The Tyranny of the Ideal

by Gaus, Gerald;

indignation, 181

  information markets, 263

  inherent justice, 9–11, 41, 51, 62, 66, 76, 105, 107, 140, 242

  injunctive rules, 212–15

  innovation, 98, 175, 197

  institutional fundamentalism, 21, 178

  institutions, xix, 13, 19–21, 24–26, 33, 43, 52, 61, 67, 77, 86–90, 101, 141, 145, 149, 153, 178, 220; based on moral framework, 180; claims that they are judged in light of ideal justice, 5; as forming common social world, 177; in ideal theory, 4; need to both preserve and update, 239; and niti, 158; and NK optimization, 64–65, 136; of Open Society maximally friendly to diversity, 244; space of in Open Society, 222; in utopian thought, 63; in well-ordered society, 245

  intransitivity of reform, 85

  intuitions, 27–28, 36, 237, 248–49

  Jubb, R., 2, 36

  jurisdictions, 198ff. See also rights

  justice, 4–8, 11, 13, 21–26, 55, 72–112, 115, 121–30, 133, 139–53, 164, 173, 191, 216, 230, 249; agreement on among evaluation normalized perspectives, 107; anti-technology conviction about, 183; categorical judgments of, 48; changing views of, 122; claims that humans are not up to, 249; comparative, 5, 23; and correlated equilibrium, 223; definite and normalization, 154; determinate, 150ff; distributive, 202; dreams of, 12; eligible perspectives on, 157; eligible views of, 174; endorsed in a common social world, 178; experiments about in Open society, 196; as fairness, 5, 22, 152, 154, 208; ideals of derived from human condition, 250; incompleteness of, 156; interperspectival, 174–75; intuitions about, 28; is up to us, 249; judgments of under full normalization, 173; knowledge of is changeable, 248; landscape of in ideal theories, 243; liberal view of, 19, 152; local v. ideal, xix; niti v. nyaya approaches to, 158; as one of many virtues, 26; optimizing perspective on, 215; and pairwise judgments, 8; paraphernalia of the practice, 16; pluralism of views of, 162; as the preeminent virtue of social institutions, 25; prime, 16; provides framework for diverse moral perspectives, 174; as responsive to configuration of diversity, 175; and reversibility, 170; search for a normalized perspective on, 150; Sen’s full theory of, 157; supposed accountability and so is inconsistent with optimizing stance, 216; surrealist, 13; and theory of second best, 15; as a vector of all the eligible perspectives, 174, 199; view that it must be reflected in law, 206. See also ideal justice

  justice, scalar, 46–48, 255–57

  justice scoring, 43–51, 55–6, 63, 65–7, 76, 80, 99, 116, 128–9, 132, 160

  Kallgren, C., 212

  Kant, I., 22–23, 249

  Kauffman, S., 65, 68, 72, 113

  Kautsky, K., 2

  Kavka, G., xv

  Kenyon, T., 2, 4

  Kepler, J., 35

  Keynes, J., 52, 253–55

  King, M., 12, 15

  Kirk, R., 137

  Kogelmann, B., xxi

  Kohlberg, L., 171

  Kotkavirta, J., 177

  Kuhn, T., 34

  Kumar, K., 3, 91–3

  Lancaster, K., 14

  Landemore, H., xv, 112, 115–17, 119, 127–29, 134

  Lapham, V., 188

  law, 22, 90, 206–7, 214, 222

  Lawford-Smith, H., 7, 14, 26, 31, 36, 45, 57, 81

  left-libertarianism, 146. See also bleeding heart libertarianism; libertarianism

  legitimacy, 153

  Lehrer, K., xxi

  Lenin, V., 143

  liberal/liberalism, 19, 27, 35, 89, 96–97, 122–25, 134–36, 138, 143–47, 152, 163, 168, 220; as accommodating diversity per se, 176; communities of inquiry 96ff, 145–9; based on natural liberty, 191; family of views, 152, 173; framework of Open Society, 174, 243; justice can be endorsed from a variety of comprehensive views, 162; not necessarily in support of open society, 233; perspective, 168; public social world of, 177; subjects in Haidt’s studies, 237; theory of public reason, 244

