ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Amartya Sen’s apples example from ‘Rational Fools’ with which he elucidates the distinction between sympathy and commitment. It describes a norm-following account of the main protagonist of Sen’s example, and explains Geoffrey Brennan’s scepticism that the example demonstrates, as Sen Claims it does, the nature of commitment. The chapter focuses on to contrast different models of norm following and highlights the centrality of counter-preferential choice in Sen’s understanding thereof. It draws on remarks from Brennan’s commentary on Sen to argue that there is a connection between commitment and agent relativity. Sen has contributed to philosophical debates on agent relativity but never has he made its relationship to commitment explicit. Sen offers his own version of Werner Guth’s criticism when he adverts to economists who purvey the art of ‘skillfully “elongating” the self-interest model to deal with these challenges’.
