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loved the "go bama-->roll tide" in
this movie, makes my hair stand up on the back of my neck
youtube.com/watch?v=rjRxdrg9BtU
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"Liberal critics of Sen often
identify the focus of the Capability Approach – ‘the ability
to achieve the kind of lives we have reason to value’ – as
problematic because it appears to impose an external valuation
of the good life, whatever people may actually value. Rawls,
for example, notes that the reason for liberals to focus on
the fair allocation of general purpose resources rather than
achievement is that this best respects each individual’s
fundamental right to pursue their own conception of the good
life. This relates to Rawls’ conception of justice as
political rather than metaphysical: it is not the task of
justice to assess people’s achievements, but rather to ensure
the fairness of the conditions of participation in a society.
Justice should be neutral with regard to judging different
people’s conceptions of the good. But this neutrality seems
incompatible with the Capability Approach’s concern with
assessing people’s achievements, which would seem to require a
much more substantive view of what counts as a good life than
one needs for assessing general purpose resources. Rawls
suggests that this constitutes the privileging of a particular
(non-political) comprehensive conception of rational advantage
or the good."http://www.iep.utm.edu/sen-cap/#H5
In researching some topics, I ran across this pretty amazing
piece, which eludes to the criticism of Amartya Sen, who
created a "capability" approach in 1980, much of which guides
the process across the world in capability and development,
with liberal exceptions of course, surround ing justice and
fairness.
Clearly, what has happened in the liberal mind as justice, and
morality have evolved, is that the meme of fairness has
somehow been coopted by "sameness". This same affiliction was
pointed out by Pinker, in The
Blank Slate-->"...he argues that
political equality does not require sameness..."
Sen responds to the liberal criticism, pointing out clearly
the roots @F-L-O-W, that people are different, and capability
is varied, as our values, and without a conception of what is
good, right and true which is universal.
"In replying to this criticism, Sen
particularly points to the heterogeneity (variability) in
people’s abilities to convert the same bundle of resources
into valuable functionings. Theories of justice that focus on
the distribution of means implicitly assume that they will
provide the same effective freedom to live the life one has
reason to value to all, but this excludes relevant information
about the relationship between particular people and
resources. Even if one abstracts from existing social
inequalities or the results of personal choices (‘option
luck’), as many liberal theories of justice do, one will still
find a substantial and pervasive variation in the abilities of
different members of a society to utilize the same resources –
whether of specific goods like education or general purpose
goods like income. That means that even if it happened that
everyone had the same conception of the good, and the same
bundle of resources, the fact of heterogeneity would mean that
people would have differential real capability to pursue the
life they had reason to value. Therefore, Sen argues, a theory
of justice based on fairness should be directly and deeply
concerned with the effective freedom – capability – of actual
people to achieve the lives they have reason to value." - http://www.iep.utm.edu/sen-cap/#H5
What Sen points out is that people differ in values and they
differ in the capability to actualize those values. This is
extremely significant in view of the assessment models which
generate a values hierarchy. In those models doing so, they
equate capability with valuing, and Sen produces a large
amount of counter-argument which indicates that values are one
thing, capability another.
To the point about about fairness and sameness, and the next
moral evolution.
The Moral Dilemma @F-L-O-W can be constructed from this set of
foundational ideas, fairness is not sameness, values are not
capability, and the moral question is how to we deal fairly
with what are clear differences in each.
The mistake that is clear to me, being made by evolving
liberal, and relativist systems is that we have this dilemma
about what to do about differences, so the moral convention is
that we treat people the same, that is fair.
That brings about two questions:
1) Is treating different people the same, fair.
2) Why aren't people the same.
Each question begs a different moral position. In treating
people the same, it's not fair, as a reverse argument to
question 1), and that brings up the dilemma of 2) why people
are different. Yet the second question is one that we have yet
to answer because it evokes an unknown territory of
philosophy, and that is, if people are different, for whatever
reason, and we treat them differently, is that fair?
First the question is it fair to treat different people
differently.
Second, why?
We have not been able to answer the second, the first is
self-evident, different people are treated differently in
every aspect of modern day life, either directly or
indirectly, discrimination is based on a diverse number of
reasons, for many different values, including race, gender,
intellect, and so on, height, weight, aesthetics, income,
education, and we can keep going.
The societal dilemma is dealing with the fallout, the why.
Moral Dilemma @F-L-O-W is solved in the transition state and
that is to answer the question should different people receive
different treatment as fairness, and the answer is YES.
Now, what happens when you are not in control of differences?
That is the larger moral question, which @F-L-O-W, a
transition system, can't answer, but only raise in the current
form, as the post-modern system is in a cul de sac and in
order to deal philosophically with the question, we have to
recurse back far enough in the system to get to the decision
tree bifurcation that confused the issue of fairness with
sameness.
