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Inverse View
It is not the case that The decomposability of inequality indices and separability of social welfare functions carry significant ethical weight, not merely technical convenience.
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Reasons For
2 perspectives
Reason for 1 of 2
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1.
Separability conditions are mathematically necessary for tractable aggregation across large populations, not expressions of ethical commitments about independence.
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2.
A technical constraint that enables measurement does not thereby encode the normative assumptions that would follow if the constraint were chosen on ethical grounds.
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3.
Harsanyi's aggregation theorem shows separability can be derived from expected utility axioms without presupposing any stance in the egalitarianism-prioritarianism debate.
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Reason for 2 of 2
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1.
Sen's capability approach and Rawlsian contractualism both generate inequality assessments that are decomposable yet explicitly reject the individualist independence assumptions Argument 1 attributes to separability.
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2.
The same formal structure of decomposability is logically compatible with relational and communitarian ethical frameworks, refuting the claim that it carries distinctively individualist ethical weight.
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Reasons Against
1 perspective
Reason against
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1.
Separability conditions presuppose that individuals' well-beings can be evaluated independently of one another.
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2.
Whether egalitarianism or prioritarianism is correct determines whether such independence assumptions are ethically acceptable.
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3.
Adopting separability implicitly takes a side in the egalitarianism-versus-prioritarianism debate.
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