The concept of feasibility and its role in moral and political philosophy
This thesis concerns the nature of the concept of feasibility and its role in constraining moral and political philosophy: to what extent and in what way facts about feasibility ought to constrain what moral and political theory say. I begin in my first chapter by giving an account of feasibility, that is, by attempting to understand what we mean when we say that some outcome is or isnât feasible. I argue against the various attempts that have been made in the literature to give a binary definition (e.g. Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, RĂ€ikkĂ€). There is a multiplicity of different possible sharpenings of the term âfeasibleâ, no single one of which is obviously privileged. Different sharpenings hold fixed different ranges of facts, making different sets of proposals feasible. In the remainder of the thesis, I go on to relate this account of feasibility to moral and political theory. I argue that it is not clear which sharpenings of âfeasibilityâ constrain which sorts of moral theory. I engage with the literature on âideal theoryâ, arguing that theory constrained only by expansive (permissive) sharpenings of âfeasibilityâ (which is one thing that could be meant by âideal theoryâ) is useful
Guillery, D. A.
The concept of feasibility and its role in moral and political philosophy. This thesis concerns the nature of the concept of feasibility and its role in constraining moral and political philosophy: to what extent and in what way facts about feasibility ought to constrain what moral and political theory say. I begin in my first chapter by giving an account of feasibility, that is, by attempting to understand what we mean when we say that some outcome is or isnât feasible. I argue against the various attempts that have been made in the literature to give a binary definition (e.g. Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, RĂ€ikkĂ€). There is a multiplicity of different possible sharpenings of the term âfeasibleâ, no single one of which is obviously privileged. Different sharpenings hold fixed different ranges of facts, making different sets of proposals feasible. In the remainder of the thesis, I go on to relate this account of feasibility to moral and political theory. I argue that it is not clear which sharpenings of âfeasibilityâ constrain which sorts of moral theory. I engage with the literature on âideal theoryâ, arguing that theory constrained only by expansive (permissive) sharpenings of âfeasibilityâ (which is one thing that could be meant by âideal theoryâ) is useful
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