Primary goods, capabilities,... or well-being?

Philosophical Review

Volumn 116, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 603-632

  Kaplow, Louis ^a  

^a NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH   (United States)

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EID: 35648972675     PISSN: 00318108     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00318108-2007-015     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. Discussions of Rawls's views herein are primarily based on A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971; rev. ed., 1999);
2. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001);
3. "Social Unity and Primary Goods," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 159-85;
4. and "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515-72.
5. For Dworkin, see "What Is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981): 283-345.
6. Discussions of Sen are drawn mainly from Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1985);
7. Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992);
8. On Economic Inequality, enlarged ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
9. and "Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984," Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985): 169-221. (Sen distinguishes capabilities and functionings; see, for example, Commodities and Capabilities, chaps. 2, 4; Inequality Reexamined: chap. 3, which difference is relevant more broadly to opportunity-based theories, discussed briefly at the conclusion of section 4.B. This difference, however, is immaterial for present purposes; all that matters is that neither concept is equivalent to well-being, as Sen's discussions emphasize. For further consideration, see notes 11 and 26.)
10. Much has been written on Rawls's, Dworkin's, and Sen's views, including Richard J. Arneson, "Primary Goods Reconsidered," Noûs 24 (1990): 429-54;
11. and G. A. Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," Ethics 99 (1989): 906-44.
12. This second requirement suggests that the present analysis may be largely inapplicable to a theory of equality of resources such as that proposed by Dworkin. However, the analysis would apply if the resources in question are of more than one type, as seems inevitable, and when there is no natural, neutral metric or index that can convert resources into a single dimension. As Gibbard argues in addressing Rawls's primary goods notion, such conversion is not really possible even if one focuses only on income (due to the price index problem when there are multiple goods that may be bought with income). Allan Gibbard, "Disparate Goods and Rawls' Difference Principle: A Social Choice Theoretic Treatment," Theory and Decision 11 (1979): 267-88.
13. Rawls considers political theory rather than moral theory and, in particular, often justifies his use of the primary goods notion on practical grounds. See, for example, Theory of Justice (1971), 95 (using such language as "most feasible," "objective measure," and "simplifying device");
14. Justice as Fairness, xviii (distinguishing "between the political conception and various comprehensive doctrines, religious, philosophical, and moral," and emphasizing that his approach is political);
15. ibid., 60 (refers to primary goods for "workable political principles");
16. "Primary Goods," 159 ("primary goods enable us to make interpersonal comparisons in the special but fundamental case of political and social justice");
17. ibid., 161 (emphasizing pragmatic concerns);
18. and "Kantian Constructivism," 536, 561, 570 (emphasizing practical and political functions).
19. See also "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical," Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): 223-51. Nevertheless, Rawls's primary goods notion is featured here because Theory of Justice, including the difference principle and its use of primary goods, is taken by many as an important ideal normative conception of distributive justice (indeed, this common interpretation is presumably what prompted Rawls's many subsequent clarifications). It follows, however, that the arguments advanced here are not necessarily criticisms of Rawls. (They might still be relevant to his work because Rawls's conception of the person, to which his notion of primary goods is related, has an important moral aspect. Furthermore, some of the arguments below bear on what rational parties might plausibly accept in Rawls's original position.)
20. Interestingly, Sen has criticized Rawls's notion of primary goods because of the difficulty of valuing what are in fact means independently of the ends they serve. See, for example, Inequality Reexamined, 80. He does not see this criticism as applicable to his own means-based approach, however, because he equates the capabilities he considers with that which is intrinsically good. For example, he states that the capability approach is distinctive "in making room for a variety of doings and beings as important in themselves (notjust because they may yield utility, notjust to the extent that they yield utility)." Ibid., 43. To some extent, however, the difference between how he views his approach and one based on utility or well-being may be attributable to his assumption that the latter concepts are narrower than some would suppose, for example, by excluding components that individuals themselves care about. (Sen does not precisely define what he means by well-being; he often insists that it refers to mental states, yet when he describes what is excluded from well-being, he refers to individuals' having other aims, motives, or desires, which seem impossible to have without there existing a corresponding mental state.) The notion of well-being employed here is not meant to be so restricted. In other respects, however, Sen's approach is harder to understand since some of his means (like the ability to move about) seem difficult to view as intrinsically valuable. In addition, Sen believes that his approach is superior to Rawls's because Rawls focuses on primary goods that may be differentially valuable to different individuals.
