Say one had a view about what justice is but did not see justice, as understood on that view, instantiated in the world. Would one conclude that one’s view of justice was mistaken? Not necessarily–else everyone on this blog would have to concede being in error. Our shared view–we have differences certainly, but we also share much in common–is certainly not instantiated in the world we live in.
Ok. Say one had a view about what justice is but did not see justice, as understood on that view, instantiated in the world nor plausibly realizable in the world. Now would one conclude that one’s view of justice was mistaken? Here, I think, my view differs from that of several of my co-bloggers. I still think the answer should be “not necessarily.” Of course, the view might be wrong–but that was true in the previous scenario as well.
The two scenarios are very different. BHLs that think concession is the only correct response in the second scenario but not in the first might say “look, if it were clearly demonstrated that a BHL society were impossible due to empirical facts (about human beings, economics, politics, or what-have-you), I would give up BHL.” (They would presumably say the same about libertarianism in general.) They would likely add something like “Of course, there is no clear demonstration of such a claim. Indeed, quite the opposite. Consider empirical facts A, B, and C; they clearly support the possibility of BHL.”
I agree with some version of that second claim–there is no good reason to think a BHL society is impossible on empirical grounds. But, as a BH-Ideal Theory-L, I also think that is beside the point. I would not necessarily stop thinking BHL was (or included) the right view of justice if that view could not be instantiated in the world we live in. I would give up that view if it was shown to be conceptually incoherent or to contradict other known facts (of a relevant sort) that are even more clearly right. (There may be other things that would make me give up on BHL, but I am not sure what they are.) Empirical facts, though, are not always (or usually) the sort of thing that can disprove normative claims.
That last sentence is weak. Intentionally so. Some people think that David Hume showed that one cannot go from an is to an ought. He actually did not show such a thing. Indeed, he did not even claim such a thing. He merely claimed that too many writers went too quickly from one to the other without careful thought. That is surely true. Still, I think there are times when one can go from an is to an ought. But not just any “is” will do it. That is, I don’t think just any empirical facts that make BHL impossible to instantiate would make it the wrong view of justice. There is impossible, after all, and impossible. I suppose I would agree that BHL is wrong if the empirical facts were such that it is necessarily impossible to instantiate BHL–meaning the empirical facts at issue are not themselves contingent. But that is not the sort of claim typically made by non-ideal theory opponents of BHL–those are rather about contingent empirical facts (or so I think).
I’ll close with a quote from G.A. Cohen, whose work I admire greatly even though I disagree with his politics. About ideal theory, I think he was right. With him, “I want to know what justice is whatever I or anyone else may think is the right form and amount of the contribution that justice should make to political and social practice. I personally happen also to be exercised by the latter question, but one need not be exercised by it in order to care about the first one” (2008, 307).
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