6.3 Capability approach  (Page 3/6)

Smith

• Smith anticipates many of the fundamental theses of the capability approach. First, he agrees with Aristotle that humans are bounded by their mortality and vulnerability.
• Second, Smith agrees with the notion that the human is a social animal, contrary to the many individualistic interpretations that have been foisted upon him.
• Finally, Smith’s conception of human vulnerability led him to pose many governmental and social interventions to allow humans to act freely and humanly: the abolition of apprenticeship, laws against monopolies, restrictions on businesses lobbying government, and the abolition of slave trade.
• Contemporary interpretations of Smith incorrectly view him through the lens of Social Darwinism; they interpret Smith as advocating competition to bring about the survival of those who are socially the fittest. Since Smith wrote and lived before Darwin published his theory of evolution, this interpretation foists upon Smith views that he never held and would have rejected.

Marx

Iv. capability approach—some key concepts:

This list of the central concepts of the Capability Approach is taken primarily from Nussbaum’s Creating Capabilities to get the latest developments of this movement. Some terms have been taken from Robeyns and others from Oosterlaken.

• Capability Approach : “The Capabilities Approach can be provisionally defined as an approach to comparative quality-of-life assessment and to theorizing about basic social justice. It holds that the key question to ask, when comparing societies and assessing them for their basic decency or justice is, “What is each person able to do and to be?” Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities,(18)
• Capabilities : “What are capabilities? They are the answers to the question, “What is this person able to do and to be? In other words, they are what Sen calls “substantial freedoms,” a set of (usually interrelated) opportunities to choose and to act. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities, 20.
• Basic Capabilities : “Basic capabilities are innate faculties of the person that make later development and training possible.” Creating Capabilities, 24. An older definition comes from Human Rights in Theory”: “the innate equipment of individuals that is the necessary basis for developing the more advanced capability. Most infants have from birth the basic capability for practical reason and imagination though they cannot exercise such functions without a lot more development and education.” HRT: 289. Or, Women and Development (Nussbaum): 84: “the innate equipment of individuals that is the necessary basis for developing the more advanced capabilities, and a ground of moral concern.
• Internal Capabilities : “developed states of the person herself that are, so far as the person herself is concerned, sufficient conditions for the exercise of the requisite functions. Unlike basic capabilities, these states are mature conditions of readiness.” WD: 84. And an earlier statement in HRT 289: “states of the person herself that are, so far as the person herself is concerned, sufficient conditions for the exercise of the requisite functions…[M]ost adult human beings everywhere have the internal capability to use speech and thought in accordance with their own conscience.”
• Combined Capabilities : “Finally, therefore, there are combined capabilities, which may be defined as internal capabilities combined with suitable extrernal conditions for the exercise of the function.” WD: 84-5. Or HFT: “internal capabilities combined with suitable external conditions for the exercise of the function. A woman who is not mutilated but is secluded and forbidden to leave the house has internal but not combined capabilities for sexual expression—and work, and political participation.” HFT 289-290.
• Functioning : Nussbaum, CC: 24-5: “On the other side of capability is functioning. A functioning is an active realization of one or more capabilities. Functionings need not be especially active or, to use the term of one critic, “muscular.” Enjoying good health is a functioning, as is lying peacefully in the grass. Functionings are beings and doings that are the outgrowths or realizations of capabilities.”
• Conversion Factor : For Robeyns, conversion factors help convert a capability into a functioning. The example most often given is that of a bicycle which converts the capability of bodily movement into actually moving from one’s home to one’s place of work. But the bicycle only works as a conversion factor under certain conditions. Individuals must have the physical apparatus and stamina to actually ride the bicycle. And a bicycle would not work well in a desert where there were no roads. Robeyns points out that there are “three groups of conversion factors.” “[P]ersonal conversion factors (e.g. metabolism, physical condition, sex, reading skills, intelligence) influence how a person can convert the characteristics of the commodity into a functioning….Second, social conversion factors (e.g. public policies, social norms, discriminating practices, gender roles, societal hierarchies, power relations) and, third, environmental conversion factors (e.g. climate, geographical location) play a role in the conversion from characteristics of the good to the individual functioning.” Robeyns, “Capability Approach: a theoretical survey, Journal of Human Development, 6(1), 2005: 99.
• Zooming in and Zooming out : Ilse Oosterlaken uses these two ideas to bring the philosophy of technology into contact with the capability approach. “Zooming in…allows us to see the specific features or design details of technical artifacts; zooming out…allows us to see how exactly technical artifacts are embedded in broader socio-technical networks and practices.” ‘Zooming in’ cites participatory and value-sensitive design as ways in which moral value and import are integrated into a technical artifact’s design. ‘Zooming out’ places the surrounding socio-technical context in the center of focus and concentrates on how a technical artifact is enrolled or integrated into this broader context. Technical artifacts, thus, are relational; the device must be understood in terms of how it functions in this broader socio-technical context. Zooming in and zooming out allow Oosterlaken to work around the dichotomy within the philosophy of technology between the social determination of technology and the technological determinism of society. Zooming in shows how value is designed into the artifact and how this works on the surrounding socio-technical environment. Zooming out shows how the technical artifact takes on meaning as it is ‘enrolled’ into a socio-technical system. (See Taking a Capability Approach to Technology and Its Design: A Philosophical Exploration, Introduction, 14. Simon Stevin Series in the Ethics of Technology). (See Taking a Critical Approach to Technology and Its Design 13 (table) and 14.)
• Mark Coeckelbergh in “How I learned to Love the Robot” looks at the importance of deploying “techno-moral imagination” in the exploration of the appropriateness of a technology for a given socio-technical system. (His example is the use of robots for care of the elderly.) As he puts it: “One way to proceed…is to study technological promises (research proposals, interviews in the media, and so on) and to write—not just read and discuss—fictional scenarios in order to imaginatively explore how future technologies could re-shape not only elderly care, but also our capabilities and their meaning.” This resembles John Dewey’s “dramatical rehearsals” where one imaginatively plays out a solution alternative or project in the mind in order to explore how readily it can be integrated into the real world. (Human Nature and Conduct and The Moral Life) Such experiments of imagination are described by John Gardner in Moral Fiction and actualized in many of his novels. (See especially The Sunshine Dialogues.) Mark Coeckelbergh, ““How I Learned to Love the robot”: Capabilities, Information Technologies, and Elderly Care.” in The Capability Approach, Technology and Design, Illse Oosterlaken and Jeroen van den Hoven (eds). New York: Springer: 77-86.) Your first item here