Guido Pincione (University of Arizona) and Gregory Robson (University of Notre Dame), “Theories, Facts, and Meanings in Political Philosophy”
Philosophers’ Imprint, 2024
By Guido Pincione and Gregory Robson
Imagine a philosopher rejecting G. A. Cohen’s egalitarian principles of political morality (e.g., in Cohen 2009) because they “justify,” “require,” or “lead to” egregious crimes such as those perpetrated by Joseph Stalin. Or consider a philosopher rejecting Robert Nozick’s “entitlement” theory of justice (Nozick 1974) because it “justifies,” “requires,” or “leads to” crony capitalism and imperialist wars. Such critiques would face widespread charges or irrelevancy among academic philosophers. They would say that these critiques trade on misapplications, if not blatant violations, of the principles of political morality proposed by Cohen and Nozick. Misapplications, let alone violations, of a principle cannot possibly undermine its validity.
In “Theories, Facts, and Meanings in Political Philosophy” (Philosophers’ Imprint, Vol. 24, No. 11, September 2024), we defend the relevance of many such critiques. We argue that “[t]he fact that a political theory will predictably be applied in ways that yield counterproductive or independently objectionable outcomes is a major reason to reject that theory.”
It might seem that our position conflates a political theory’s content with its application: a violation of a norm—such as the principles articulated by a political theory—cannot possibly count against it. Just as crimes can hardly compromise the validity of the moral or legal prohibitions they violate, misapplications of a political theory leave its validity untainted.
We certainly agree that violations of a norm do not compromise its validity. However, it is inherent to norms to provide guidance, and that guidance varies with agents’ factual and especially causal beliefs. A principle proclaiming a right to quality college education can be naturally interpreted as requiring legislators to pass laws granting admission to college to all high-school graduates. Should legislators believe that direct subsidies to colleges would more effectively help provide quality college education than a voucher system, the principle in question would guide them towards the direct-subsidies policy. Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that those legislators are wrong: vouchers would more effectively enforce the right to quality college education. Hence, the principle would misguide legislators, even if they understood and honestly applied it.
Couldn’t an objector argue that in such cases it is not the principle that is wrong but only the legislators’ factual beliefs? In reply, we note that the difference made by a principle to an agent’s practical reasoning should be central to assessing that principle. It is true that, as suggested by the education example, such difference is mediated by the agents’ factual beliefs. As a result, the principle that establishes a right to quality public education seems to bear no responsibility for the voters’ or legislators’ support of the bad policies we imagined—their factual mistakes do. However, when key political actors, such as sizeable electoral or legislative voting blocs, routinely interpret a principle of political morality as requiring them (given their mistaken factual beliefs) to vote for independently objectionable policies, the guidance they receive from the principle—the difference that coming to embrace it makes to their practical reasoning—must be objectionable as well. We would be sending them a wrong normative message should we tell them that the principle is valid without also telling them that they need to change their factual beliefs.
We can generalize this point. The guidance provided by a principle of political morality is morally objectionable if the political actors it addresses are likely to take it to require or permit independently bad policies. This is so even if (i) those political actors are honest and competent speakers of the language in which the principle is formulated and (ii) the theories offered to justify the principle are consistent, have intuitively acceptable logical implications, and satisfy any of the other usual standards for assessing political theories. We argue that political philosophers have overlooked the normative message effectively sent by their principles to voters, legislators, and other key political actors. We call this message the broad meaning of such principles, the guidance they provide given its addressees’ factual beliefs. And we call our thesis that a principle’s broad meaning counts for or against its validity the Predictable-Use View.
The Predictive-Use View supports this methodological rule:
Suggestion for Theory Construction. Theorists should replace any political theory T, whose broad meaning includes an objectionable normative message N, with another theory, T*, that retains the plausible components of T’s broad meaning while ruling out N.
Frequently, T* will include a proviso that prevents perverse incentives from affecting policy making. Consider, for example, a conception of liberty as a political ideal according to which an individual is free just in case they are their own master and are not under the control of external (human or non-human) forces. In his classic discussion, Isaiah Berlin observes that this “positive” conception of liberty has been used to justify totalitarian regimes (Berlin 1958/2002). The Predictable-Use View takes the rhetoric employed by such regimes as evidence against the theory of positive liberty, and the Suggestion for Theory Construction recommends that the theory (assuming it is otherwise well-grounded) be suitably qualified. Thus, provisos aimed at safeguarding free speech, political pluralism, democratic elections, and the rule of law may prevent theories of positive freedom from acquiring the broad meanings that Berlin feared.
The Suggestion for Theory Construction promotes theoretical progress, beyond preventing theories from acquiring unpalatable broad meanings. The provisos it recommends play a heuristic role in reformulating the theories to reflect the weight of independent principles or values. Thus, the above proviso requiring that the promotion of positive freedom conform to the rule of law invites a reformulation of the ideal of positive freedom in terms of an underlying rationale, i.e. non-domination by rulers or other powerful individuals (the so-called “republican” conception of freedom (Pettit 1997)). This rationale seems less manipulable on behalf of totalitarian policies than a self-mastery that we could achieve if only the state repressed our base impulses.
References
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Isaiah Berlin, Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 [1958]).
G. A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).