge 1: Abilities and counterfactuals 30 . Explanatoryc hallenge 2: Abilities and dispositions 32 . Explanatoryc hallenge 3: Abilities and "can" statements 34 . Upshot 36  The simple conditional analysis 38 . Modal semantics: Counterfactuals 40 . Extensional inadequacy I: Masks 44 . Extensional inadequacy II: Impeded intentions 49 . The problemw ith general and specific abilities 52 . The problemw ith degrees and context sensitivity 55 . The problemw ith non-agentivea bilities 58 . Upshot 60  Possibilism 63 . Modal semantics: Restricted possibility 64 . Possibilism: The details 68 . Upsides &d ownsides I-General vs.s pecific abilities & masks 72 . Upsides and downsides II-Impeded intentions, agentive vs. nonagentive abilities, and other possibilities 77 . The problemw ith degrees and context sensitivity 81 . Af ormal problem 84 . Upshot 88  The success view I-Agentive abilities 92 . The general framework 94 . The proper motivational state 100 . An account of degrees and context sensitivity 103 . Impeded intentionsa nd the existential requirement 108 . An account of general and specific abilities 112 .. General abilities 115 Resumé and an open question 225 References 229 Index of Names 234 Index of subjects 236 X Contents OpenAccess. ©2 020J aster,p ublished by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsA ttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

This paper explores the prospects for dispositional accounts of abilities. According to so‐called new dispositionalists, an agent has the ability to Φ iff they have a disposition to Φ when trying (or being otherwise properly motivated) to Φ. We show that the new dispositionalism is beset by some problems that also beset its predecessor, the conditional analysis of abilities, and bring up some further problems. We then turn to a different approach, which links abilities not to motivational states but to the notion of success, and consider ways of implementing that approach. Our results suggest that there are principled disanalogies between abilities and disposition which prevent any dispositional account of abilities from succeeding.

Das Funktionieren moderner Demokratien hängt von der Informiertheit der Öffentlichkeit ab. Durch den Erfolg von »Fake News« und postfaktischer Politik ist diese jedoch in Gefahr, zumal parallele Öffentlichkeiten zunehmend sogenannte alternative analoge und digitale Medienangebote nutzen. In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir, wie sich »Fake News« verbreiten und Einfluss auf Öffentlichkeit und Politik gewinnen. Dazu analysieren wir das Zusammenspiel einer Reihe kognitiver Verzerrungen mit der Funktionsweise sozialer Medien sowie die strukturellen Anreize, die der digitalisierte Medienkapitalismus setzt. Beides spielt der Verbreitung von »Fake News« in die Hände, was einige politische Akteure auszunutzen wissen. »Fake News« werden in diesem Fall als Propaganda eingesetzt. Wir unterscheiden vier Funktionen von »Fake News«-Propaganda: (1) die Täuschung der Öffentlichkeit, (2) die Stärkung von Gruppenidentitäten, (3) die Demonstration von Macht und (4) die Destabilisierung der politischen oder öffentlichen Ordnung. Einleitung Das Funktionieren moderner Demokratien hängt von der Informiertheit der Öffentlichkeit ab (Lippmann, 1922; Sproule, 2005). Durch den Erfolg von »Fake News« und postfaktischer Politik ist diese jedoch in Gefahr, zumal parallele Öffentlichkeiten zunehmend sogenannte alternative analoge und digitale Medienangebote nutzen (Benkler, Faris & Roberts, 2018). Mit dem Brexit und der Präsidentschaft Donald Trumps als politische Konstanten der letzten zwei Jahre sowie dem zunehmenden Einfluss rechtspopulistischer Parteien und russischer Staatsmedien in immer mehr Ländern der Welt 1 Der Beitrag stammt in gleichen Teilen von beiden Autoren.

Hawthorne (2001) toys with the view that ascriptions of free will are context-sensitive. But the way he formulates the view makes freedom contextualism look like a non-starter. I step into the breach for freedom contextualism. My aim is twofold. On the one hand, I argue that freedom contextualism can be motivated on the basis of our ordinary practice of freedom attribution is not ad hoc. The view explains data which cannot be accounted for by an ambiguity hypothesis. On the other hand, I suggest a more plausible freedom contextualist analysis, which emerges naturally once we pair the assumption that freedom requires that the agent could have acted otherwise with a plausible semantics of "can" statements. I'll dub the resulting view Alternate Possibilities Contextualism, or APC, for short. In contrast to Hawthorne's view, APC is well-motivated in its own right, does not beg the question against the incompatibilist and delivers a context parameter which allows for a wide range of context shifts. I conclude that, far from being a non-starter, freedom contextualism sets an agenda worth pursuing.