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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2016
This essay discusses and criticizes the claim that normative political theory can be (justifiably and fruitfully) divided into two parts—a part having to do with ideal theory which assumes full compliance and abstracts away from issues having to do with implementation and, contrasting with this, a nonideal part having to do with implementation and with rules and institutions appropriate for conditions of partial compliance. On this conception of ideal theory, empirical facts about human behavior and motivation, connected to issues surrounding compliance and implementation, are irrelevant to ideal theory, although such facts can be relevant to the nonideal part of normative theory. I argue against this conception, holding instead that such empirical facts are relevant to most or all of normative political theory, including “fundamental” normative principles.
1 These are described by Cohen as “rules of social regulation” (G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008]).
2 Think of “relevance” in this context as having to do with whether (and how) empirical considerations bear in some way on the normative acceptability of the theory — on whether it is a theory we should adopt. I explain how I think such claims can be supported in Section II.
3 To guard against possible interpretation and accusations of “strawmanning,” let me underscore that the views that I am criticizing do not contend (and I do not claim that they contend) that empirical claims about motivation and behavior are irrelevant to all normative theorizing. Virtually no one contends this, if normative theory is understood to include proposals about implementation. Instead, my target is the claim that there is a component of normative theorizing (the ideal theory part) that is independent of concerns having to do with implementation and empirical considerations having to do with human motivation. A number of writers do endorse versions of this claim, including Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality and David Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (2011): 207–237.
4 Becker, Lawrence, Reciprocity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986);Google Scholar Schmidtz, David, Elements of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and most prominently, Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
5 Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality.
6 In particular, as I understand Rawls, his assumption of strict compliance does not amount to the idea that it is okay to build into the conception of ideal theory that compliance ought to occur, regardless of whether there is any empirical warrant for supposing it will occur, and in this way secure the irrelevance of whether it will occur — that is, his conception does not merely amount to the claim, “My theory of justice is correct and it ought to the case that people comply with it (even if they won’t)” which is how Estlund seems to understand the claims of his version of ideal theory (see Section V.) For example, Rawls regards it as an objection to utilitarianism that people will find it difficult to comply with it and would not think it an adequate response for utilitarians to appeal to the remark quoted above.
7 Cohen, G. A., “Facts and Principles,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (2003): 211–45, at 213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 See, for example, David Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (2011): 207–37.
9 Ibid., 208.
10 Ibid., 229.
11 Ibid.
12 I should, however, acknowledge an ambiguity in portions of Estlund’s discussion. At a number of points, as in the remarks above, he seems to argue for the irrelevance of facts about human motivational capacity, and so on, to portions of normative theory. But at other points he seems to claim only that such facts are not by themselves sufficient to imply normative conclusions. As explained, I agree with this latter claim, but it does not establish that it is justifiable to ignore facts about human nature in normative theorizing if such facts are relevant in the light of plausible connecting premises.
13 For some doubts about whether (i) and (ii) are correct, see footnote 12.
14 Gibbard, Allan, “Constructing Justice” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20, no. 3 (1991): 264–79.Google Scholar
15 Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
16 Rawls writes, “ . . . the idea of reciprocity lies between the idea of impartiality, which is altruistic (being moved by the general good) and the idea of mutual advantage” (Political Liberalism, 16). He makes it clear that he thinks of justice as fairness as a reciprocity-based conception (ibid., 16–17).
17 Gibbard, “Constructing Justice,” 266.
18 A common critique of reciprocity as a normative notion is that it imposes no obligations to aid those who are unable to reciprocate (Allen Buchanan, “Justice as Reciprocity versus Subject-Centered Justice,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 [1990]: 227–52). This would be a damaging consideration if it were also assumed that the only reasons to aid are reciprocity-based reasons. However, both common reflection and experimental evidence suggest that it is no part of the ordinary understanding of reciprocity that one need not provide aid to those unable to reciprocate. Instead, as remarked above, most people treat such cases as governed by nonreciprocal principles of aid, which may be different from the principles governing reciprocal interactions. On the other hand, the common understanding of reciprocity permits and perhaps encourages us to treat those who are able to reciprocate and do not quite differently from those who are unable to reciprocate. In this respect, as well as others, reciprocity is just one component of a conception of justice, rather than the whole thing. A focus on reciprocity fits naturally with a pluralistic conception of justice and the motives that underlie it.