21. Ibid., 79-85. However, Sen's approach could lead to greater discrepancies than Rawls's. Suppose, for example, that the primary good in question is simply income, and equal amounts are equally useful to two individuals. There is available $100 for each individual. There are, however, two capabilities, and Sen's capabilities approach assigns $50 worth of resources per capita to each capability because the capabilities are deemed equally important. However, it may be that one of the individuals benefits little from the first capability and would have allocated his entire amount to the second. Thus, insisting on equalizing capabilities rather than primary goods (leaving individuals free to use the primary goods as they wish) can be the cause, not the cure, of differential outcomes.
22. For further discussion, see section 3.A. To elaborate on the qualification stated in the text, which should be understood to be implicit throughout this article, the notions of freedom, autonomy, or consent contemplated here are ones under which individuals' own assessments (assuming them to be informed and not subject to various infirmities such as lack of self-control) are taken to be central. Of course, each of these concepts is contested, and some versions differ sufficiently from the one employed herein to render the present claims moot from the perspective of such theories.
23. For example, in "Primary Goods," Rawls's most complete statement, he lists five categories of primary goods, each with the briefest of motivations, after which he states (166): "These observations must suffice here to show that the parties' reliance on primary goods is rational." Moreover, each of his categories of primary goods self-evidently advances well-being, and the intended contrast with well-being and the grounds for such departure are not expressly articulated even though Rawls claims to be endorsing an approach that is independent of well-being. With Sen, the situation is different because he embraces well-being as part of his moral ideal. See, for example, "Well-Being, Agency and Freedom," 185: "It would, of course, be altogether amazing if moral goodness had nothing to do with well-being. It is easy to argue that well-being is fundamentally important." Therefore, the issue is determining just how and why Sen would supplement or amend well-being, not why he rejects it in favor of something else.
24. Some who have considered Rawls's primary goods have suggested that there may not exist a plausible solution to the index problem. See, for example, Douglas H. Blair, "The Primary-Goods Indexation Problem in Rawls's Theory of Justice," Theory and Decision 24 (1988): 239-52;
25. Gibbard, "Disparate Goods and Rawls' Difference Principle";
26. Charles R. Plott, "Rawls's Theory of Justice: An Impossibility Result," in Decision Theory and Social Ethics: Issues in Social Choice, ed. Hans W. Gottinger and Werner Leinfellner (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1978), 201-14;
27. and John E. Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 165-72. Rawls recognizes the index problem but does not develop a response.
28. See, for example, A Theory of Justice (1971), 93. He does suggest that the problem may be less challenging than first appears because, in light of his difference principle, he needs only to solve it for the least advantaged group.
29. "We try to do this by taking up the standpoint of the representative individual from this group and asking which combination of primary social goods it would be rational for him to prefer." Ibid., 94. It is not clear, however, that the conceptual problem is any easier when applied to only one group. Moreover, his proposed simplification involves circularity because one must apply the primary goods index to all groups to determine which is the least advantaged group in the first place; indeed, this is one of the most important functions of the primary goods index in his overall theory.
30. One of Sen's most recent statements on the subject is as follows: "How are the weights to be selected? This is ajudgmental exercise, and it can be resolved only through reasoned evaluation.... [I]n arriving at an 'agreed' range for social evaluation.... there has to be some kind of reasoned 'consensus' on weights (even if it is of an informal kind)." On Economic Inequality, 205-6. How a society is supposed to reason to an appropriate consensus is not explored.
