Capabilities and Human Dilemmas: How to Cope with Incompleteness

Mario Biggeri and Nicolò Bellanca ()

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to discuss the role of evaluative incompleteness in the work of Amartya Sen. In section 2, we consider Sen’s distinction between optimising or perfect choices and maximising or acceptable choices, showing it is based on a restrictive interpretation of incompleteness. In section 3, we argue that this distinction does not take into account a third crucial category of human choices, the dilemmas, and we show they are based on the concept of incompleteness in a strict sense. Section 4 discusses the reason why in Sen’s theoretical approach dilemmas and incompleteness appear to be somehow neglected. Then, in section 5 we advance an attempt to analyse human choices – both in the form of dilemmas or not – in conditions of incompleteness, while in section 6 we suggest a definition of freedom able to embrace also these dilemmatic choices. Finally, section 7 concludes.

Keywords: evaluative incompleteness; Amartya K. Sen; dilemmas; freedom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 B59 D01 D63 I30 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-hpe
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