  libertarianism, 64, 109, 136–38, 146, 185. See also bleeding heart libertarianism; left-libertarianism

  liberty, 137, 187ff. See also freedom; natural

  liberty like-mindedness, 101ff

  Lincoln, A., 57–58

  Lipsey, R., 14

  List, C., 20

  local improvements in justice, 1, 82–83, 105, 142, 246–47

  local optima/optimum, 67–69, 72, 81, 84, 87, 100, 109ff

  Locke, J., 121–22

  Lorenz, E., 69

  low-dimensional landscapes. See Mount Fuji landscapes

  Macedo, S., 191, 207

  Machiguenga, 205

  MacIntyre, A., 148

  Mack, E., 146, 216

  Mackie, G., 206, 212

  Maddox, W., 252

  Majone, G., 30, 33

  Malthus, T., 32, 33

  Manchester School, 124

  Mao, 88

  maps, 1, 3, 85

  mapping function, 43–44, 47–50, 53, 56, 63–64, 67, 80, 92, 99, 107–8, 116, 122, 131, 155, 158, 173

  Mapuche, 205

  market socialism, 125, 135

  markets, 202ff

  Marx, K., 19, 77

  Marxian, 143

  Marxism, xviii, 138, 160

  Maximal Precision Requirement, 70ff

  maximally rugged optimization landscapes. See high dimensional landscapes

  maximin reasoning, 151

  May, K. O., 189

  McKelvey, B., 68

  Meade, J., 72

  meaningful structure of domain, 51, 53–54, 99, 107ff, 112, 121

  Medin, D., 252

  Menger, C., 137

  Mercier, H., 186, 206, 229

  metric of distance. See distance of social worlds

  Meyer, F., 137

  Mikhail, J., 187, 192

  Mill, J., 33, 88–90, 100–101, 103, 124, 137, 163, 165, 169, 187–88, 239

  Miller, D., 13

  misogyny, 164

  Mockus, A., 181, 207

  model/modelling, xv–xx, 10, 22, 29ff, 38, 44, 50–51, 68, 77–80, 92–94, 107, 111, 116, 119, 123–8, 131, 134, 169, 207, 219, 262; attuned to current world, 79; of complex systems, 80; error inflation in, 81; expanding neighborhood, 81; and feasibility, 34, 56; of Hadfield and Weingast, 207; as ideal in economics, 38; of ideal theory, 242; interaction of dimensions, 67; in mapping function, 44, 92; Muldoon’s, 166, 172; necessarily incomplete, xvii; of normative change, 186; not to be confused with actual social worlds, 77; predictive, 17, 72, 94–95 103, 117–19, 243, 261–63, 50, 95; of similarity, 55; replaced in social experiments, 94; roles of evaluative standards and principles of justice in, 49; Sen’s, 39; small world ring models, 147; social contract, 169; as tales, xvi; of tolerance based on Ricardo’s theory of trade, 219; task of mapping function, 44, 116; used in CI procedure, 23; as using abstraction and idealization, 37

  modularity, 135ff, 146

  Moehler, M., xv, 168, 222

  moral constitution. See public moral constitution

  moral improvement, 145–47, 216–18, 226, 229, 241, 248. See also progress

  More, T., 2, 4, 33, 88, 262

  Morreau, M., 52, 254–7

  Mount Fuji landscapes, 62–5, 72ff, 120, 121–22

  Mráz, A., xxi

  Mueller, D., 201

  Muldoon, R., xv, xxi, 43, 69, 147, 153, 164–69, 172–5, 202, 219, 235

  Müller, J., xxi

  Mullin, W., 247

  Munger, M., xx

  Muslims, 169, 172. See also religious perspectives

  Nash bargaining, 168

  Nash equilibrium, 224, 229

  Natural Liberty, 197ff

  neighborhood(s), 74–84, 87–9, 94–5, 101–3, 106, 115, 120–21, 124, 128, 130, 141–42, 217, 242; bringing ideal within, 121; convergence of models within., 94; disputes about, 99; expanding, 89ff, 95–99, 103, 142; related to distance metric, 100; utopia brought within it, 123