@F-L-O-W, the moral treading of water while waiting for the
next ship to come by, to provide the answer to the moral
question, why are we different, and hence not the same,
is occluded by the present emphasis on sameness, as fairness.
@F-L-O-W, we recognize we are different, and not the same.
This then, brings us to a dilemma of what to do.
I like the approach by Sen, because his approach allows, even
what he criticizes, as utilitarism, and resourcism, because
essential the gambit, "...achieve the kind of lives we have
reason to value," is better served with "realized" to move off
of the value point of achieve, as most people are not driven
by achievement.
This approach..."realize the kind of lives we have reason to
value" runs on BS Platform extremely efficiently, so his
algorithm is coopted because the CORPORATE system of
value-making is active in influencing what we value, and
literally sidetracking the philosophical discussion about why
we are inborn different, and as a result of epigenesis,
largely controlled by factors outside of general control,
shaping what we value, as wants, versus inborn needs.
These are two separate issues now...
On one hand we know that capability and values are not equal,
we also know that fairness is not sameness, yet what confounds
the entire movement away from the cul de sac is BS
substituting wants for needs, driving what are in effect the
emergent arguments of Sen about resourcism and utilitarianism.
@F-L-O-W, there is an important distinction to be realized.
Eliminating a problem is more
EES than solving it in almost
every case I can find.
The consequences of each, elimination and solution, are each
the same, a new set of problems arrives--that is the hallmark
of an open system, and we live in an open system.
The question becomes, is it easy to solve a problem, or
eliminate and go on to the next set of constraints, realizing
that constraints are arriving like the trains in a 24hr train
station.
In the issue with Sen's argument, i can suggest we don't need
to worry about resourcism, or utilitarinism if we solve the
problem that
BS is creating by substituting wants and needs.
Next, once we eliminate those problems, we can move onto the
bigger issues undergirding the problems that are arising that
are actually confounding the issues of fairness.
@F-L-O-W doesn't answer the philosophical question or dilemma
of why we are different, it can't, a new morality is required
to hold the paradox, through no fault of my own, I am not the
same, or as __________________ as you. I am not as pretty, as
tall, as healthy, fit, motivated, ambitious, extraverted,
accepting, confident, etc.
IT is what it is @F-L-O-W.
However, that being the case, then fairness is related to
"each to his own" and if you contribute for whatever reason,
then the contribution to be fairly rewarded is defined as
disimilar to someone who doesnt' contribute, in whatever form,
process, or matter, with whatever meaning attribute.
I might not be able to contribute as much as you, I may not be
as strong, as good-looking, as ambidextrous, healthy, tall,
etc., and it's not in my control, so now what?
And this is a Moral Dilemma @F-L-O-W which is solved by a
"rights" issue, but not everyone will have the same
rights--this is the confounding issue--where rights are not
the same. This leads directly into the slippery slope that has
tripped up civilization almost since it became one.
However, to blindly continue to pretend we that go on, in the
face of the facts that we are different and that under no
condition, will rights ever be the same at the absolute level,
and only at the figurative level, in that people have the
right to exist, and may not be able to be guaranteed to
realize the life they value--especially when those values are
derived by wants.
This double-bind is the convergence of multiple slippery
slopes which we continue to avoid by pretending that we are
the same, and that is fair.
Philosophically, I do NOT know how we tell someone in a
lineup, you are entitled to this, and you are not because of
differences that they or we have had no control over of, but
it's a fact, not some story.
The real question is how do we live together in view of these
differences, that values are not correlated to capability, and
that fairness is not sameness.
For me, the question remains that there are constraints on all
of us, our systems, and our social perspective. |
Helpful Hint: To continue down the path, limited
by growth in the same fashion is going to limit options, the
only way i know how to approach the space in-between now and
what is next is to become more
EES, which requires, IMHO, a
reversal of wants and needs, which helps in some respects to
eliminate part of the problem between haves and
havenots...allowing the haves to contribute more to the
havenots in a variable format without a drop, but usually a
corresponding increase in happiness.
So while we wait on the impending evolution of our
philosophical and moral dilemma, we can at least recurse back
to where wants were substituted for needs, calming the waves
of difference between capability and values, simplifying the
equation between needs and wants, and beginning to navigate
the deadly reef of fairness and sameness, part of the problem
goes away. |
Action Step: individually, evaluate your wants
and needs, understand your values, and your capability, stay
on a path closely rooted to inborn happiness, while
scaffolding success requirements that move you off that path.
In future iterations, choose success requirements that are
more closely aligned to your capability and values, helping
you to realize the life that you value, while collaborating
with others to support the life they value. In the process,
what will happen is that your social experience will actually
enhance your needs for less, not more, while the wants for
more as constructed as an experience directly, or indirectly
through collaboration. |
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