FAYDACI REFAH EKONOMİSİ: AMARTYA SEN’İN ELEŞTİRİSİ

Fahri Seker; Murat Çetin

UTILITARIAN WELFARE ECONOMICS: AMARTYA SEN’S CRITIQUE

Year 2012, Volume: 12 Issue: 24, 277 - 304, 01.12.2012

Abstract

Utilitarianism, which has been accepted by the methodology of modern welfare
economics, faces with some difficulties while trying to add some variables from daily life
issues to the economic analyses. At this point, Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s studies
enabled to add some other factors in the studies on welfare economics. According to
another approach, Sen who is one of the most well-known supporters of new welfare
economics developed a new definition of utility which considers the functions and turned
toward the essence, against the classical and formal definition of utilitarianism.
Sen’s approach is not a radical critique on strong rooted utilitarian thought; it’s more
of a corrective and compensative one. The basic aim of this critiqueis to show that the
analysis based on pure utilitarian terms can cause important analytical problems on welfare economy. Therefore, without ignoring utilitarianism, it is necessary to supplement
alternative approaches to the welfare analysis.
Sen tracksthe footsteps of the initial critiques of utilitarian thought to the Ancient
Greek philosophy. Hedonistic basics of utilitarianism had been criticized in Aristotle’s
ethic approach. In his approach, he putted the character and the life style forward instead
of hedonism. According to him, happiness cannot be reduced to pleasuring. Moreover,
despite pain and suffering, some values and behaviors can lead to big happiness in
human’s life. At this point, the utilitarian thought criticism of Sen begins with Aristotle’s
words: Wealth is just an instrument for good life. Wealth exists not for pleasuring but for
living good and, a good life can necessitate more values than just pleasure and benefit.
Aristotle says that, a life which is consisted of pure desires and pleasures is for animals
only.
Sen has systematically developed his critique of utilitarianism in his various studies.
In the studies he discusses the effect of utilitarian thought on economic theory and welfare
economy. According to Sen, considering “welfare” equals to benefit is quite open to
criticism. Moreover, claiming welfare as the only valuable thing is not an acceptable
argument. He criticizes the utilitarian approach which considers the development as the
increase in national income per capita. According to him, utilitarian approaches are
always open to criticize because of neglecting the sharing and ignoring the rights and
freedoms.Sen’s critique of utilitarianism is also focused on inequalities in the context of
welfare economy. He discusses the inequalities caused by the interpersonal comparison
problem which is one of the most important dilemmas of utilitarianism. Sen claims that
utilitarianism is having dilemmas because of considering the change in total benefit,
instead of individual’s welfare.
Amartya Sen examines two main streams in the history of utilitarian thought. He
examines the effects of Bentham’s utilitarianism thought based on happiness and the other
utilitarian thought based on fulfilling desires which takes place in the last quarter of 19th
century. In addition to these, new utilitarian basics of Samuelson’s “revealed preferences
theory” is also discussed by Sen. According to him both the happiness utilitarianism based
on mental basis and Samuelson’s approach based on more objective criteria have been
failed to solve the problem of the preference function in economic theory.
One of the most important questions of Sen investigates, whether the public choice
provides the adequate informatics basics of utilitarianism for the economic development
policies or not. According to Sen, explanatory power of economics theory will be
obviously increased as using “non-utility information” in mainstream welfare economy
analyses.
According to Sen, neoclassic economics also includes important deficiencies of the
methodological perspective based on utilitarian assessment and it can’t be seen as
“scientific knowledge”. According to him, utility and profit maximization cannot be
proved by experiments and neither corroboration nor falsification is possible with it. Sen
argues that neoclassic economics is out of science because “utility” is a mental state and
as a mental perception, it is relative and impossible to measure. Eventually utility cannot
be considered “scientific”, as an indicator which cannot be measured. Whereas, according
to utilitarian thought, positive or negative consequences are important as the reason of
why having to do or not to do an activity. This consequentialist approach embraces
utilitarianism as the only concept of explanation and justification. Also well-known economist J. M. Keynes has the same approach as describing the activities good or bad
according to their utility or non-utility consequences.
Utilitarian philosophy effected welfare economics through welfarist approaches. In
other words, while emphasizing only utility as a welfare measurement, it is expected to
make welfare researches easier. It can be said that this approach provides several
advantages to welfare economics. Especially as reducing human welfare to tangible
utilities, the analyses has been made much easier and more certain. However, this
overdosed simplifying approach has brought some problems with it. Although the monist
approach of utilitarianism has some advantages,it can cause a lot of important variables
other than the utility to stay out of the analysis. Firstly, the utilitarian approach preferred
to be indifferent to the problem of distribution. The utilitarian calculation tends to ignore
the inequalities of sharing the happiness. It interests in only the societies and does not care
about the unequa ldistribution problem. The second critique about utilitarianism is that the
adaptation and mental conditioning are also ignored. Not even the aspect claims that the
utilitarian approach accepts the concept of individual welfare, is healthy because it can
easily be redirected to the mental conditioning and the adaptive attitudes.
Finally, utilitarian approach has been a significant contribution in the development of
economic theory. However, Amartya Sen concludes that utilitarianism, particularly in
welfare economy, causes significant analytical difficulties. For instance, the well-being of
a person measured only by utility will disregard many other variables. Sen indicates that
utility cannot adequately reflect the value of well-being. Individual welfare is directly
related to the increase in the capability and freedom. It is considered that Sen’s critique
undermines the cornerstone of orthodox approaches. This article discusses this critique in
detail.

Keywords

Amartya Sen, Welfare Economics, Utilitarianism