  Neighborhood Constraint, 81, 90, 95–98, 100–105, 115, 128–30, 141–44, 242

  Neighborhood Diversity Dilemma, 116

  networks, 146–47, 185–86, 199, 217–18, 221, 230, 246

  New Harmony,
91–92

  New Lanark, 90, 92

  Newton, I., 148

  Nichols, S., xx, 192

  niti, 21, 158

  NK optimization, 65–67, 108

  Norenzayan, A., 252

  normative expectations, 179–80, 183, 190, 197, 207, 212–13, 218, 224, 227–28, 230, 234. See also expectations

  normalization, 104–7, 142–57, 161, 165–68, 200, 216; claims that some amount of required for any theory of justice, 157; as fragile basis of social life, 232–33; and the harm principle, 164; inherent to socialism, 201; minimal degree appears required by Open Society, 222; not basis of common social world, 178; not presupposed by markets, 202; partial, 150; partial in ideal theory, 105ff; partial in Rawls’s later work, 153; in public reason views, 168; Rawls on 42ff; required for well-ordered society, 154, 245–47; of secular thought, 162–63; supposed by the social contact, 144; and use of disease labels, 164; in western ethics, 164

  norms, xxi, 15, 59, 77, 171, 206, 212–13, 221–22, 229, 235, 238. See also descriptive norms; injunctive rules

  Nozick, R., 225

  nyaya, 158

  O’Neill, M., 72

  O’Neill, O., 36–37

  Open Society, xvi, xviii, xix, 141, 148–50, 150–240, 244, 858–58; allows one to better know one’s ideal, 218; and the anti-technology conviction, 183; arose in commercial cities, 204, 219; based on a morality of prohibitions, 198; based on Natural Liberty, 187ff; characterized by deep diversity, 149; contains republican communities, 146; does not require people to renounce their perspectives on justice, 216; dynamism of, 169ff; as framework for inquiry, 243; as liberal society, 176; liberty is fundamental to, 187; life is not always comfortable in, 246ff; maintained by diversity, 230ff; as maximally friendly to diversity, 244; as a moral achievement of the first order, xix; as a small-world network, 147; moral decision making in, 194ff; moralities of residual prohibition are hostile to, 197; nature of diversity it must accommodate, 165; new act types constantly arising in, 194; normative improvement in, 186; no shared ideal in, 147; no single analysis that accounts for all the dynamics of rule change in, 186; not itself a community of inquiry, 146; place of distributional questions in, 201; polycentric institutions of, 185ff; provides framework for moral inquiry, 217; requires a public social world, 178; requires stability and flexibility, 237; role of markets in, 202; seeks to accommodate two realms of diversity, 174; socialism unsuited to, 201; social space of, 220ff, 244; some liberal societies do not qualify as, 172ff; worries about instability in, 230

  optimization, 39, 50–53, 63–73, 78, 80–83, 92, 103, 106, 108, 112–14, 131, 210, 243

  optimizing stance, 215–19, 222, 232, 244ff

  option space of ideal theories, 36–40, 43, 54

  oracle, 127, 128

  orient/orientation, 4, 11–17, 26, 29, 35–41, 46, 52, 57–62, 67, 73, 76–78, 82–83, 86, 90–92, 101, 104, 112, 127, 141, 144

