When does non-ideal political theory really exist? How moral and political theory come apart. OR: Why Gerry Cohen is Right About Everything, Part. 9823948790.
- Posted by Paul Gowder on March 5th, 2009 filed in philosophy, sometimes produces political theory
- 12 Comments »
Non-ideal moral theory is, we can think, addressed to an individual who wishes to comply with his duties to others when some of his fellow humans are acting inappropriately. The paradigm case of non-ideal theory is something like this: if everyone gave to charity, problem X would be solved. Everyone has a duty to give to charity. Most other people are not giving to charity, and even if I gave to charity under these circumstances, X would not be solved. What are my duties in this world?
This formulation immediately reveals that there are some difficulties even in this context — for if everyone reasons this way and concludes that their non-ideal duties are different from their ideal duties, we have just created a moral collective action problem where everyone is — dutifully! — not giving to charity just because everyone else is not giving to charity.
But at least non-ideal moral theory is addressed in principle to those who are motivated to comply with their duties. It is only other people who are the laggards. The situation is different in political theory, where the arguments are addressed to an entire political community. The argument there is “here’s how we should order our affairs, given that some of us are acting like jerks.”
I have objected to this style of non-ideal theory before. Richard disagrees. I take Richard’s point, but I think it has a limited sphere of application — limited to those cases, like the infamous squash player, where the agents acting non-ideally really can’t help their obnoxious behavior. If it is truly impossible (or overwhelmingly difficult) for some of us to (e.g.) be as productive as we’re capable of being without getting extra and inegalitarian rewards, then, perhaps, contrary to Gerry Cohen, the difference principle is justifiable. (Though we still ought not to call it “ideal theory,” as Rawls does — in an ideal world, people wouldn’t be driven to grab above-average goodies in order to be convinced to use their above-average talents.*)
But more often than not, it isn’t impossible, it’s just unpleasant. It’s “don’t wanna” rather than “can’t.” It seems to me that a lot of non-ideal political theory proposes things that are just as difficult for people, either in their capacity as citizens implementing a political will or in their capacity as individual moral agents, to accomplish as it would be for them to stop engaging in the non-ideal behavior in the first place. Taking the Rawls example again, is it really more difficult for us to achieve, as a political community, an ethos where the talented don’t demand more rewards for their skills than the untalented than it would be to achieve, also as a political community, a world where everybody supports institutions that instantiate the two principles of justice? Which I take to be Cohen’s point…
(Edit: also see this v. interesting post on Public Reason with a critique of Cohen’s argument for the fact-insensitivity of moral principles.)
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* It’s a strange dogma of anti-egalitarians that people are paid more because they work harder, as if the unskilled laborer doesn’t work much harder than the much higher-paid but more talented right-wing think tank mouthpiece claiming that there’s a relationship between pay and labor.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I’m not sure that you do take my point. Nothing in my arguments rely on the added premise that it would be “truly impossible (or overwhelmingly difficult)” for laggards to do their duty. Rather, all that matters is that, for whatever reason, they actually won’t. (Or, if we are concerned with rationality rather than reasons: what matters is whether our evidence suggests that they most likely actually won’t.)
The basic point is that things that would be ideal if other people were doing their duties might prove disastrous in other circumstances. So it’s simply fallacious (as explained in my post) to reason from “It’d be good to (X and Y)” to “it’d be good to X”.
On any sane view, we shouldn’t cause disasters. So, on any sane view, we sometimes shouldn’t do that thing that would be ideal in different circumstances, merely on the naive hope that others will step up to the plate despite all evidence to the contrary. That’s just wishful thinking. We should do what will be for the best in the actual world, not what would be for the best in the world as we wish it were.
Of course, this leaves open the possibility that the best available action is to (somehow) persuade the laggards to start pulling their weight, as per your final paragraph. But that’s an empirical question about what non-ideal theory ultimately recommends, as opposed to whether it is asking the right question in the first place.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
But it’s mistaken, I think, to talk about what people will “actually” (or even “most likely”) do apart from our normative theorizing, which can influence what people actually do. That’s why I think non-ideal theory is often pernicious rather than just harmlessly mistaken — because it offers people excuses for doing what is in their interest rather than for what is right (in an ideal-theory sense) — perhaps if we said “here’s what your duty is, now do it,” it would help bring about ideal conditions…
You do need the extra premise about it being very difficult (because, say, of facts about human psychology) for people to behave ideally. If the agent who is being addressed doesn’t have some kind of psychological block against behaving properly, then perhaps they can be persuaded. Otherwise, you’d have to be working with a very odd model of human psychology, in which it’s possible (and not unduly difficult) for someone to X, but in which they can’t be persuaded to do it and they aren’t disposed to do it in the first place. It is more sensible, I think, to say that where A doesn’t want to X and can’t be persuaded to X, it is not possible (or it is unreasonably difficult) for A to X.
