In Arrow’s ordinal framework, welfarism insists that individual preference orderings are the only basis for deriving social preferences. Non-welfare factors—physical characteristics of social states, people’s motives in having the preferences they do, respect for rights, equality—none of these are to make any difference except indirectly, through their reflections in individual preferences. WP asserts the demands of welfarism in the special case in which everybody’s strict preferences coincide. Sen argued that even these limited demands might be found excessive on moral grounds (Sen 1979: Section IV). Section 4.5  has further discussion of welfarism.  