Abstract
This paper addresses critical methodological issues raised by the reductionism-simplicity and scarce concern for fairness of orthodox value-free economics by focusing on Professor Amartya Sen’s ethical review of the foundations of welfare economics.
What is previously assumed is that scientific research or science-related policymaking in several research areas within economics, or in the social sciences more generally, ought to be considered as “activities oriented to ends” – thus, unavoidably dependent on value judgements and, explicitly, ethical judgements.
With the view of accomplishing the persistent demands of ethical and methodological pluralism, Sen’s “ethics and economics” paradigm, his human development model – the “capability approach” – and, especially, the adoption of the social choice theory as an overarching framework for social evaluation represent strong methodological challenges not only to standard utility-based economics, but also to mainstream liberal-egalitarian theories of justice. Indeed, Sen’s strategy of introducing ethical evaluation – thus, a concern for a plurality of objects of practical value and for multiple ends of action – substantially enriches conventional economic accounts and powerfully enhances fairness-equity.
The major insights of Sen’s “economic method”, entailing a strong ethical component, are expected in the applied research of areas where the shortcomings of reductionist-monist economics have been mostly detrimental, such as social evaluations of wellbeing or health and global justice.
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Notes
- 1.
A still influent view of objectivity in the social sciences is the one defended by Max Weber ([1904] 2007).
- 2.
For an overview of standard RCT, see (Reiss 2013, Ch. 3, 29–53).
- 3.
The terms orthodox economics and neoclassical economics can be used interchangeably since refer to the same approach to values and normative judgements in economics.
- 4.
An overview on how the reductionist economic approach (functionally based on the standard RCT) has been adopted in several disciplinary areas, see (Mari-Klose 2000).
- 5.
Scientific Pluralism is the philosophical view that aims to demonstrate the viability that some phenomena require multiple accounts. Pluralists observe that scientists present various, sometimes even incompatible, models of the world and argue that this is due to the complexity of the world and representational limitations that, in any case, need to be addressed and not circumvented by adopting scarcely empirically useful reductionist and highly simplified exploratory, explanatory, predictive models.
- 6.
For an overview of the on-going debate concerning values, science and democracy in the so-called Politics of Science see, (Machamer and Wolters 2004).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Welfarism is the view underlying orthodox economics. Here, wellbeing, health is usually measured by means of survey-based methods eliciting individuals’ preferences. Preferences are then, merely sum-aggregated at collective level (i.e., by applying sum-ranking).
- 10.
For an overview of the main methodological differences between welfarist and extra-welfarist accounts of wellbeing and health, see (Brower et al. 2008).
- 11.
This view is expressed by Aristotle mostly in the “Politics” and in the Nicomachean Ethics.
- 12.
Social choice theory (SCT) is a theoretical framework for analysis that combining individual opinions, preferences, interests, or welfares reaches collective decisions or social welfare evaluations (e.g., regarding wellbeing or justice). It has been criticised for using elements of formal logic (axiomatic method) and especially, for being methodologically individualistic
- 13.
This event is central to the development of Sen’s research program. Sen began his academic activity by attempting to solve Arrow’s paradox (with scarce success) by weakening the formal requirements of rational social choice with a special focus on transitivity (see Sen 1969).
- 14.
Arrow’s theorem shows the same formal result of the Condorcet’s “voting paradox” dated 1785. An overview of the general debate in Public Choice in (Mueller 2003).
- 15.
Arrow’s model is based on ordinal utility measurements those prevent to assess the magnitude-intensity of people’s levels of satisfaction, thus, formally established the impossibility of making interpersonal comparisons of people’s welfare formerly argued by Lionel Robbins.
- 16.
- 17.
This statement is consistent with several positions defended in social epistemology see Longino (2019).
- 18.
Proposals for increasing the realism of RCT’s assumptions entail either considering “real” rational agents’ cognitive limitations as in Simon’s Bounded Rationality or, the influence of the context of choice when taking rational decisions as in Kahneman’s and Tversky’s Prospect Theory. An overview of the overall debate in Sen (2009a, ch. 8).
