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This chapter begins with a discussion of the two models of value judgement. It discusses human interest as part of the natural world. It then goes on to consider how much of the epistemic and metaphysical standing of human interests carries over to the human rights derived from them.

Focuses on simple moral judgements, one's moral standards that do not go far beyond the prudential values to which they are related. The question whether more complex moral judgements are like them in their epistemic and metaphysical features is left open. The chapter argues that there is no sharp line between prudence and morality or between egoism and altruism: we can neither understand morality independently of prudence, nor live well prudentially independently of living well morally. The chapter looks closely at the relation between the prudential judgement ‘that is painful’ (along with judgements about intentions) and the moral judgement ‘that is cruel’, and concludes that elements of the realism appropriate to the former judgement transfer to the latter.

Can value judgements be ‘correct’ or ‘true’ and, if so, in what sense? This chapter argues for the proposal in the preceding chapter that any plausible account of how we identify prudential values is more complex than is indicated by a simple reductive naturalist model, the Humean model or certain forms of intuitionist model. The chapter argues that the most plausible account will give a role to both recognition and reaction, but without the sharp separation between them or the priority to one of them that the Humean model makes central. It develops an error theory for judgements about human interests and for a kind of realism about these interests and events of their being met or not met.

The sixth and seventh chapters that make up Part II of the book consist of one practical and much narrower application of the capability approach, namely, a discussion of how economic analysis (cost‐benefit analysis) and systematic qualitative information on human impacts can be combined in order to assess the relative effectiveness of particular development activities in expanding human capabilities. This sixth chapter on assessing capability change first gives an introduction to Part II. It goes on to defend the necessity of efficiency considerations, such as those that are incorporated in cost‐benefit analysis and in project evaluation, and then looks at capability set analysis by reviewing two prominent participatory assessment methodologies that have been developed to supplement economic considerations with social data: one by the World Bank (participatory social assessment), the other as a result of US legislation governing public expenditure (social impact assessment). Both of these lack a systematic method for identifying changes valued by participants themselves and for devolving real control over a decision to the lowest level capable of making it, and this lack increases the chance of significant bias in gathering and interpreting value judgements. In response, a novel method of impact assessment is described that would complement and improve available assessment tools; the method of impact assessment represents one way in which the framework of the preceding chapters could be used.

Discusses whether it is irrational to give no weight to past desires – desires that depend on value judgements or ideals; three attitudes to time: caring more about, or being biased towards, what is near, what is in the future and what is present – whether these attitudes are rational; the direction of causation; how it would be better for us if we were temporally neutral; Time's passage; and the asymmetry in our attitudes to our own lives and the lives of others.