Sen’s Criticisms and Proposals: Incomplete Theory or Approach? In and Welfarism’ Sen (1979a) decomposes utilitarianism into three ‘Utilitarianism component parts. The initial decomposition is of but it can be ‘act-utilitarianism’, generalised so that it applies to rules or motives instead. The first component of utilitarianism is consequentialism, and he defines act-consequentialism as follows: an action is right if and only if the state of affairs resulting from Act consequentialism: x α α is at least as good as each of the alternative states of affairs that would have resulted respectively from the alternative feasible acts (Sen, 1979a, 464). On Sen’s account, act-utilitarianism combines act-consequentialism with a second principle: Any state of affairs is at least as good as any alternative state of Outcome Utilitarianism: x affairs if and only if the sum total of individual utilities in is at least as large as the sum of y x utilities in (Sen, 1979a, 464) y. This in turn is factorised into the following principles: The judgement of the relative goodness of alternative states of affairs must be Welfarism: based exclusively on, and taken as an increasing function of, the respective collections of individual utilities in these states. (Sen, 1979a, 468) and One collection of individual utilities is at least as good as another if and only if Sum-ranking: it has at least as large a sum total. (Sen, 1979a, 468). Sen 468) rejects sum ranking as Rawls (1972, 77) does on the grounds that it is – – as to how a constant sum of benefits is distributed’. He also rejects welfarism. In ‘indifferent and Welfarism’ this is primarily because welfarism, by definition, excludes all ‘Utilitarianism
Sen’s Criticisms and Proposals: Incomplete Theory or Approach? In ‘Utilitarianism and Welfarism’ Sen (1979a) decomposes utilitarianism into three component parts. The initial decomposition is of ‘act-utilitarianism’, but it can be generalised so that it applies to rules or motives instead. The first component of utilitarianism is consequentialism, and he defines act-consequentialism as follows: Act consequentialism: an action α is right if and only if the state of affairs x resulting from α is at least as good as each of the alternative states of affairs that would have resulted respectively from the alternative feasible acts (Sen, 1979a, 464). On Sen’s account, act-utilitarianism combines act-consequentialism with a second principle: Outcome Utilitarianism: Any state of affairs x is at least as good as any alternative state of affairs y if and only if the sum total of individual utilities in x is at least as large as the sum of utilities in y. (Sen, 1979a, 464) This in turn is factorised into the following principles: Welfarism: The judgement of the relative goodness of alternative states of affairs must be based exclusively on, and taken as an increasing function of, the respective collections of individual utilities in these states. (Sen, 1979a, 468) and Sum-ranking: One collection of individual utilities is at least as good as another if and only if it has at least as large a sum total. (Sen, 1979a, 468). Sen 468) rejects sum ranking – as Rawls (1972, 77) does – on the grounds that it is ‘indifferent as to how a constant sum of benefits is distributed’. He also rejects welfarism. In ‘Utilitarianism and Welfarism’ this is primarily because welfarism, by definition, excludes all
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