  Orientation Condition, 2, 40–41, 51–62, 67, 72–74, 83–84, 103–5, 127, 140ff, 241, 251

  original position, xv, 24, 49, 151–53, 208, 231; as forging common social world, 177; as idealizing, 37; multiple versions of in Rawls’s later work, 153; as normalizing, 245

  Orwell, G., 51

  Ostrom, E., xxii, 179, 184, 186, 214, 222

  Ostrom, V., xxii, 184, 186, 214

  overall evaluation task, 44, 116

  Owen, R., 90–93

  Owen, W., 93

  Page, S., xxi, 43, 53, 69, 94–99, 106–7, 109, 111–35, 139, 144, 146, 199, 225, 231, 236, 255, 261, 263

  paradise, 3–4, 20, 39, 88, 144, 247. See also utopia

  parameters (in models and experiments), 30, 34–36, 40, 60, 89 103

  Pareto criterion, 14, 151, 156–57, 160, 162, 175, 214, 232

  Parfit, D., 74

  Passmore, J., 148

  pass-the-baton dynamic. See handing-off-the baton dynamic

  Perestroika, 133

  perfect justice. See ideal justice; global optimum

  permissions, 192–98, 209

  perspective(s), 43–55, 61–65, 76, 79–80, 86, 92–94, 103–12, 119, 128, 136, 168, 201, 225, 256, 263; change of in Lockean revolution, 122; Christian, 161; common projections of, 160; creates a landscape as it explores, 95; determines classificatory scheme, 70; distance metric as element, 54; diversity of in Muldoon’s social contract, 66ff; elements of, 45, 99, 114, 116, 146; evaluation normalized, 107, 123; excluded, 222ff; exploring through diversity, 89–90; and handing-off-the baton dynamic, 111ff; Hong-Page conception inappropriate to ideal theory, 130; ideals in as a source of defection from public moral constitution, 233; identified by an ideal theory, 102; inherently incomplete, 85; and innovators, 196; internally diverse, 94; integrated nature of, 131; gains from others in Open Society, 187; generating a similarity ordering, 251ff; learning from others, 135–6; maximally precise judgments in, 70; normalization, 105, 150–4 173; Ownite, 91; problems of communication among, 130; of reform and order, 237ff; revisionary, 230; similarity element, 52; underlying structure of, 69; what constitutes learning is internal to it, 243

  Pettit, P., 20, 56

  Physiocrats, 124

  Plato/Platonic, xviii, 3, 29, 87–88, 102, 140, 248–49

  pluralism, 154–5, 162, 249

  point of view. See perspective(s)

  Pol Pot, 88

  political liberalism, 152–53, 161, 173

  political philosophy, theory choice in, 35

  polycentrism, 184ff, 218–21

  polygamy, 232–33

  Popper, K., vi, xviii, 72, 84–85, 87–88, 106, 134, 136, 141, 170, 187, 248

  possibility, 3, 30, 35

  possible worlds, 2, 30–31, 45, 76, 85; built by models, xvii; in ideal theory, 6; and parameters, 30; tales of in models, xvi

  precautionary principle, 197

  predictive diversity, 94–97, 119, 139, 262ff

  predictive models, 80–81, 93–99, 117–19, 130–33, 138ff, 141, 262–63

  principle-defined ideal, 18

  principles of closure, 187ff

  principles of justice, 18–20, 24–28, 31, 40, 49, 50, 76, 95, 99, 245; agreement on is a mirage, 246; disagreement about not the sole root of moral diversity, 161; diversity of in Rawls’s partially normalized theory, 173; instability of in Muldoon’s social contract, 172; multiple in Sen’s theory, 155; political liberalism generates competition among, 154; as selected by normalized choosers, 150; sharing of as public knowledge in a well-ordered society, 153

  probability distribution of social realizations, 34, 50

  Proceed with Justification Principle, 196–97

  progress, 32, 85–86, 148, 239

  prohibition(s), 64, 92, 187ff, 193, 196–98, 209

  property, 72, 99, 125–26, 135, 138, 160, 171, 178, 201, 209. See also jurisdictions

  property-owning democracy, 72, 99, 125

  proximity of social worlds, 9–11, 40, 51, 54, 105, 140. See also distance of social worlds

