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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    The same utility formalism can be used to discuss interpe... — Carmelics
    Home/Justice & Punishment
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The same utility formalism can be used to discuss interpersonal comparisons of resources, opportunities, and capabilities

    ConsequentialismJustice & Punishment
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Utility functions may be given a variety of substantial interpretations
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    • 2.The formalism does not fix what kind of information is ethically relevant
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Rawls's 'separateness of persons' objection establishes that aggregative utility formalisms obscure distributive structure by collapsing distinct individuals into a single welfare sum.
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    • 2.Interpersonal comparison of resources and capabilities requires attention to relational and positional facts that a utility function, by design, encodes only through individual preference satisfaction.
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    • 3.A formalism that misrepresents the structure of the problem it models cannot serve as a neutral common currency for comparing heterogeneous goods across persons.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sen's capability approach demonstrates that utility metrics systematically fail to capture functionings that resist cardinal measurement, such as dignity and political participation.
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    • 2.When a formalism cannot represent the morally relevant differences between distinct goods, applying it across those goods produces distorted rather than neutral comparisons.
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    Topics

    Justice & PunishmentConsequentialism

    Connections

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    Truth & Knowledge2 linked

    Related

    A formalism that misrepresents the structure of the problem it models cannot ser...Interpersonal comparison of resources and capabilities requires attention to rel...Rawls's 'separateness of persons' objection establishes that aggregative utility...Sen's capability approach demonstrates that utility metrics systematically fail ...
    +3 moreShow less
    The formalism does not fix what kind of information is ethically relevantUtility functions may be given a variety of substantial interpretationsWhen a formalism cannot represent the morally relevant differences between disti...

    Similar

    Broadening interpersonal comparisons to cover all kinds of comparisons...84%Interpersonal comparisons can be made on the sole basis of ordinal non...81%Distributional issues such as egalitarian evaluation require interpers...80%In the absence of interpersonal utility comparisons, the Pareto princi...75%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: economic-justice
    View source passageHide passage
    A related issue is how the evaluation of individual well-being must be made, or, equivalently, how interpersonal comparisons must be performed. There is now a growing interest in exploring concrete ways of measuring individual well-being, as illustrated by happiness studies (section 7.5 below) and the handbook published by Adler and Fleurbaey (2016). Welfare economics traditionally relied on “utility”, and the extended informational basis of social choice is mostly formulated with utilities (alt
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit