IPP 503: Environmental Ethics

AWAYMAVE - The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Week 2: Utilitarianism and well-being

I. Introduction

In the last section we noted that the utilitarian tradition approaches the issue of apparent conflicts between different values and interests by attempting to find some measure through which different ends can be traded off with each other so as to maximise the total good. A loss in one area can then be traded against a gain elsewhere.

Classical Utilitarianism: The right action is that which has the consequences which maximises the well-being or happiness of affected agents i.e. the best action is that which produces the greatest improvement in well-being.

The theory makes three distinct claims that need to be distinguished:

1. It is welfarist: The only thing that is good in itself and not just a means to another good is the happiness or well-being of individuals.
2. It is consequentialist: whether an action is right or wrong is determined solely by its consequences.
3. It is an aggregative maximising approach: we choose the action that produces the greatest total amount of well-being.

Each of these assumptions raises distinct lines of questions and possible lines of criticism

1. Welfarism:

• What is well-being or happiness?
  
• Is the well-being of individuals the only thing that is good in itself?
  
• Should only the good of individuals count?
  
• How do you measure well being or happiness?

2. Consequentialism:

• Are there actions that are wrong whatever the consequences?
  
• Could it ever be right, for example, to torture an innocent child or to punish an innocent woman for the sake of improving the general welfare?
  
• What role, if any, does the theory have for obligations that appear to arise form past actions, such as promises?

3. Maximisation:

• Who counts in arriving at the sum of well-being?
  
• How do you compare one individual's welfare with another's in summing arriving at a sum of well-being for each option?
  
• Should just the total amount of welfare count?
  
• What implications would this have for the distribution of welfare and considerations of fairness and justice?

Exercise: Make some initial notes as to how you think those questions should be answered.

The following section will deal with the question of well-being. What is it for an individual’s life to go well?

II. Welfare: Hedonism, Preferences and Objective Lists

A. The Hedonistic account of well-being:

1. Bentham and the felicific calculus

Jeremy Bentham who is generally recognised as the chief founding author of classical utilitarianism. The account of the principle of utility is found in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).

Link to full text: Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

In this work Bentham defends the following claims:

• Welfare or happiness consists in pleasure and the absence of pain (hedonism).
• The value of pleasure and the disvalue of pain are to be measured by its intensity, duration, certainty and propinquity (or ‘nearness’).
• Units of pleasure accounted for across these dimensions can enter into a calculus of happiness – the felicific calculus.
• The best action will be that which tends to produce the greatest sum of pleasure over pain for those affected.

Consider the following passage from the work:

To a person considered by himself, the value of a pleasure or pain considered by itself, will be greater or less, according to the four following circumstances
1. Its intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
These are the circumstances which are to be considered in estimating a pleasure or a pain considered each of them by itself....

To take an exact account then of the general tendency of any act, by which the interests of a community are affected, proceed as follows. Begin with any one person of those whose interests seem most immediately to be affected by it…. Sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side, and those of all the pains on the other. The balance, if it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that individual person; if on the side of pain, the bad tendency of it upon the whole.

Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to be concerned; and repeat the above process with respect to each. Sum up the numbers expressive of the degrees of good tendency, which the act has, with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is good upon the whole: do this again with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is bad upon the whole. Take the balance which if on the side of pleasure, will give the general good tendency of the act, with respect to the total number or community of individuals concerned; if on the side of pain, the general evil tendency, with respect to the same community. (Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch.4)

Here is another famous and much quoted passage from Bentham The Rationale of Reward:

The utility of all these arts and sciences,—I speak both of those of amusement and curiosity,—the value which they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield. Every other species of preeminence which may be attempted to be established among them is altogether fanciful. Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either.

Exercise:

On reading these passages consider the following questions:

• Are the circumstances listed - intensity, duration, etc. - The only ones that need to be considered in estimating a pleasure or pain of an individual?
• Do they provide a method for measuring different pleasures for the purposes of arriving at a sum?
• Is it possible to put different kinds of pleasure and pain on a single felicific scale?
• How would the pleasures of appreciating unspoilt nature fare within Bentham’s account?

2. John Stuart Mill

Mill was introduced to Bentham and indoctrinated in his ideas by his father James Mill. At first an ardent disciple, J.S. Mill came to believe that Bentham's conception of human nature and human happiness was much too narrow. But he believed that the modifications that needed to be made were quite consistent with the central idea of utilitarianism. His principal work on this topic, Utilitarianism (1861).

Link to full text: Utilitarianism

Mill endorses the basic utilitarian standpoint:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure… (Mill, 1861, p.257)

However, he rejects Bentham's conception of human happiness by distinguishing between different qualities of pleasure, not just different quantities in the following influential passage:

It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others…If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs... A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable: we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides....From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. (Mill, 1861, pp.258-260)

Pushpin and poetry
Mill's claim that pleasures differ in quality and not only in quantity is a criticism of Bentham: if he is right there can be no calculus of pleasures of the kind that Bentham assumes. But he suggests an alternative method by which pleasures can be compared: pleasant experiences are desired, and some are desired more than others. Two pleasures as disparate as poetry and pushpin may still be compared, and one rated more valuable than the other: the criterion being whether it is preferred or desired more by those who have knowledge of both.

Exercise:

Does Mill’s appeal to the preferences of the informed to show the greater quality of the higher pleasures rely only on comparisons of the quality of pleasure, or does his test introduce another criterion of goodness?

Problems with Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures:

If the argument is to work, the preferences of an informed person who favours the dissatisfied life of Socrates over the satisfied life of ignorance must rely only on comparisons of the quality of pleasure. But if those preferences are held it can be for reasons other than the quality of pleasures. There are a variety of other considerations for choosing one life over another besides the pleasures they might bring – some of which Mill mentions in the passage in which he introduces the preference-test: pride, the love of liberty and independence, a sense of personal dignity. There are no reasons to assume that these are just a matter of pleasure. A person might prefer to maintain a sense of dignity even where this leads to a loss of overall pleasure, be it a loss in quantity or quality. Mill’s test illicitly introduces criteria of goodness other than pleasure, such as personal dignity.

Mill and the appreciation of nature:

Mill's position opens up utilitarianism for some forms of the appreciation of nature in ways which Bentham's narrow conceptions of pleasure and pain might seem to rule out. Classical Utilitarianism should not be confused with 'utilitarian' in a narrow economic sense: the pleasures of living in an unspoilt natural environment can all count.Consider the following excerpt from Mill's Principles of Political Economy which makes apparent the degree to which the utilitarian position is open to an enlarged reading of pleasure and pain which includes environmental concerns:

It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it. (J.S. Mill 1848 book IV, ch.6 section 2)

Exercise:

On what grounds does Mill think that the preservation of wild nature is a good? For whom is it a good?

3. Recent developments in hedonistic theories of the good.

Hedonistic accounts of well-being have remained central to debates in public policy. A recent influential discussion is that of Richard Layard who has called for a return to Bentham’s hedonism, here are some links to his lectures on this subject:

Happiness: has social science a clue?

Income and happiness: rethinking economic policy

What would make a happier society?

Toward a happier society

In these recent developments, the measure of well-being is often taken to be a person’s subjective estimation of her life satisfaction. A person is asked questions of the form “On the whole are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the life you lead?” or “Taken all together, how happy would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, not at all happy?”. The answer is taken to indicate a person’s mental states – of how good they feel. You will find a survey of the literature used for government policy in the UK in Life Satisfaction: the state of knowledge and implications for government

One result of the literature on the determinants of subjective well-being that has been important in the literature on environmental policy has been the finding that while there is a correlation between income and life-satisfaction reports, there is very little correlation between the growth in GDP and life satisfaction. This result has been used by some environmentalists to argue that it shows that improving well being is not best pursued by a constant economic growth and increasing consumption. The Sustainable Development Commission can be found defending this claim in their document Redefining propserity

There are however questions that might be raised about these claims however. Some of these are empirical. For example, while a growth in GDP might not improve subjective life satisfaction, it does not follow that an absence economic growth would maintain life satisfaction. However there are also normative issues. One is whether life-satisfaction is the best measure of well-being. Consider again Mill’s claim that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. However, there is a more basic problem here as to whether feeling good is all that matters in considering well-being. Is well-being just a matter of having the right mental states?

4. Problems with Hedonism

Mill’s position shares with Bentham the claim that well-being is just a matter of having the right mental states of pleasure and the absence of pain. Happiness is taken to mean pleasure and the absence of pain, which are states of consciousness. So on this view the only things that are good in themselves are states of consciousness. Is this satisfactory?

Consider the following passage from Robert Nozick:

Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super neurophysiologists could stimulate your brains so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life's experiences?...Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside? Nor should you refrain because of the few moments of distress between the moment you've decided and the moment you're plugged. What's a few moments of distress compared to a lifetime of bliss (if that's what you choose), and why feel any distress at all if your decision is the best one? What does matter to us in addition to our experiences? (Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, pp.42-3)

We can imagine a similar experience machine having a fine environmental component that gives us all the experiences of living in some beautiful and biologically rich environment but without the existence of that physical environment itself.

Exercises:

Is the experience of nature what the environmentalist aims to defend?

Is the experience of nature as such what most of us want?

Nozick’s point: What matters is having friends, realising certain achievements etc, not just the experience of having friends, realising certain achievements etc. Likewise in our environmental case, we want to actually live in an unspoiled natural environment not just have the experience of doing so. Given the choice, most of us would desire to live in a natural world not to live in a simulation of it, even if the experiences were identical.

How is utilitarianism to be modified to accommodate these facts? One response begins with the observation that in these cases we fail to really get what we want. Our desires remain unfulfilled. We prefer a state of affairs in which our desires are really satisfied to one in which they are not. So maybe we should redefine welfare not in terms of the subjective states we experience, but directly in terms of the satisfaction of our preferences. We can further say that the stronger the preference, the greater the welfare improvement given its satisfaction. So we can restate the Principle of Utility to say that we should maximise the satisfaction of preferences. This is Preference Utilitarianism, the version of utilitarianism nowadays most generally adopted.

B. Desire-fulfilment or preference satisfaction theory of well-being:

1. The preference satisfaction account of well-being:

Well-being consists in the satisfaction of preferences, the stronger the preferences the greater the increase in well-being.

Preference utilitarianism: The best policy will be that which maximises the satisfaction of preferences over their dissatisfaction.

Preference utilitarianism has been particularly influential in welfare economics since it is taken to open up the possibility of monetary measures of well-being. The claim is made that the strength of a person’s preference for a good can be captured by how much they are willing to pay for its satisfaction. For a discussion of this see the module on environmental decision making.

2. An objection:

In its crude form the preference satisfaction theory doesn’t appear to allow for mistakes about what is of value. In its crude form whatever persons believe is good for them is good for them. This is clearly false.

• Ignorance: e.g. I have a preference for some food which unbeknownst to me is carcinogenic.
  
• Incompetence: e.g. a person in an illness refuses water when they need it.

It looks implausible to say that if you satisfy whatever preferences people happen to have then you will make them better off.

The theory also fails to capture the importance of what are often called adaptive preferences, that is preferences that have been changed to fit circumstances. The point is of particular importance in considering the effects of deprivation on well-being. One response to deprivation is cut one’s aspirations accordingly, to stop wanting what you can’t have:

‘A thoroughly deprived person, leading a very reduced life, might not appear to badly off in terms of the mental metric of desire and its fulfilment, if the hardship is accepted with non-grumbling resignation’. (A. Sen Inequality Reexamined p.55)

3. Reformulation: from actual to informed desires:

One response to this objection is to move from actual to informed desires. It is not the satisfaction of any preferences that improves welfare, but the satisfaction of the preferences of fully informed competent agents.

• Were I fully informed about the food I would no longer prefer it, for I have a settled preference for good health which has priority over my preference for gastronomic pleasure.
  
• Were I not ill I would want to drink the water.
  

This position allows for error but still holds that whether something is good for a person depends ultimately on what they would want or value. What is good for us is still determined ultimately by our preferences.

Exercise:

Does the appeal to informed desires overcome the problem of adaptive preferences?

4. New Objections:

New knowledge doesn’t just inform existing desires – it forms new desires.

Does the informed preference account of welfare adequately deal with the ways in which information can be involved in forming a preference for an object?

In some cases information can serve to ascertain whether an object that I currently desire in fact satisfies other given preferences. I have a preference for some food which unbeknownst to me is carcinogenic. Were I fully informed about the food I would no longer prefer it, for I have a settled preference for good health which has priority over my preference for gastronomic pleasure. This role for information is quite compatible with the informed preference account of wellbeing.

However, informing a person can also act in a second way to form or reform her preferences. Education often isn't a question of ascertaining whether an object fits current preferences, but rather a matter of altering preferences by pointing to features of the object that make it worthy of being preferred. For example, I may have had no preferences at all for a flat muddy piece of ground by the sea. I then take some walks in the area with a friend who has a great deal of ecological and social knowledge of the place, who points out biological features I had no inkling of, fills me in on its history and so on. On being educated about salt marshes I may subsequently come to value them a great deal, and this education might make a large difference to my wellbeing: I walk by the coast with developed capacities to see and hear what is there. But here my well-being is increased, not by allowing me to better realise some given preferences, but rather, through changes in perception and knowledge, by allowing me to form new preferences. That is what education, both formal and informal, is all about.

The problems with the informed preference account of well-being parallels the difficulties with J. S. Mill's account of why the preferences of an informed or competent agent should be given priority. Mill appeals to a subjective-state account of well-being. One starts from the informed agent because only she is in a position to judge: she knows 'both sides' of the question, whereas the uninformed agent only knows one. That answer is unsatisfactory because it relies on the introduction of some criterion of excellence independent of pleasure itself. The appeal to the quality of pleasures is an illicit way of introducing independent ideals - famously, in the case of Mill, the values of 'human dignity' and of realising our specifically human capacities. The same point is true in the case of the appeal to the informed and competent agent to defend a preference-regarding account of well-being. It serves only to smuggle in criteria that are independent of the preferences themselves. The only plausible reason for starting from the preferences of the 'informed' and 'competent' is one that refers directly to those independent criteria of excellence. For example, if we are considering the value of certain ecological systems, the preferences of the competent and informed ecologist count in virtue of her sensitivity to the objects around her, such that she is better able to make judgements about the value of the different habitats. It is features of the sites she knows about that give us reason to attach greater weight to her pronouncements, not the fact she has this or that preference per se.

C. Objective list theory of well-being:

1. Objectivist account:

To live well is to have or realise particular objective states – particular forms of personal relation, physical health, autonomy, knowledge of the world, aesthetic experience, accomplishment and achievement, sensual pleasures, a well-constituted relation with the non-human world, and so on.

On the objectivist view, preferences as such are not what determines welfare. Rather, it is the other way around. We prefer things because we believe they are good. They are not good because we prefer them.

What is good for us depends, therefore, on something about us, on what we are like. If we were angels, water and other material conditions of life would not be valuable to us. Neither would friends. But we are not angels. Given the beings we are, such things are valuable. What is of value to us cannot be independent of the kinds of being we are, and the capacities we have. This is perfectly compatible with a rejection of the preference satisfaction account, which says that what we desire or value determines what is valuable to us. On an objectivist account we simply can't choose like that. It says, rather, that improving welfare is a matter of realising certain objective states.

2. Objections:

a. Consistency with autonomy: Objective determination of what is of value to us is incompatible with autonomy – it allows paternalism
The principle of Preference Autonomy: 'in deciding what is good and what is bad for a given individual, the ultimate criteria can only be his own wants and his own preferences.' (Harsanyi 'Morality and the Theory of Rational Behaviour' in A. Sen and B. Williams eds. Utilitarianism and Beyond p.55)

Response:

The objective list can include autonomy.
Aristotelian line: Human flourishing involves developing our characteristic capacities. Amongst other things we are beings with a capacity to judge what is and is not of good for us and others of our kind. Given we have those capacities part of our good consists in their development and exercise. Autonomy is a good in virtue of that fact about us. Given the kinds of being we are need the space and opportunities to exercise our capacities of judgement.

b. Preferences again - endorsement constraint (Dworkin): One cannot improve an individual’s life by supplying resources that are by some objective criterion valuable to the individual, but which are not in the lights of the conception of the good life recognised and accepted by that individual: a person’s life cannot go better in virtue of features that are not endorsed by the individual as valuable (Dworkin ‘In defence of equality’ Social Philosophy and Policy, 1, 1983, pp.24-40) .

