Among the many things philosophers disagree about, one that I find interesting is Realist and PossibilityistBroadly speaking, possibilists believe that we should do our best. Yes A realist believes you should do the best you can. actually Even if you could technically do it better, given your own imperfections, you shouldn’t.To see how the disagreement plays out, consider the following scenario.
I was playing a tennis match with Bob and he beat me easily. I have a short temper and a bad temper, so I want to hit Bob over the head with my tennis racket, but of course that’s not a good idea. Let’s say there are three possible situations:
Best case scenario, I walk up to the net, shake Bob’s hand, and congratulate him on a good game in a sportsmanlike way. The less-than-ideal scenario is that I get angry and storm off the tennis court. And the worst case scenario is that I go up to Bob and hit him over the head with my tennis racket. I know my personality well enough to be certain that if I walked up to Bob right now, I would get angry and hit him over the head. That would be metaphysically speaking. Yes I have been advised not to do this, but this is exactly what I do. Should I stay away from the net?
A possibilist would say the best I can do is probably Rather than walk up to the net and shake hands in a sportsmanlike way, the realist believes that, given the facts of my personality and weaknesses, the best I can do is actually You shouldn’t go near the net because you’ll just get angry and walk off the court.
This issue is often raised in debates over utilitarian and consequentialist ethics. Suppose a philosopher named Setar Pinger concluded that if you don’t take the highest paying job you can find, work as many hours as you can before you drop, and donate no more money than is necessary to maintain a basic standard of living, then you are morally no different from a serial killer. And suppose that, given plausible features of human psychology, if you demand that people meet this standard, they will be overwhelmed and stop donating to charity. But suppose instead that you demand that people meet more moderate standards, such as Do what you can If you take the pledge and donate 10% of your income to effective charities, the real results will be more money donated and more lives saved. Possibilityisthe would encourage people to work like madmen and live like monks. Realisthe will urge people to take the aforementioned pledge.
Scott Alexander seems to describe himself as a realist, although he doesn’t use the term. this post. He acknowledges that much of what goes on in the meat industry is morally unacceptable. He also says that he “tried to become a vegetarian for a long time” but that it was “really hard” and he “gave up many times.” But then, rather than becoming a vegetarian, he decided to follow “more relaxed rules,” namely, “I can’t eat any animals except fish at home, but I can eat meat (except chicken) in restaurants. generally I was able to stick to that rule, and now I eat a lot less meat than I used to.”
A possibilist would say that Alexander should stop eating meat altogether, while a realist would say that Alexander should stick to looser rules. In a very realist tone, Alexander says, “If I’m right that these are the strictest rules I can follow, then I don’t see whose interest it is to remind me that I’m trash. If I were denied the right to feel okay about doing half-heartedly good deeds, then I would not do any good deeds at all, and that would be even worse for me.” and It’s even worse for the animals.”
This divide seems to me very similar to the differences in how people think about what government should do. Here, too, there is a possibilist-realist divide. For example, I once Written Bernie Sanders argues that if the government taxed Bill Gates $100 billion, the government “could end homelessness and provide clean drinking water to every person in this country” and Gates “would still be a billionaire.” Sanders is speaking very much like a possibilist here. He says the best thing the government could do is probably It would be very nice if $100 billion could achieve this, but the government should actually receive that $100 billion.
My criticism of his argument, on the other hand, was that I took a more pragmatic view. After all, I said, “If Sanders is right about the cost of ending homelessness, the federal government could completely end homelessness in America for just 1.7% of what it already spends a year.” But I realized that homelessness has not completely disappeared.
It’s worth noting that Sanders did not claim that the federal government could end homelessness and provide clean drinking water to everyone at a cost of $100 billion. AnnualHe argued that both issues were completely solvable. one time It would cost $100 billion. Sanders believes the government probably Although they have solved the homeless problem many times with their vast resources, actually He did so for a variety of reasons, but at the same time, he believes that whether the government will collect an additional $100 billion in taxes should be evaluated against real-world experience, not against what the government might do. actually It’s not about what’s the best thing the government can do, probably Perform according to his ideal standards.
Another postScott Alexander evaluates the possibility of taxing billionaires to produce positive outcomes, and again takes a very similar realist perspective.
Two of the billionaires I most admire in philanthropy, Dustin Moskovitz and Kali Tuna, have made significant contributions to criminal justice reform. The organizations they fund concluded that many innocent people languish in jail for months because they can’t afford bail, and that some people plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit because they need to get out of jail to work or take care of their children, even if it means they have a criminal record. They funded short-term efforts to help these people afford bail, as well as long-term efforts to reform the bail system. One of the charities they donate to is Bronx Freedom FundThey found that 92% of suspects who don’t receive bail assistance plead guilty and end up with a criminal record. But if they’re given enough bail to receive bail assistance until trial, over half of the charges are dropped. This is exactly the kind of work everyone says we need to break the cycle of mass incarceration and poverty, and it’s working very well. I’ve donated to the charity myself, but of course I can only give a fraction of what Moskovitz and Tuna manage.
If Moskovitz and Tuna’s money went to the government, would it accomplish the same goal in a more democratic and publicly guided way? No. That money would be used to lock up these people, to hire more prosecutors to force them to plead guilty, and to hire more prison guards to abuse and harass them. The government already spends $100 billion on maintaining the prison state, seven times the value of Tuna and Moskovitz’s combined fortune. Every yearThis completely overshadows what little money, if any, is being spent on addressing the ills of the prison state. Getting rid of Tuna and Moskovitz does not result in civically responsible bail reform. It only ensures that all of the money is making the problem worse, instead of the status quo where the overwhelming majority of the money is being spent on making the problem worse, and only a tiny amount is being spent on improving it.
However compelling you find realist thinking, it seems to me that there is probably a great deal of overlap in the tendency to view public policy decisions through the lens of concepts like public choice economics, or to evaluate economic regulation with regulatory capture theory rather than a public good theory of regulation. Just as James Buchanan described public choice as evaluating politics without the romance, realist philosophers hold that action should be guided by a similarly unromantic view of human nature.
