Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a

2. Core Ideas and the Framework
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capabilities or a mixture. It follows that a choice must be made, but that
there are various options to choose from.
Finally, each capability theory will embrace some meta-theoretical
commitments. Yet often, these meta-theoretical commitments are
shared commitments within one’s discipline or one’s school within
that discipline, and as a graduate student one has become socialised
in accepting these meta-theoretical commitments as given. As a
consequence, it often happens that scholars are not even aware that
there are such things as meta-theoretical commitments. For example,
if one wants to conduct a measurement exercise (a choice made in the
module B1) then one may be committed to the methodological principle
of parsimony (to build a model with as few assumptions and as elegantly
as possible) or, instead, to providing a measurement that is embedded
into a rich narrative description aimed at a better understanding. Or,
if one wants to construct a theory of justice (again, a choice made in
the module B1), then one may aim for an ideal or non-ideal theory
of justice, or for a partial or a comprehensive account of justice. Or
one may espouse certain views about the status of theories of justice
or meta-ethical claims related to, for example, the role that intuitions
are permitted to play as a source of normativity. Some debates within
the capability approach, but also between capability scholars and
those working in other paradigms, would be truly enlightened if we
made the meta-theoretical commitments of our theories, accounts and
applications more explicit.
In addition to the compulsory content of the core A-module, and the
optional content of the non-optional B-modules, a capability theory
could also add a third type of module, which I will call the contingent
modules. These are either modules that need to be taken on board due
to some choices that have been made in a B-module, or else they are
entirely optional, independent of what one has chosen in the B-modules.
The following table gives an overview of the contingent modules.