Category Archives: MTSP Discussion: Gerald Gaus’s The Tyranny of the Ideal

A Critique of Gerald Gaus’s Tyranny of the Ideal (Part 2 of 2)

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Continued from part 1.

Then Gaus turns to coordination problems like Stag Hunt / Assurance game (213-15), which (he should add) also involve an independent dimensions of CAPs. It consists in an interaction-situation having more than one equilibrium, at least one of which is not P-optimal, so that arriving at the (or one of the) P-optimal equilibria requires coordination. It is crucial that in many of these cases, a mere convention like stopping at red lights rather than green lights can suffice; nothing deeper need underlie it. Sometimes the natural “salience” of certain phenomena, places, or things does underlie it (red, being associated with blood, is perhaps naturally alarming / arresting). Continue reading →

A Critique of Gerald Gaus’s Tyranny of the Ideal (1 of 2)

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There are a lot of good things to say about Gerald Gaus’ book, The Tyranny of the Ideal (Princeton University Press, 2016). It is a difficult work because it operates mostly at a meta-theoretical level, focusing on properties and problems of “ideal” theories of justice in general – although there is quite a bit of commentary on Sen’s theory and Rawls’s approach in Political Liberalism and after. Still, it contains may insights on these topics, and especially epistemic difficulties in discerning what ideal justice actually requires. But I will not focus on many of the good points here, simply in the interests of space. Continue reading →

HOW EXTREME UNLIKELIHOOD MIGHT BLOCK REQUIREMENT SPECIFICALLY

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Suppose that general normative requirement works like this: if X is generally required to A, this is partially constituted by X’s not-A-ing options in her choice situations starting out with a very high negative valence (that generally swamps any negative valence of the not-A-ing options). Now suppose that, in particular choice situation S, it is super-unlikely that X will pull off A-ing. In such a case, the relevant option is really her attempting to A. But also any attempt to A is almost certain to come to her not-A-ing. It seems plausible, then, that all of X’s options in S have nearly the same magnitude of highly negative valence. So there is not, as there would normally be, some huge “valence gap” between (token) A-ing and (token) not-A-ing. There is no normative “swamping” to leave A-ing as the far-and-away best option. And so, despite being under a general requirement to A, X is not, in S, required to A (realize this token of A-ing). 

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THE OUGHT-DEFEATING WORK OF UNLIKELIHOOD?

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Having reread David Estlund’s “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy” (2011) – I had read it or similar material from Estlund years ago – I have some thoughts. Here is one. (For a variety of more shooting-from-the-hip points, of varying quality and level of present endorsement, see David Potts’ more-comprehensive critique Estlund’s article and specifically my comments there (Estlund’s Defense of Ideal Political Theory).)

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If agent X being unable to perform action (or carry out plan) A entails that it is not the case that X ought to perform A, why is this? This answer seems plausible: because this rules out A-ing as an option for X in her deliberation and decision-making. If this is right, then why suppose that only the ability/inability binary is relevant? Why not a cut-off in a relevant scalar quantity? Specifically: perhaps if it is unlikely-enough that X will pull off A (maybe or maybe not due to relevant deficits in X’s internal, psychological abilities), then A-ing is not an option for X — and so it is not the case that X ought to A.

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Local Optima and Abolitionist Ideals

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In The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus draws attention to a trade-off faced by anyone pursuing an ideal conception of justice. What he says here seems almost trivially obvious (at least once he puts it down on paper), and seems to have obvious implications (at least once one sees it set out in print), but I still find it insightful. He calls it The Choice:

The Choice: In cases where there is a clear optimum within our neighborhood that requires movement away from our understanding of the ideal, we often must choose between relatively certain (perhaps large) local improvements in justice and pursuit of a considerably less certain ideal, which would yield optimal justice (Tyranny, p. 82).

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Estlund’s Defense of Ideal Political Theory

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In “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” (2011) David Estlund defends what are sometimes called “ideal” or utopian political theories against the charge of being incompatible with human nature. For example, a utopian socialist or egalitarian political theory might require a degree of selflessness from the citizenry that it is entirely unrealistic to expect flesh and blood humans to possess. Therefore, it is said, the political theory is defective and false. To this familiar objection, the familiar reply from defenders of utopian political theory is to claim that human nature is indeed up to the demands of their theory, or at least it will be once the dog-eat-dog pressures imposed by capitalism have been swept away and we enter the New Jerusalem.

But Estlund does not take this tack. What distinguishes his defense of utopian political theory is a willingness to agree for the sake of argument that we can know in advance that people will never bring themselves to act as the theory requires—which means he acknowledges that the theory should never be implemented, since to do so would bring catastrophic social dysfunction. Nevertheless, this does not invalidate the theory! Such a utopian political theory would remain the normative ideal: we ought to rebuild society on the model it prescribes and comply with its moral demands on our personal actions. Only, since we will never so comply, we ought not to rebuild society in the way it prescribes. But that does not mean there is anything wrong with the theory.

In what follows, I will elaborate and critique Estlund’s argument. TL;DR: The main thrust of his argument makes a valid and interesting point, but not one that saves ideal theory’s bacon.

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Gerald Gaus on the Primacy of Individual Moral Perspectives

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In “Social Morality and the Primacy of Individual Perspectives” (2017), Gerald Gaus responds to critics of his The Order of Public Reason (2011) as part of symposium on that book. I presume The Tyranny of the Ideal (2016) is a continuation of the ideas earlier and more formally developed in the 2011 book. The 2017 essay is valuable because it aims to “sketch a modest of recasting of the analysis” presented in the 2011 book. That is, more or less the whole argument of 2011 is restated in new terms, and obviously much abbreviated. The following is a brief summary of the argument and one of its implications.

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