31. This formulation does not in principle require that each of the x's relate to well-being because it is possible for a function of a variable to be independent of a variable. (For example, f(z) = 5 [or 5 + 0z], a constant function, is independent of z.) It seems apparent, however, that most proposed components of primary goods or capabilities or other such lists do relate to well-being.
32. 2 ≤ R, but it will be presumed that, under any x-theory under consideration and under each individual's W function, more is better, so there would never be any reason not to use all available resources.
33. For nonegalitarian theories, the comparison is more complicated. For example, if one wanted to deem A to be twice as important as B, an x-theory might give A 2/3 of the total and B 1/3, but a w-theory might favor a different distribution (because the W function need not be linear in x). Nevertheless, the x-theory that weights A double would be equivalent to a w-theory that gave A a higher weight than B that wasjust sufficient to generate the same allocation. Furthermore, if one considered the case omitted here - one dimension, different well-being functions - the analysis would be similar to that with nonegalitarian theories; specifically, for a given x-theory, there would exist a w-theory that generated the same allocations for any level of resources.
34. 2 under a theory of capabilities and functionings.
35. 2.
36. β (a generalization of the example in note 12), and the possible values of α and β are each independently and uniformly distributed on the interval (0, 1). For any ratio (between 0 and 1) of the x's under the x-theory, say χ, the probability that the ratio under the w-theory is also χ is zero (put in mathematical terms, the subset of combinations of α and β that would yield any stipulated ratio χ is of measure zero).
37. 2 under the w-theory is determined by the ratio of the exponents in the well-being function W. Thus, if the allocation by coincidence were the same as under the x-theory, one could simply consider any W functions of the same form but with a different ratio of exponents.
38. 2. This uninteresting (and unlikely) possibility will be ignored in the remainder of the discussion (although it will be used in subsection E to eliminate the present consideration in order to focus on another factor).
39. Indeed, the present result would obtain even in a one-individual world and thus even when there was no problem of distributive justice.
40. Although the particular analysis is quite different, this point and others in this section instantiate the more general argument in Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell, Fairness versus Welfare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002),
41. and "Any Non-Welfarist Method of Policy Assessment Violates the Pareto Principle," Journal of Political Economy 109 (2001): 281-86.
42. It is, of course, possible that individuals will not choose to use the technology in this manner. Whether this is so depends both on the conception of well-being and on possible infirmities in individuals' decision making. As explored in sections 3.B and 4.A, respectively, it is appropriate for present purposes to consider cases in which these divergences do not arise.
43. 2 that which reflects what happens after conversion has been applied to the pure x-theory allocation - and banning the conversion technology. This would present a partial version of the next case considered in the text.)
44. 2. Using an x-theory to make the central allocation (in a world with no individual conversion technology) rather than using a w-theory is tantamount to ignoring such requests, requests that only affect a requesting individual's own situation.
45. .5. As stated in that note, the ratio of the x's that maximizes well-being will be the ratio of the exponents, which is 2:1 for A and 1:2 for B.