- 19.
For examples of rational choices constrained by ethical and social norms see, (Sen 1993a).
- 20.
Sen considers that, differently from commitment, sympathy is in keeping with standard economics behavioral assumptions since consistent with the self-interested behavior. His interpretation comes from Adam Smith (Sen 1987, ch.1).
- 21.
For an overview of the on-going debate on individual preferences in economics, see Reiss 2013, Ch.12.
- 22.
Popular capability-based multidimensional measures are the inequality adjusted Human Development Index (HDI) and, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) both implemented by UNDP (United Nation Development Program).
- 23.
According to Sen (1980), a truly egalitarian society ought to provide “equality of capabilities” and not, for instance, equality of welfare or equality of resources.
- 24.
- 25.
For an opposite view of acontextual objectivity still based on abstraction from the peculiarities of subjects expressing value judgement and, suggest focusing on fact or evidence instead (e.g., Write 2018).
- 26.
For an analogous position see Putnam 2002, Part II.
- 27.
On the possibility of “contextual” values as elements informing “objective” knowledge production see, Cenci (2019).
- 28.
For a critical assessment of Sen’s deliberative method against Rawls’ RE, and how this is in keeping with Sen’s interpretation of a Goals-Rights System functionally based on both deontological and consequential evaluation and reasoning see Gotoh (2014).
- 29.
It implies the rejection of the formal condition of transitivity (if A is better than B, B is better than C, thus, A is better than C) that denies the possibility of preference changes over time, strategic behaviour or counter-preferential choice.
- 30.
Decision making procedures selecting principles of justice that relies on RE are still based on the standard rationality. That is, in the OP under a veil of ignorance, self-interested rational agents choose the principles of justice by following prudential rather than ethical motivations. Thus, the adoption of Rawls’ theory perpetuates most of the epistemic, methodological, normative problems described in this paper at Sects. 11.2 and 11.3.
- 31.
- 32.
For a formal argument and justification for maximal choices by adopting the set theory see, (Sen 1997).
- 33.
- 34.
For an assessment of Sen’s critique of Rawls’ Transcendental Institutionalism as based on a redundancy and an unfeasibility argument, see Osmani (2010).
- 35.
As widely acknowledged, the design of perfectly just institutions in a well-ordered society” is Rawls’ main regulative ideal (a deontological “optimum”) and the basis of his procedural justice approach.
- 36.
On the contribution of Sen’s approach to human rights research, see Vizard (2005).
- 37.
For examples, see Sen (1985).
- 38.
- 39.
By focusing on meta-ethical foundations, I have argued elsewhere against the suitability of leading approaches in ethical theory (and in favor of Sen’s deliberative approach) to substitute standard economics utility-based theories and measures for public policy (see Cenci 2011, 2015). In particular, both Rawls’ and Nussbaum’s’ account accept the ethical-political view called Political Liberalism (Rawls 1993) that apply reflective equilibrium as decision method when selecting the valuable objects of the list or the principles of justice in a “well-ordered” liberal society.
- 40.
For example, experts’s advisory boards but especially, scientific communication become fundamental to take rational decisions on complex topics of general interest at societal level.
- 41.
A popular methodology to handle (i.e., to aggregate and compare) multidimensional measures is the so-called weighting schemes approach which is also common in popular Capability-based metrics (Alkire and Foster 2011). By still supposing the total commensurability, analysists assign a numerical value to qualitatively different dimensions in order to obtain a single, manageable measurement of wellbeing, health, poverty etc. for a given population and thus, build the rankings accordingly.
- 42.
On the contribution of “contextual values” to objective knowledge production, see Cenci A. (March 2019).
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Cenci, A. (2020). The “Economic Method” and Its Ethical Component: Pluralism, Objectivity and Values in Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach. In: Gonzalez, W.J. (eds) Methodological Prospects for Scientific Research. Synthese Library, vol 430. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52500-2_11
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