Response: This is not a criticism of the objective list theory as such. It may point to a necessary condition for preferences in determining how well someone’s life goes.

Compare Augustine:De Trinitate 13.5.8:

‘all who are happy have what they want’ but ‘not all who have what they want are for that reason happy’.

On this account want satisfaction is a necessary condition for happiness, but not a sufficient condition.
For Augustine you can be unhappy for two reasons: (i) you can lack what you want; or (ii) you can want what you ought not to have wanted.

3. Needs and capabilities.

The two central concepts in attempts to develop a more objectivist account of well-being are those of ‘needs’ and ‘capabilities to function’

a. Needs: Needs claims are of different kinds. Some needs are relative to specific projects. If I am to get to Chicago by tomorrow then I need to take a plane. However one might respond to that need claim by asking if I really need to be in Chicago tomorrow. However some needs claims are not like that. There are some needs that must be satisfied if a person is to have a flourishing life at all (D. Wiggins, 'The Claims of Need' in Needs, Values, Truth). For example, basic needs for water, food, shelter, certain social relations and the like are of that kind. One way of capturing the objectivity of needs claims is through consideration of the logic of the concept. The concept of 'need' has different logical properties from that of 'preference'. A sentence of the form 'a needs x' is extensional i.e. if a needs x, and x is y, then it follows that a needs y; a sentence of the form 'a prefers x to z' is intensional i.e. it is not the case that if a prefers x to z and x is y that it follows that a prefers y to z'. For example, from 'Joseph needs glucose', and 'glucose is C6H12O6' we can infer 'Joseph needs C6H12O6'. However, from 'Oedipus prefers to marry Jocasta to any other woman in Thebes' and 'Jocasta is Oedipus's mother', one cannot infer 'Oedipus prefers to marry his mother to any other woman in Thebes'. Whether or not a person needs something depends on the objective condition of the person and the nature of the object, its capacities to contribute to the flourishing of a person. Whether a person prefers one object to another depends rather upon the nature of the person's beliefs about the objects.

b. Capabilities
A more recent popular objectivist account is the capabilities approach of Sen developed by others in particular by Nussbaum. Well-being is defined in terms of in terms of central human functionings, of what people can be and do. How well a person’s life can go is determined by what they are able to be or do, with their capabilities to function.

Nussbaum has gone further than Sen in attempting to offer a list of universal central human functional capabilities. Here is one version of the list:

1. Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length: not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
2. Bodily health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.
3. Bodily integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; having one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign, i.e. being able to be secure against assault, including sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.
4. Senses, imagination and thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think and reason – and to do these things in a ‘truly human’ way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing self-expressive works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to search for the ultimate meaning of life in one’s own way. Being able to have pleasurable experiences, and to avoid non-necessary pain.
5. Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by overwhelming fear and anxiety, or by traumatic events of abuse or neglect. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.)
6. Practical reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience.)
7. Affiliation.
   A. Being able to live with and towards others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation; to have the capability for both justice and friendship. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.)
   B. Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails, at a minimum, protections against discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, caste, ethnicity, or national origin. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.
8. Other species. Being able to live with concern for, and in relation to, animals, plants and the world of nature.
9. Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
10. Control over one’s environment.
    A. Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association.
    B. Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), not just formally but in terms of real opportunity; and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. (M. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development pp.78-80)

Exercise:

Nussbaum notes that in discussions of her list item 8, - being able to live with concern for, and in relation to, animals, plants and the world of nature - was particularly controversial.

There were participants from South Asia who never thought this very important, who actively disliked animals, and who thought it a kind of romantic Green Party flourish to put this on the list when people were suffering. On the other side, as time went on, there were people who questioned the anthropocentricity of the entire list, judging that we had no reason to give human capabilities priority over other capabilities, and objecting to the idea that other species would be brought in only on account of their relationship to the human (M. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, p.157)

Do you think either of these criticisms is justified? In particular do you think it is plausible to suggest that this capability should be on a list of universal human functional capabilities? If it should how would one show that it should be on the list? Are there other items on the list which you think should not be present on such a list? Is the project of coming up with such a universal list a justifiable one?

Please do put your thoughts on this on the discussion site.