19 Walker, James and Ostrom, Elinor, “Trust and Reciprocity as Foundations for Cooperation,” in Cook, Karen, Levi, Margaret, and Hardin, Russell, eds., Whom Can We Trust? (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009), 96.Google Scholar
20 Dufwenberg, Martin, Gneezy, Uri, Guth, Werner, and van Damme, Eric, “Direct vs. Indirect Reciprocity: An Experiment” Homo Oeconmicus 18 (2001): 19–30.Google Scholar
21 Kaplan, Hillard, Hill, Kim, Lancaster, Jane, and Magdalena Hurtado, A., “A Theory of Human Life History Evolution: Diet, Intelligence, and Longevity,” Evolutionary Anthropology 9 (2000): 156−85.3.0.CO;2-7>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 Cohen, “Facts and Principles,” 211–45.
23 Anderson, Elizabeth, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999): 287–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 Although this should not be necessary, I suspect that I should emphasize that this is not to say that whatever we (or some of us or most of us) currently think (or have thought or will think) is just, therefore is just. Among other considerations, our thinking about justice includes the idea that we may be (and in some respects likely are) mistaken in our judgments about justice. This does not undercut the idea that our thinking about justice is to be understood along constructivist lines. Constructivism is meant to contrast with, for example, Platonic conceptions according to which normative theory has to do with the correct or true description of an independently existing realm of values, which has this status independently of our practical concerns.
25 Singer, Peter, The Most Good You Can Do (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
26 In addition, as this example illustrates, many features of ordinary moral thinking that may otherwise seem puzzling, such as “deontological” prohibitions against working as a concentration camp guard even when someone is available who would take your place and would behave even worse become more intelligible when viewed in a strategic context. In other words, many features of ordinary moral thinking take the form that they do because they are relatively robust against manipulation or exploitation by people who are prepared to behave badly. Superficially better alternatives are not adopted because they are so exploitable. If we remain in the realm of ideal theory we miss all of this.
27 For some remarks in a similar spirit on the difference between thinking parametrically and thinking strategically, see David Schmidtz, “After Solipsism” Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 6 (forthcoming, 2017); and for further discussion Allman, John and Woodward, James, “What Are Moral Intuitions and Why Should We Care About Them?” Philosophical Issues 18 (2008): 164–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 David Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” 207–237.
29 Carens, Joseph, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).Google Scholar
30 Cohen, “Facts and Principles”; Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality.
31 A wealth of evidence — described in, e.g., Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Christina Fong, Samuel Bowles, and Herbert Gintis, “Reciprocity and the Welfare State” in Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, eds., Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Jennifer Hochschild, What’s Fair? American Beliefs About Distributive Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981) — supports the claim that ordinary people take account of incentives and implementation considerations in judging what is just or fair in connection with social welfare schemes and economic arrangements. Of course it might be responded that what people are really assessing are “institutional proposals” or “rules of regulation” rather than principles of fairness or justice, but this seems ad hoc. Another possible response is to concede that many people take implementation considerations to be relevant to justice but to argue that they are confused or mistaken in doing so — in principle, implementation considerations can always be separated out from fundamental moral principles, which are independent of such considerations (Cf. Cohen, “Facts and Principles”). Space precludes detailed consideration of this response but I believe that (assuming it is to be carried out in a nontrivial way) it rests on implausible (Platonistic) assumptions about how concepts in general work. Contra Cohen, the concepts (including the concept of justice) we employ have developed in contexts in which particular factual backgrounds are assumed. Concepts typically do not embody specifications of how they are to be applied or what they entail when these background assumptions fail. For example, contrary to what Cohen suggests, our concept of justice says little or nothing about what would be just for creatures who live for only twenty-four hours. Moreover, we are often deeply unaware of how such assumptions influence and structure our concepts — we come to recognize this, if we do at all, only when we encounter new situations in which these assumptions fail to hold, and we see that we need new or modified concepts. For these reasons, we cannot, with any confidence, separate out the factual commitments of our concepts from a remaining nonfactual core just by reflecting on the concepts themselves. See M. Wilson, Physics Avoidance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming) for a much more detailed development of these claims in connection with scientific concepts.