46. Relatedly, Gibbard shows that Rawls's primary goods approach is Pareto incompatible when individuals are heterogeneous, due to the price index problem even when the only primary good is income (because individuals may differentially value different underlying goods that may have different prices under different regimes, and the value to individuals of income is determined by the bundle of goods that individuals can purchase). In "Primary Goods," 163 n.4, Rawls states: "I do not believe that this is not i sic] a serious problem in view of the balance of reasons for using primary goods as the basis of interpersonal comparisons in questions ofjustice, and of the subordinate role of the Pareto principle injustice as fairness, particularly in its welfarist interpretation." Nevertheless, Rawls does claim that individuals in the original position would find it rational to insist upon primary goods. In light of the meaning that Rawls gives to "rational"-see, for example, "Kantian Constructivism," 521 (stating that his notion of "rationalautonomy [applied by individuals in the original position] ... roughly parallels ... the notion of rationality found in neo-classical economics") -it would not seem that such individuals would wish to make everyone (themselves) worse off. That is, if deviating from Rawls's primary goods approach in favor of well-being would, in fact, better allow everyone to advance their diverse ends, it is hard to understand how the irreducible diversity of ends would lead them to favor institutions that thwarted all of them. (The answer may lie in Rawls's conception of the person, under which the goals of individuals in the original position need not correspond to the actual ends of persons in the society to be governed by the chosen institutions. On the other hand, Rawls states: "In their deliberations [individuals in the original position] are not required to apply, or to be guided by, any principles of right andjustice, but are to decide as principles of rationality dictate." Ibid., 524.) Arneson is also skeptical that Rawls's Kantian conception of the person can justify using primary goods rather than welfare or opportunity for welfare as a basis for interpersonal comparisons. See "Primary Goods Reconsidered," 439-40.)
47. The x-theory could mimic one of the two allocations. Then, compared to the allocation under the w-theory, it would make one individual worse off and leave the other indifferent, which still seems problematic. Moreover, in such a case, there always exists another allocation that, relative to the x-theory allocation, makes everyone better off: First, move to the w-theory allocation, which helps one individual, say A, and does not affect the other. Second, take a small amount of resources from A - a small enough amount that he is still better off than under the x-theory allocation - and give it to B. Under this revised allocation, both individuals are better off than under the x-theory allocation.
48. 2-precisely the problem raised in subsection C (and which can be fully rectified by a conversion technology). Put another way, trade can eliminate the effects of an x-theory as regards heterogeneity of well-being functions but not the effects due to the difference between an x-theory and average well-being, which is captured by the case with identical W functions.
49. Compare Larry Alexander and Maimon Schwarzschild, "Liberalism, Neutrality, and Equality of Welfare vs. Equality of Resources," Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (1987): 85-110, at 93-95, who offer a related criticism of Dworkin's equal resources allocation scheme. Another interesting case is that in which an x-theory in principle requires trade to be prohibited but prohibition is infeasible. (For example, it maybe difficult to prevent barter and black markets.) Then, a central authority could predict that, starting with the ideal x-theory allocations, those individuals whose W functions most differed from the weightings of the x-theory would engage in the most trade and thus be "worst off" as measured by the x-theory. An egalitarian x-theory, therefore, would seem to favor allocating more initially to such individuals, so that, when the post-trade equilibrium is reached, they would be as well off as others according to the x-theory. (After all, the purpose of the x-theories considered here is the assessment of individuals' situations for the purpose of determining distributive shares.) That is, X-theories would seem to favor giving more x's to those who most disagree with the theory and the least to those most in agreement. Moreover, when equality is thus achieved in terms of the x-theory, in terms of well-being the best off will be those who most disagree with the X-theory and the least well off will be those who most agree.
50. A taxonomy might be helpful. There is a continuum from basic, raw materials (food, energy, clothing, other objects) to well-being. Some have suggested a sequential breakdown: basic resources, primary goods, capabilities, functionings, well-being. In this present article, well-being (w-theory) is taken to represent one end of the continuum and x-theories can occupy any intermediate point. For present purposes, all that matters is that there be some gap, requiring some transformation, between the x's of the x-theory and well-being. (That transformation is given by the W functions of individuals.) The present subsection considers that there may well be a gap between the location of x-theories and the end of the continuum opposite to well-being. This transformation is given importance by allowing the method of producing various of the x's by the central authority to involve different costs depending on which individuals will be allotted the x's.
51. 2, but a division (relative to that in the equal cost case) favoring whichever was less costly to produce.
