Critics and modifications

There Is No List of Capabilities

In his review of Amartya Sen's "Commodities and Capabilities," Robert Sugden of the University of East Anglia noted what he thought was a serious lack of insight in Sen's approach. "This is an important idea, but Sen has disappointingly little to say about how these sets are to be valued; he makes a few suggestions but only to show how unsatisfactory they are." In the point of view of Sugden, there is a need for a ranking of capabilities because in order to judge whether or not someone is living a full life, we need to know what the scale is that judges that happy life.

Sugden is referring to Sen's paper