CONCEPT
The Ten Central Human Capabilities
Nussbaum's list of ten capabilities so fundamental that a life without any of them at threshold level falls below the minimum conditions of human dignity — the operational instrument of the capabilities approach.
The ten capabilities — life, bodily health, bodily integrity, senses-imagination-thought, emotions, practical reason, affiliation, other species, play, and control over one's environment (political and material) — constitute Nussbaum's answer to the question every society must address: what must be secured for each person for human dignity to be possible? The list is not a wish catalogue but a set of concrete requirements for justice, with direct implications for how the AI transition should be evaluated and governed.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The list emerged from sustained engagement with Aristotle's ethical framework, cross-cultural reflection on what constitutes a dignified human life, and Nussbaum's fieldwork with women in India during the 1990s. It is designed to be capacious enough to accommodate different conceptions of the good life within each culture, while demanding enough to rule out arrangements that violate basic human dignity.
Applied to the AI transition, the capabilities most directly implicated