Thanks so much for this interesting post—this framing of wellbeing had never occurred to me before. On the first example you use to explain why you find the capabilities framing to be more intuitive than a preference framing: can’t we square your intuition that the second child’s wellbeing is better with preference satisfaction by noting that people often have a preference to have the option to do things they don’t currently prefer? I think this preference comes from (a) the fact that preferences can change, so the option value is instrumentally useful, and (b) it feels better to do what you’d prefer freely than to do so with no other option. You can account for the second example the same way.
The example of women reporting to be happier in the 70s (which lets take to be true for the sake of argument) is interesting, but for me that’s a point against hedonic accounts of wellbeing, not preference accounts of wellbeing: our happiness is just one (albeit very very important!) thing we care about. So whilst women might have been happier in the US in the 70s, they may well have had preferences thwarted by discrimination… and even if their preferences were satisfied as in your first two examples (e.g. suppose they preferred playing the economic role they were forced by discrimination to play) they presumably would have preferred to have more options, and to choose freely.
I don’t purport to have shown why the capabilities account of wellbeing is wrong, but rather to show why I’m not convinced that the holes (in the preference account of wellbeing) it’s supposed to fill, exist in the first place.
[Sorry for the scrappy writing—written on my phone whilst walking]
Glad you found this interesting, and you have my sympathies as another walking phone writer.
can’t we square your intuition that the second child’s wellbeing is better with preference satisfaction by noting that people often have a preference to have the option to do things they don’t currently prefer
A few people have asked similar comments about preference structures. I can give perhaps a sharper example that addresses this specific point. I left a lot out of my original post in the interest of brevity, so I’m happy to expand more in the comments.
Probably the sharpest example I can give of a place where a capability approach separates from preference satisfaction is over the issue of adaptive preferences. This is an extended discussion, but the gist of it is that it seems not so hard to come up with situations where the people in a given situation do not seem upset by some x even though upon reflection (or with full/better information), they might well be upset. There is ample space for this in the capability approach, but there is not in subjective preference satisfaction. This point is similar in spirit to my women in the 1970s example, and similar to where I noted in the text that “Using subjective measures to allocate aid means that targeting will depend in part on people’s ability to imagine a better future (and thus feel dissatisfaction with the present).” The chapter linked above gives lots of nice examples and has good discussion.
If you want a quick example: consider a case where women are unhappy because they lack the right to vote. In the capability approach, this can only be addressed in one way, which is to expand their capability to vote. In preference satisfaction or happiness approaches, one could also do that, or one could shape the information environment so that women no longer care about this and this would fix the problem of “I have an unmet preference to vote” and “I’m unhappy because I can’t vote.” I prefer how the capability approach handles this. The downside to the way the capability approach handles this is that even if the women were happy about not voting the capability approach would still say “they lack the capability to vote” and would suggest extending it (though of course the women could still personally not exercise that option, and so not do the functioning vote).
Hope that helps to make some of these distinctions sharper. Cheers.
Thanks so much for this interesting post—this framing of wellbeing had never occurred to me before. On the first example you use to explain why you find the capabilities framing to be more intuitive than a preference framing: can’t we square your intuition that the second child’s wellbeing is better with preference satisfaction by noting that people often have a preference to have the option to do things they don’t currently prefer? I think this preference comes from (a) the fact that preferences can change, so the option value is instrumentally useful, and (b) it feels better to do what you’d prefer freely than to do so with no other option. You can account for the second example the same way.
The example of women reporting to be happier in the 70s (which lets take to be true for the sake of argument) is interesting, but for me that’s a point against hedonic accounts of wellbeing, not preference accounts of wellbeing: our happiness is just one (albeit very very important!) thing we care about. So whilst women might have been happier in the US in the 70s, they may well have had preferences thwarted by discrimination… and even if their preferences were satisfied as in your first two examples (e.g. suppose they preferred playing the economic role they were forced by discrimination to play) they presumably would have preferred to have more options, and to choose freely.
I don’t purport to have shown why the capabilities account of wellbeing is wrong, but rather to show why I’m not convinced that the holes (in the preference account of wellbeing) it’s supposed to fill, exist in the first place.
[Sorry for the scrappy writing—written on my phone whilst walking]
Glad you found this interesting, and you have my sympathies as another walking phone writer.
A few people have asked similar comments about preference structures. I can give perhaps a sharper example that addresses this specific point. I left a lot out of my original post in the interest of brevity, so I’m happy to expand more in the comments.
Probably the sharpest example I can give of a place where a capability approach separates from preference satisfaction is over the issue of adaptive preferences. This is an extended discussion, but the gist of it is that it seems not so hard to come up with situations where the people in a given situation do not seem upset by some x even though upon reflection (or with full/better information), they might well be upset. There is ample space for this in the capability approach, but there is not in subjective preference satisfaction. This point is similar in spirit to my women in the 1970s example, and similar to where I noted in the text that “Using subjective measures to allocate aid means that targeting will depend in part on people’s ability to imagine a better future (and thus feel dissatisfaction with the present).” The chapter linked above gives lots of nice examples and has good discussion.
If you want a quick example: consider a case where women are unhappy because they lack the right to vote. In the capability approach, this can only be addressed in one way, which is to expand their capability to vote. In preference satisfaction or happiness approaches, one could also do that, or one could shape the information environment so that women no longer care about this and this would fix the problem of “I have an unmet preference to vote” and “I’m unhappy because I can’t vote.” I prefer how the capability approach handles this. The downside to the way the capability approach handles this is that even if the women were happy about not voting the capability approach would still say “they lack the capability to vote” and would suggest extending it (though of course the women could still personally not exercise that option, and so not do the functioning vote).
Hope that helps to make some of these distinctions sharper. Cheers.