3 Comments

I'm not sure what advantages capabilitarianism confers over preference utilitarianism + revealed preferences? According to the latter, you can tell that owning a yacht is less important than having food, since given a choice between having a yacht and starving versus having no yacht and not starving, most people would choose the latter.

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One way to think about capabilitarianism (or so I think) is 'hard-coding' some amount of "preference utilitarianism + revealed preferences" as something like 'deontology'.

And I find that's a good way to think of some kind of compatibility between utilitarianism and deontology (and virtue ethics) too – as something like a (far more practical) approximation or 'hard-coded' set of (nearly) universal preferences, or capabilities.

It doesn't seem (obviously) terrible to create and maintain a (small) set of 'universal preferences and capabilities, at least practically. Preferring NOT to be murdered is one great candidate. Having access to at least a basic education is a good candidate capability. Prohibiting slavery seems very similar, even if, in some cases, some people still might reasonably choose slavery over some other (extremely terrible) possible outcomes.

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Ah, I have missed the Ozy book reviews. My poor wallet though, as I buy them all...

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