(And if we persuade the laggards to pull their weight, we’re not doing non-ideal theory anymore.)
March 5th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
You know that Cohen’s view is basically a Platonistic one, right, that doesn’t tell you any practical steps at all, and can’t, because at best you get an ad-hoc balancing of intuitions w/o any way to adjudicate them? It’s not a theory that moves away from non-idea theory at all. If anything, it’s less practical and more “ideal” (in a pajorative sense) than Rawls’s by far.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
How does it follow from a view’s being Platonistic (which I don’t think Cohen would deny — and which seems a reasonable position to take about normative propositions) that you can’t get anything more than an ad-hoc balancing of intuitions?
March 5th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
It seems to me entirely psychologically plausible to think that some people might stubborn refuse to (be persuaded to) do what they easily “could” do (in an ordinary sense of ‘could’). Indeed, I suspect this happens all the time.
But your broader point is entirely compatible with non-ideal theory (as I understand it). It’s both important and true to note that “attempting to persuade laggards to do their duty” is among the (non-ideal) options available to us. We should pick the best option available — and who knows, maybe sometimes this will be it! But again, there’s no guarantee. It’s an empirical question, the answer to which is determined by non-ideal theory.
So I don’t see any case here for thinking that non-ideal theory per se is “mistaken”. You’re just pointing out that it could be pernicious if done badly. (That’s true of all ethical theorizing.)
N.B. I don’t see why you say, “if we persuade the laggards to pull their weight, we’re not doing non-ideal theory anymore.” I guess if we succeed in bringing about utopia, then subsequently we won’t do any more non-ideal theory. But the act of persuading laggards is itself very much in the non-ideal realm. In an ideal world, no such persuasion would be necessary, after all. We could simply go about our own duties, without having to harry others into doing theirs.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I’m not sure that it necessarily follows from a view being Platonistic that you can’t get more than an ad-hoc balancing of intuitions, but unless you have some sort of special access via intuition to rules as well as judgments, you’ll not get it. Cohen pretty clearly only has an ad-hoc balancing of intuitions. (He thinks this is true of Rawls, too, but mostly because he mis-reads Rawls as committed to luck egalitarianism, as Cohen is.) The dispute between Rawls and Cohen isn’t about ideal or non-ideal theory at all. (Cohen’s view is just as much ideal theory.) If you want something attacking ideal theory you might read Raymond Geuss’s _Real Politics_. I don’t think it looks very promising (See Tom Hurka’s recent review in the NDPR some some idea why) but that would be the sort of thing to look at. Whatever you may think of the dispute between Cohen and Rawls, it’s certainly not over the status of ideal theory.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
A concrete example might help the discussion. Suppose in an ideal world the top marginal tax rate would be 100%, but the most productive capitalists would continue to work overtime anyhow, from sheer altruism. Do you think this fact suffices to establish that we should actually institute the policy of a 100% tax rate on the top bracket?
An affirmative answer is clearly daft. But if you answer ‘no’, then you accept the need for non-ideal theory instead. Looking at the ideal world doesn’t suffice to tell us what to do in our actual circumstances.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
(Sorry, I need to add to the scenario that actual-world capitalists could act as they ideally ought to. But they very much don’t want to, and it’s an open question how difficult they would be to persuade.)
March 5th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Richard… I want to make the question more complicated. The facts you outline do suffice to make the following proposition true: “there ought to be a 100% tax rate on the top bracket.” That proposition identifies a true moral fact.
They do not suffice to make this proposition true: “given that the most productive capitalist might not work with taxes that high, we ought to establish, in this society as it currently stands, a 100% tax rate on the top bracket.” But neither do they suffice to make the negation of that proposition true — which is what I think a lot of the objectionable non-ideal theory claims.
Rather, they demand further inquiry about how necessary or contingent the dispositions of the most productive capitalists are. And if we find that it’s possible (without some other moral violation) to change their dispositions (to persuade them), then that fact, combined with the other facts, does suffice to make the pair of propositions “we ought to change the dispositions of the most productive capitalists to conform with these ideal conditions” and “we ought to establish a 100%…” true.