32 Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” 216.
33 In arguing that claims of motivational incapacity are not requirement-defeating, Estlund also appeals to judgments like the following: we would not allow a (sincere) claim to be motivationally incapable of working with members of another gender or race to block a requirement to work with such people. But in this and many similar cases (a) the claim of motivational incapacity is itself dubious (as an empirical matter, most people, including those who make such incapacity claims, do adapt to working in such situations when provided with the appropriate opportunities) and (b) the alleged incapacity is or reflects something that is tainted or objectionable on just about any moral theory. Our judgments about such examples are influenced by (a) and (b); they do not establish that all claims about motivational incapacity or motivational difficulty, including cases in which the claim is highly credible and the motive itself not objectionable on independent grounds (e.g., a requirement not to show any partiality toward one’s children), fail to be requirement-blocking.
34 Whether it is psychologically difficult for people to comply is often not “observable” and certainly not fixed, independently of their earlier choices; hence allowing noncompliance on these grounds creates incentives for people to represent themselves as having great difficulties in complying, independently of whether this is true, or to develop motivational profiles which makes compliance difficult for them when (under other theories that do not treat claims of motivational incapacity as requirement-denying) they would not have developed such profiles. Note, ironically, that this is a strategic consideration which seems to belong to nonideal theory.
35 Cf., Harry Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting it Right (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
36 To pose the issue in a slightly different way: Are the presence of reciprocators and the moral significance they attach to reciprocation to be viewed as impediments (like “selfishness”) to the achievement of full justice (or the requirements of ideal thory) or are they instead features to be incorporated into the “content” of justice in its ideal theory form? How might one decide? Why assume the former?
37 Cf. James Andreoni and John Miller, “Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma: Experimental Evidence,” Economic Journal 103 (1993): 570–85.
38 Ahn, Ostrom, and Walker, “Heterogeneous Preferences and Collective Action.”
39 Cf. James Andreoni, “Why Free Ride? Strategies and Learning in Public Goods Experiments,” Journal of Public Economics 37 (1988): 291–304.
40 Talbot Page, Louis Putterman, and Bulent Unel, “Voluntary Association in Public Goods Experiments: Reciprocity, Mimicry and Efficiency,” The Economic Journal 115 (2005): 1032–53.
41 Croson, Rachel, “Theories of Commitment, Altruism and Reciprocity: Evidence From Linear Public Goods Games,” Economic Inquiry 45 (2007), 199–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 Bo Rothstein, The Quality of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 148ff.
43 Cf. Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter, “Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments,” American Economic Review 90 (2000): 980–94.
44 McCabe, Kevin, Rigdon, Mary, and Smith, Vernon, “Positive Reciprocity and Intentions in Trust Games,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations 52 (2003): 267–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 The original version of the trust game is due to Joyce Berg, John Dickhaut, and Kevin McCabe, “Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History,” Games and Economic Behavior 10 (1995): 122–42. They interpret their results as suggesting that “reciprocity exists as a basic element of human behavior” (122).
46 Pettit, Philip, “The Cunning of Trust,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 24 (1995): 202–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
47 Fong, Bowles, and Gintis, “Reciprocity and the Welfare State.”
48 Cf. Elizabeth Warren: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. . . . You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. . . . You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” http://www.cbsnews.com/news/elizabeth-warren-there-is-nobody-in-this-country-who-got-rich-on-his-own/ Accessed, April, 2016.
49 Anderson, Elizabeth, “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999): 287–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50 This remark is likely to elicit the response that there is nothing about ideal theory projects that precludes attention to nonideal theory. One problem with this response is that energy, attention, and other resources are limited and when these are directed at ideal theory, other, nonideal projects are inevitably slighted. This is why I wrote earlier of “opportunity costs.”