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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The same utility formalism can be used to discuss interpersonal comparisons of resources, opportunities, and capabilities

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 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 for 2 of 2
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    • 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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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 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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