An incrementalist approach to political philosophy. The case of heterogeneous rationality assumptions in theories of distributive justice

Abstract

The main goal of the thesis is to provide a framework for the pursuit of normative inquiries in the field of political philosophy, which bridges ideal and non-ideal theory by accommodating both types of approaches and by providing a blueprint for the transition between ideal and non-ideal theory. This blueprint is subsequently used to examine the various ways in which principles of distributive justice are dependent upon certain idealised assumptions and the ways in which such principles would be affected by the transition from ideal to non-ideal theory. A secondary goal of the thesis is to explore to what extent we can draw on various developments from social sciences (and particularly for this thesis, from neoclassical and behavioural economics) to engage in meaningful analyses of theories belonging to the field of political philosophy (and particularly for this thesis, theories of distributive justice). Aside from the provision of a theoretical background concerning the topic of distributive justice (chapter 2), the thesis consists of two main parts.In the first part (chapter 3), I propose and defend a novel methodological approach for pursuing normative inquiries, which aims to bridge ideal and non-ideal theory and provide a framework for the systematization of knowledge in political philosophy. The core ideas of the approach are that: (1) political philosophy should be concerned with both short term goals, such as addressing severe injustices in the present world and long term goals, such as moving towards gradually more just states of the world in the long-run and (2) an appropriate way to satisfy these aims in a systematic manner is to build a landscape of normative models through incremental derivation (i.e., making the assumptions of a model more or less fact-sensitive one at a time) and selecting to pursue the best path that we might take from mitigating problems of severe injustice in the current state of the world to the achievement of perfect justice. The subsequent chapters, which together compose the second part of the thesis, are then designed to expose various ways in which normative principles are dependent on certain assumptions, thereby illustrating the problems which may arise in the transition from ideal to non-ideal theory. All cases studied refer to the connection between principles of distributive justice and assumptions concerning rationality.In chapter 4 I challenge the Rawlsian assertion that each party will have a first-ranked preference for an identical set of principles of justice behind the veil of ignorance, claiming that the original position allows parties to choose on the basis of a plurality of conceptions of rationality and allows choices based on the assignment of different weights to social positions, which in turn may lead to a reasonable disagreement concerning the conception of justice selected. I then argue that this reasonable disagreement does not entail an abandonment of the contractualist project, but its reconstruction in the form of a two-stage process, where parties first construct an individual preference hierarchy for alternative conceptions of justice and then work towards the reconciliation of the divergent conceptions that are chosen in the first stage. Finally, I claim that the threshold prioritarian view is the most plausible candidate for selection in this reconciliatory stage, since it manages to address both the legitimate complaints of parties that would prefer a conception of justice focused on the most disadvantaged positions in society as well as the legitimate complaints of parties that would prefer a conception of justice in which less or no special weight is assigned to the worst-off positions. This result illustrates the more general claim that, in some cases, incrementally modifying the inputs of a normative model may lead to a change in the principles generated by that model.In chapter 5 I seek to assess the responses provided by several theories of sufficientarian justice in cases where heterogeneous assumptions concerning individual rationality are introduced. …