Responsible choice for appropriate technology  (Page 4/11)

Nussbaum's list

Basic capabilities

• Life
• Bodily Health
• Bodily Integrity
• These capabilities overlap with basic rights. But the capability approach moves beyond the rights perspective by exploring the social and community-based dimensions of human agency; rights on the other hand are more individualistic. (See Werhane on this.) Bodily Integrity would include, for example, freedom from marital rape and the ability to move about freely within one's own country.

Cognitive capabilities

• Sense, Imagination, Thought
• Emotion
• Practical Reason
• Note : Nussbaum's description of cognitive experience is richer than that allowed through the concept of homo economicus (the economic human) avowed by economical theory. (Homo economicus is driven by a narrow view of rational self-interest.) Emotions incorporate judgment, and practical reason overlaps with the autonomous ability to formulate and carry out thoughtfully life plans. Imagination and sensation are not separate from the knowing and cognitive faculties as they are, say, for Kant but closely connected with these as they are in the ethical theory of Aristotle. Full exercise of thought, sensation, and imagination could occur in aesthetic expression or religious experience. We explore emotions imaginatively through literature, drama, and cinema.

Social or out-reaching capabilties

• affiliation : This capability allows forming alliances with others such as friendships and collegial workplace relations. This would include the capability to form associations such as a church, an NGO, or a political interest group.
• Other Species : Here Nussbaum is setting forth the rudiments of an environmental ethics where nature as a whole and the individuals within nature place constraints on human action. But, rather than formulating this traditionally in terms of the extension of utilitarianism or deontology, Nussbaum sees our ability to commune with nature as a necessary constituent of a life of human dignity or human flourishing.

Agent-based capabilities

• Control Over One's Environment
• Play
• The capability of play is deformed by child labor. Adam Smith, for example, comes out strongly against child labor in his economic theory and advocates strong government intervention to protect this capability. Childhood labor prevents children from reaping the developmental and psychological benefits of play. This capability militates directly against the idea that play is isolated and does not contribute to the formation of other cognitive and practical abilities such as emotion, thought/sensation/imagination, or practical reason. On the other hand control over one's environment works directly against such poverty traps as uninsurable risk, lack of working capital, non-workable property practices, etc. See Stephen Smith below.