  Ptolemy, 35

  public moral constitution, 177–84, 213, 217, 243, 247; based on socially eligible rules, 215; as basis of practice of responsibility, 229; changing, 218, 226ff; claim that a liberal one might only give permissions, 192; of the closed society, 195; denies the claim of any perspective to implement its ideal, 218; determines fairness of market rules, 204; how it can be endorsed by various perspectives on justice, 208ff; ideal, 183; incentives to defect from, 234ff; imperfect coordination on, 223ff; job of coordinating our normative and empirical expectations, 183; jurisdictional rights in, 200; many levels of, 187; moral improvement of, 186, 229; not a mere social fact, 184; not equated with a specific perspective, 179; provides basis for reactive attitudes, 182; provides basis for sound legislation, 207; provides framework of coordination, 183; as public social world, 178; reducing complexity of, 199; relation to constitutional political economy, 179; relation to the political constitution, 206; requires both stability and flexibility, 231, 235; as the result of coordination, 225; should be decisive, 190; sustained by a practic
e of mutual responsibility, 181; as a system of expectations, 181; that all can live with, 220

  public reason, xx, 88, 169, 207; dominant view based on normalization, 168; implications of existence requirement, 224; indeterminacy of in political liberalism, 154; a Kantian version rejecting natural liberty, 196; point of in political liberalism, 152; Sen’s theory as instance of, 154; as source of public social world, 179; as theory of public social world, 244

  public social world, 177–78, 183, 210, 220, 243–44; alienation from, 222; as artificial, 178; indeterminacy of justifications of, 245; many do not feel at home in, 248; must be relatively stable for open society, 179; not simply a matter of what can be justified, but what has been created, 184; small, 185. See also public moral constitution

  punishment, 206, 213, 217, 222, 229, 233–4

  Quong, J., 168, 191

  Räikkä, J., 31, 61

  Rand, A., 51

  Rawls, J., xix, xxi, 3–5, 9, 20–26, 29–30, 35, 40–44, 50, 59, 63, 72–76, 83, 88, 124–25, 140–44, 149, 151–57, 161–62, 165, 168–69, 171–79, 187–88, 208, 210, 220–22, 230–31, 244–45, 249; on aims of political philosophy, 35; belief that comprehensive views interpret the world in fundamentally different ways, 162; claim that ideal theory helps with difficult cases, 4; claim that normalization is feature of social contract 42ff; claim that we should suppose the parties are bound through an unpredictable future, 169; on closed systems, 176; on constructing public social world, 243; conviction that ideal justice provides guidance for thinking about justice in our nonideal societies, 83; on depth of diversity, 157, 161; disarray of political liberalism project, 153; disintegration of concept of well-ordered society, 153; does not hold that the two principles are just in all social worlds, 24; on economic systems, 124; on ethics of creation, 30; on the family as part of basic structure, 20; falsely said to originate ideal theory, 2; on fashioning social worlds, 177; ideal as a long-term goal, 4, 40, 59, 73, 140, 245; idea of a neighborhood, 74ff; on the idea of social worlds, 177ff; the insight of that exercise of free reason leads to disagreement, 149; insistence that contract cannot be renegotiated, 171; interpretation of Kant, 22–23; on limited social space of liberalism, 220ff; on movement away from the ideal, 5; naturalistic theodicy of, 248; and natural liberty, 191; normalization as fundamental to the social contract, 144; O’Neill’s criticism of, 37; original position as mapping function, 48; on principles of closure, 187; on stability, 230–31; suggests idea of a perspective, 43; trajectory of work regarding normalization, 150; two principles, 20, 24; utopia as institutional, 63