Beyond ‘having reason to value’: why we should adopt a procedure-independent and value-neutral definition of capabilities

Morten Fibieger Byskov

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2020, vol. 27, issue 1, 18-35

Abstract: Sen has famously defined the notion of capabilities as the doings and beings that we ‘have reason to value,’ which is still widely regarded within the capability literature as the correct or only definition of the concept of capabilities. In this paper, I argue that capability theorists should abandon Sen’s definition because it suffers from two issues - namely, procedure-dependence and value-ladeness - that make it unsuitable to encompass the many different applications of the capability approach and the capability terminology. In contrast, I argue that the concept of capabilities should be defined minimally as ‘the real freedom to achieve certain doings and beings’. This definition avoids the two issues identified with Sen’s definition: first, the procedure by which we select relevant capabilities can be tailored relative to the particular application and, second, can thus accommodate applications of the capability approach which also focus on non-valuable capabilities.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2019.1608584

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