52. Consider another example, involving Sen's capability of being able to appear in public without shame. Suppose that doing so is very expensive for one group in society yet the cost (degree of shame) is negligible. (Perhaps there is a group of rich but idiosyncratic individuals.) Sen's approach requires that they be equally able to appear in public without shame as others, thus requiring large expenditures to do so even though little is at stake. Ignoring both cost differences and differences in effects on well-being across different individuals obviously can result in an avoidable reduction in well-being.
53. Sen's view on disabilities is not atypical. Cohen suggests that "Egalitarians will be disposed to recommend that [a disabled person be given a wheelchair] before they have asked about the welfare level to which the man's paralysis reduces him," and indeed independent of whether the person in fact enjoys a high welfare level. "On the Currency of Egalitarian justice," 917-18. See also Ronald Dworkin, "What Is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981): 185-246, at 241, who states that the intuition "that those with handicaps should have extra resources [is not] limited to those among the handicapped who do in fact have less than average welfare on some conception."
54. There may exist external reasons for favoring given allocations. For example, enabling disabled individuals to move about might benefit others directly or might favorably affect others' outlooks toward the disabled over the long run. A full assessment of everyone's well-being would take such effects into account. The present question, however, is how one in principle should assess the situation of the given individual, implicitly holding such effects constant.
55. Given that proponents of x-theories seek to ignore real differences between individuals, it is revealing to consider how they address the case of differences that seem difficult to ignore, physical disabilities or other disparities in health. Rawls, in "Primary Goods," 168, concedes that "[i]t is best to make an initial concession in the case of special health and medical needs," but he chooses to "put this difficult problem aside in this paper," thus failing to indicate why he would in fact make a concession in this case and why, whatever the justification, it does not (one presumes) apply to many or any other differences between individuals (see ibid., 178 n.21, where he insists that the same function from the index of primary goods to the measure of an individual's situation "holds for all citizens and interpersonal comparisons are made accordingly"). Perhaps a greater concern is that Rawls sets aside the problem of people who are so disabled that they "can never be normal contributing members of social cooperation" (ibid., 170), for one might have thought that such individuals were good candidates for constituting the least-well-off group (particularly since he defines how "well off" individuals are in significant part by reference to their ability to exercise their capacities as citizens), and it is the least-well-off group that is the exclusive focus of concern under his difference principle.
56. Following the earlier analysis, one should further ask whether, under an x-theory that requires providing a special van or wheelchair, an individual receiving one should be permitted to sell it, which, in the stated scenario, it would be rational for him to do.
57. In fact, Sen gives such an example in one of his earliest presentations of his capability approach, "Equality of What?" in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 1, ed. Sterling M. McMurrin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980).
58. See also G. A. Cohen, "Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods, and Capabilities," in The Quality of Life, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 9-29. Sen suggests that the disabled person may have higher utility because of his disposition or because of religious views (on which see section 4.B), whereas the text offers other reasons.
59. Also related is his advancement of the difference principle, in particular, against more egalitarian theories that could countenance making everyone worse off, including the worst-off group. At many points, Rawls offers arguments that rest on benefiting the least-well-off group in society.
60. Restrictions on some activities, ranging from theft to bribery to buying or tampering with votes may be necessary because the moral force behind consent, autonomy, and freedom is not generally understood to legitimate aggression toward other individuals or subversion of government processes. These reservations, however, are typically inapplicable to the mere trade of ordinary goods. For further elaboration, see the final subsection of 4.A.
61. These arguments may be unimportant for those who endorse x-theories for reasons unrelated to freedom, consent, and autonomy (or who interpret such concepts differently) and for critics like Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia [NewYork: Basic Books, 1974]), who embrace notions like consent - perhaps ones similar to those invoked by some x-theorists - but who see these principles as undermining the normative case for the sorts of patterned distributive theories advanced by x-theorists. There is much controversy over the meaning and moral force behind consent and cognate concepts and about their implications for distributive justice. The present argument is limited to the point that, for those who embrace such principles and also endorse an x-theory, the demonstration that any x-theory can make everyone worse off and thus may be unanimously rejected rather than unanimously affirmed presents a prima facie basis for reexamination.