My point here is that too many people fly right past that last step.
Also, how do you feel about the notion of psychological possibility? I think there are some pretty clear cases where we say something’s psychologically impossible — I might be unable to quit smoking, for example, or to admit that I was wrong, or to torture a puppy.
If there is such a thing as psychological impossibility, then it probably ought to apply to cases where A has no disposition to X and it’s impossible to persuade them to do X. After all, in such a case, in every possible world where A has the package of psychological traits he has, A doesn’t X… sounds like impossibility to me.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:25 am
“neither do they suffice to make the negation of that proposition true”
I don’t think anyone would claim otherwise. It seems pretty obvious that even from the standpoint of non-ideal theory itself, “persuading laggards to do their duty” is one of the options on the table that must be considered. So I take it your point is merely that some unnamed non-ideal theorists are failing to apply their own theory correctly. Right?
“if we find that it’s possible (without some other moral violation) to change their dispositions (to persuade them), then that fact, combined with the other facts, does suffice”
Nope. We should do whatever is actually best. And just because ideally folks would phi, it doesn’t logically follow that the best use of our limited resources is to persuade folks of this whenever possible (or even ‘possible without other moral violations’). Sometimes that’ll be plain inefficient.
Counterexample: suppose everyone ideally ought to donate 10% of their income to charity. Suppose that Super-Rich-Dude, after donating his own 10%, could invest the rest of his fortune in moral education that would convince the rest of us to do our duty too. Further suppose that this investment is inefficient: the amount it costs SRD is more than the 10% of everyone else’s summed incomes that ends up going to charities. Then it would be better for SRD not to bother morally educating us laggards, but instead donating those resources of his directly to the needy charities.
To get your conclusions, we instead need the further premise that moral education (persuasion, whatever) is the best available option in the actual circumstances. Any non-ideal theorist will agree that from this it follows that we should engage in such moral education. But not from any weaker claim. And this strong claim will often not be true.
“how do you feel about the notion of psychological possibility?”
It’s fine, but you shouldn’t confuse psychological impossibility with ordinary stubbornness. Sometimes people just won’t do something (and nor are they especially open to being persuaded otherwise), but they certainly could do it (in the ordinary sense of ‘could’). I take it the relevant sense of ‘could have done otherwise’ here is something like ‘would have done otherwise if he had wanted to‘ (with extra provisos needed to deal with compulsive desires, e.g. the unwilling addict).
A final point: there can be possible worlds where Bob does his duty, even if there are no true conditionals of the form “if I [were to] phi, then Bob will [would] do his duty”. Proof: for the latter claim to be false, all we need is for the *closest* world where I phi to be one where Bob fails to do his duty. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for Bob to do his duty after I phi. It’s just really unlikely. (This is a rough formalization of the bog-standard intuition that non-pathological stubbornness is possible.)
March 6th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
For those who subscribe to the common sense view of ethics, this appears to be the sort of false controversy to which philosophical positivism is prone. And, prior to Kant, this sort of error (if that’s what it is) would not have been made by any philosopher of note.
For the individual, the precepts of justice are primarily negative — respect the natural rights of others and fairness in exchanges and distributions. Those precepts were generally the same for the state, but with one critical addition — the obligation to the social common good. It’s this third feature that fills the “gap” that’s desired to be filled here, isn’t it, and without contortions or imaginary constructs?
I was puzzled by the footnote concerning “anti-egalitarians.” The egalitarians’ historical doctrinal opponents have been the libertarians. (They’ve been at loggerheads since the founding!) So, the comment about hard work made no sense to me. The libertarians’ argument is that liberty should be sovereign, while the egalitarians say that equality should be sovereign. The common sense view has always been that justice is sovereign over both liberty and equality. Our everyday speech seems to reflect this. We often speak of too much equality or liberty, but we don’t tend to hear anyone arguing that there is too much justice. So, was the comment about labor just a straw man overstuffed for the occasion?
Finally, one comment about the amusing exchange about a 100% tax rate. Many years ago, I had an opportunity to ask the then-Minister of Finance of Algeria, which had a 100% rate on personal income above the equivalent of about $20,000. With a smile, he acknowledged that not one tax return had ever been filed reporting income falling into the top marginal rate.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Paul, by the way, which of the following do you think is true?
(1) It is psychologically impossible for me to eat grass.
(2) You could persuade me (without offering bribes or otherwise changing my incentives) to eat grass.
Both seem obviously false, right? I surely could eat grass. But, given the actual circumstances, I just as surely won’t do so.