Abstract
Political philosophy offers a range of utopian proposals, from open borders to global egalitarianism. Some object that these proposals ought to be constrained by what is feasible, while others insist that what justice demands does not depend on what we can bring about. Currently, this debate is mired in disputes over the fundamental nature of justice and the ultimate purpose of political philosophy. I take a different approach, proposing that we should consider which facts could fill out a feasibility requirement. This search for the facts requires requires looking to the social sciences, but I argue that it turns out that the social sciences will not provide us with findings that rule out, nor even count against, the kinds of proposals that political philosophers actually make, whether ideal or non-ideal. At the least, to deny this requires adopting deeply controversial commitments within the philosophy of social science. Thus, I conclude that a feasibility requirement has little practical use for political philosophers. Disputes over that requirement ought to be replaced by other, more fruitful ways for political philosophers to address both the findings of social science and the debates over non-ideal theory or political realism.
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Notes
A taxonomy of different approaches is offered in Southwood and Wiens 2016: 6, fn 12. For examples, see Gilabert 2017; Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 2012; Hamlin 2017; Lawford-Smith 2013; Miller 2013 Southwood 2016; Wiens 2015. Against, see e.g. Cohen 2003: 244–5; Estlund 2011, 2014: 130; Gheaus 2013. See also the broader ideal/non ideal theory debate e.g., Valentini 2012.
There is a parallel between this and the charge that contextualism in political theory is empty unless we know what the relevant context is. With thanks to a referee for this observation.
See fn. 3. Southwood and Wiens (2016), defenders of a feasibility constraint, also require this informativeness.
This rules out one possible characterisation of a feasibility constraint as logical or nomological possibility (Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 2012). For reasons detailed in Section 2, that would exclude findings of social science. But this feasibility constraint would also fail to be informative, since philosophers do not break laws of logic or natural science: Wiens and Southwood dismiss it as ‘ultra thin’ (2016). Regardless, Gilabert and Lawford-Smith do not seem to intend this as a feasibility requirement’s sole content even for ideal proposals — depending on their notion of institutional design, where ‘soft constraints’ are relevant. This is clearer in Gilabert (2017), with his claims that failure at the point of implementation should inform ideals.
Some might appeal to sociobiology, with its promise of informative constraints from, say, the inevitability of distinct sex roles. Yet, even aside from such claims being largely discredited (see Kitcher 2003, ch. 8), these purported facts share enough features of social sciences to apply the following arguments.
Such a reliance on common sense may be implicit where those discussing feasibility requirements suggest proposals to be ruled out without empirical evidence: for examples, see fn 3. So, too, many formulate feasibility constraints in terms of what lies within an agent’s option set (e.g. Lawford-Smith 2013; Southwood and Wiens 2016; Gilabert 2017). For individuals, determining the option set is often possible by looking, but that doesn’t scale up to the more complex issue of a state’s option set.
On benevolent sexism playing this role, see Connell & Heesacker 2012.
For a challenge to taking what was achieved to tell us what was feasible, see Southwood and Wiens 2016.
On interpretations of political realism, see Rossi and Sleat 2014.
With thanks to a referee for this observation.
As Rosenberg (2015) observes, some deny that we should focus on causal mechanisms, emphasising instead making the social world ‘intelligible’. I focus on social science that yields regularities or generalisations since that has the best chance of filling out a feasibility requirement.
Even those defending its predictive power regard it as very limited e.g. Reiss 2007.
For one discussion, see Martin and McIntyre 1994, introduction. As they describe it, the ‘naturalistic’ approach, where social science should resemble the physical sciences although it doesn’t yet, is ‘no longer a popular view’ and to some not ‘viable’ (p. xvi). F. See also Rosenberg 2015, ch.1, Gorton n.d. For this article’s purposes, one could hold either view: that social science should be like physical sciences but isn’t, or that it should not be.
Note even those who defend social sciences as more similar to physics observe the social world’s complexity and variability, including the importance of unique historical facts for understanding particular cases (e.g., Machlup 1961: 174). Such claims suffice to motivate the following arguments against the informativeness of a feasibility requirement.
This may echo Rawls’ comment that finding the ‘limits of the practicable’ faces a problem that “the limits of the possible are not given by the actual, for we can to a greater or lesser extent change political and social institutions, and much else” (2001: 5).
See Cohen’s comments on recycling (2008).
With thanks to a referee for this criticism.
I follow Valentini (2012) who helpfully separates out types of non-ideal theory, distinguishing the claim that justice should be realisable from views that we should revise certain ideal theory assumptions or address ‘transitional’ justice.
Note the exception here is narrow concrete policy proposals and not what philosophers sometimes describe as such, like equal educational opportunity.
Another possibility is cognitive limits. But I suspect that political philosophers don’t violate those – or where they do, these are cases best counted as obstacles, discussed in section 4. With thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me to consider psychology more carefully.
Given the reproducibility crisis in social psychology, some might be still more pessimistic over our knowledge of human nature: Open Science Collaboration 2015.
This might align with Gilbert’s dynamic feasibility (2017).
As such, local questions of feasibility touch on global ones: what will work in a particular instance depends on the system as a whole.
Cartwright (1999) thinks the same is true for physics, outside the lab, but that does not rescue the feasibility requirement.
The second example is controversial, despite some evidence for the ‘broken windows theory’ behind it, e.g. Keizer, Lindeberg & Steg 2008, on its shortcomings in the New York case, p. 1681.
Wiens (2015) endorses this sort of pessimism for ‘target view’ theories alone. This article offers a wider ranging challenge, based on different grounds.
This might form the basis for a parallel claim to Estlund’s comment against extending an ought implies can style principle implausibly far (2014: 116).
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Acknowledgements
Research for this article was was completed under the ARC project DP120101507 on ‘Political Normativity and the Feasibility Requirement’. With thanks to Nicholas Southwood, Saladin Meckled-Garcia, Christopher Nathan, Albert Weale, Jeff Howard, and two anonymous referees for this journal for their written comments, and to audiences at the PPE seminar, Institute of Philosophy; Senior seminar, Philosophy Department, University of Glasgow; 10th Legal and Political Theory conference, Manchester; the Open University “Philosophy day”; and the ‘Cherry Pickers’ workshop at UCL, for all their useful questions.
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McTernan, E. Justice, Feasibility, and Social Science as it is. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 22, 27–40 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-018-9970-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-018-9970-y