62. For a range of views on well-being, see RichardJ. Arneson, "Human Flourishing versus Desire Satisfaction," Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1999): 113-42;
63. James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986);
64. Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993);
65. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The Quality of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993);
66. Thomas M. Scanlon, "The Status of Well-Being," in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 19, ed. Grethe B. Peterson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998);
67. and L. W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). As many have noted, despite his claims to the contrary, some of Rawls's writing on primary goods, especially that indicating the role given to his Kantian conception of the person, seems to have a perfectionist flavor.
68. See, for example, "Kantian Constructivism," 527, 531, 534.
69. Some of Sen's writing is similar. See, for example, Inequality Reexamined, 56.
70. This latter point is made by Cohen in "Equality of What?" 12-13.
71. See, for example, Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
72. See, for example, Sharon Camp and J. Joseph Speidel, The International Human Suffering Index (Washington, DC: Population Crisis Committee, 1987), which presents an index that has ten measures of human welfare,
73. and United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2001: Mahing New Technologies Work for Human Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), which uses a Human Development Index that considers GDP per capita, literacy, and life expectancy.
74. Indeed, in his Commodities and Capabilities, the main body of which is devoted to elucidating his capabilities approach as a conceptual matter, he includes two substantial appendixes, one showing how international comparisons look very different when one uses a capabilities approach rather than one based on GNP per capita, and the other showing how differences in the treatment of men and women are obscured unless measurement is based on capabilities. See also Amartya Sen, The Standard of Living (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 34-35.
75. Rawls often makes explicit the point that the use of primary goods rather than well-being has such practical advantages. See, for example, "Kantian Constructivism," 563, where he states that making "interpersonal comparisons ... in terms of primary goods ... has the consequence that the comparison of citizens' shares in the benefits of social cooperation is greatly simplified and put on a footing less open to dispute." Nevertheless, in A Theory of Justice (1971), 91, he is explicit that the difficulty of interpersonal comparisons of well-being cannot itself justify use of an alternative metric. Sen argues that the problem with interpersonal comparisons is not that they cannot be made but rather that they "can give a very distorted picture of well-being" (Commodities and Capabilities, 52-53), which requires use of Sen's capabilities approach.
76. For example, as demonstrated above, the use of a measure like primary goods can in principle produce situations in which some or all individuals would wish to make trades. However, in "Primary Goods," 171 n.11, Rawls insists that at least some of his primary goods are "unalienable and therefore can neither be waived nor limited by any agreements made by citizens. [I]n justice as fairness any undertakings to waive or to infringe them are void ab initio; citizens' desires in this respect have no legal force...."
77. See also the discussion in note 30 regarding provisions for disabled individuals.
78. The discussion in the text illuminates part of the argument in Amartya Sen, "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Journal of Political Economy 78 (1970): 152-57. In response to critics who
79. See Amartya. Sen, "Minimal Liberty," Economica 59 (1992): 139-59, at 144-46. Such arguments, however, are entirely instrumental and hence fail to offer any justification for Sen's original stance that implicitly forbids alienability as a matter of first principle.
80. See, for example, Commodities and Capabilities, 21-22, 29-30, 53;
81. Inequality Reexamined, 6-7, 55, 149-50;
82. and "Well-Being, Agency and Freedom," 188-89, 190-91.
83. This argument is also advanced in Jon Elster's well-known essay, "Sour Grapes - Utilitarianism and the Genesis of Wants," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 219-38.
