Epistemic Proceduralism, Capabilities and Rights: An Approach from the Perspective of Amartya Sen

Abstract

This paper expounds an exploratory study on the connections between Amartya Sen's capability approach and epistemic proceduralism focused on the measurement of poverty. The study describes the general features of Sen's approach and then analyses them from the perspective of epistemic proceduralism. Some difficulties were observed in the deliberative concept of democracy and the process of devising lists and consensuses to design tools for poverty measurement. We proved that the strongest link between the capability approach and epistemic proceduralism lies in the theoretical level. Therefore, whoever studies poverty and social needs has to cope with the challenge of applying the ideal of deliberative democracy to the definition of needs or lists of capabilities and provide arguments to ground rights.