84. In one exposition, after stating that "[i]t is not at all obvious that [the deprived person who is happier] must be seen as having a higher level of well-being [than the nondeprived person who is less happy]" (Commodities and Capabilities, 22), he proceeds to pursue matters further, having purported to reject the approach, as though a proposition's being nonobvious implies that it is surely wrong. At another point, Sen states that failing to ignore such numbness "would be quite scandalous." "Well-Being, Agency and Freedom," 188. In this instance, he is referring in particular to the possibility that starving people might be "made happy through some mental conditioning (say, via the 'opium' of religion)." His explanation seems to be that there are valued mental states other than happiness, "such as stimulation, excitement, etc.," that are lacking in such a situation. Yet one would think that the notion of well-being would include such mental states as well. (In context, he only purports to be criticizing the "happiness" view of utility; nevertheless, this is essentially the same example he uses elsewhere as his only concrete illustration of the need to move to a more objective approach based on capabilities.) Furthermore, his precise example raises questions, for it implies that individuals who, for example, forsake material satisfaction to pursue religious callings and, moreover, who actually find fulfillment in doing so should be deemed to be faring badly. Likewise for Henry David Thoreau. The apparent policy implication is that expenditure on religion should presumptively be banned (or, more mildly, that individuals who voluntarily pursue such lives successfully should be given larger distributive shares to make up for their objective "deprivation"). In any event, it is hard to understand the normative basis for devaluing such nonmaterialistic visions of the good life, especially ones that are, by assumption, successful in raising human well-being. (Also, his use of the term "opium" is suggestive of the example to follow in the text in which his metaphor is pursued concretely.)
85. Some might object that this example differs from what Sen has in mind, namely, individuals' psychological dispositions rather than their actual feelings of physical pain. However, both are neurological phenomena. Moreover, Sen argues elsewhere that physical disabilities should be taken into account; similar logic would require taking into account mental disabilities, and to take the final step, if disabilities (whether physical or mental) are to be taken into account, logical consistency would seem to require that abilities (whether physical or mental) should be taken into account as well, rather than treated as if they did not exist.
86. For concreteness, consider a program that distributes somewhat less shabby clothing to the destitute but that, by its very existence, is a constant reminder of their poor situation, and assume that this has the effect of making them miserable.
87. Sen describes a survey conducted near Calcutta, India, in 1944, the year after a great famine, in which almost none of the widows surveyed gave responses indicating that they were in bad health (although nearly half of widowers so indicated). "Rights and Capabilities," in Amartya Sen, Resources, Values, and Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 307-24, at 309. Rather than assuming that the survey accurately shows that the widows were not badly off in terms of their actual well-being, despite tremendous objective deprivation, it seems more plausible to suppose that their answers reflect social conditioning. That is, it seems more likely that the widows' culture and circumstances were able to influence how they responded to a formal questionnaire than that the actual subjective experience of the widows was in fact positive or neutral.
88. See, for example, Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), 30-31. For further discussion of welfarism and objectionable preferences, see Kaplow and Shavell, Fairness versus Welfare, 418-31.
89. See, for example, Dworkin, "What Is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare," 228-40;
90. Rawls, "Primary Goods," 168-69;
91. and Sen, On Economic Inequality, 197-98.
92. For further examination, see Louis Kaplow, "Choosing Expensive Tastes," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (2006): 415-25.
93. If expensive tastes are not chosen, but rather are innate or are the product of early socialization over which an individual has little control, it is difficult to see why differences in needs due to expensive tastes should be ignored, especially when differences due to physical disabilities - which can be understood as a form of expensive tastes - should be taken into account.
94. See, for example, Sen's discussion of possibilities versus achievement in "Well-Being, Agency and Freedom."
95. An equal opportunity theory could, however, define equality only with regard to certain features.
96. Means-based theories would, to be sure, be more natural under a normative theory that focused on opportunity rather than attainment, but one would still need to address the question, opportunity for what. Furthermore, even if the opportunity itself is what is valued normatively, opportunity-based theories still have an instrumental aspect. For example, if one favors equal opportunity for welfare, and accordingly argues that a specific set of means should thus be made available to individuals, it is open for others to respond that some other set of means provides individuals with a better opportunity for attaining welfare.