Moving from Deep Theory to the Real World
by Christopher Wellman
The Conversation
May 30th, 2008
John Ghazvinian and Andrei Illarionov have expressed concerns that implementing Wenar’s proposed plan might have considerable unintended consequences. Wenar has responded that his plan will actually trigger incentives to make the world more just. I must confess that, as a philosopher, I am in no position to adjudicate this dispute. It is worth asking, though, whether we should adopt Wenar’s proposal, even if we can predict that implementing it will risk making the world a less just place. In other words, if we assume that Wenar is right about the injustice of buying morally tainted products from China, is this sufficient to justify instituting the trust-and-tariff mechanism, no matter what the possible consequences?
I for one think the answer to this question is clearly “No.” It strikes me that one should not move from “deep theory” to “real-world institutional” analysis so quickly. Instead, one must always consider the likely consequences of how real-world actors will react to the potential changes in rules. And when doing this analysis, one must keep in mind that many agents in the real world are either irrational (or at least make decisions in conditions which are not ideally conducive to rational deliberation) or uninterested in complying with morality. To appreciate this point, consider an example from medical ethics. If one believes in personal autonomy as I do, then one believes that each of us enjoys a privileged position of moral dominion over our self-regarding affairs. And from this, it may follow that each of us is entitled to commit suicide, to have access to physician-assisted suicide, or even to have a physician perform voluntary active euthanasia on us. Assume that this is correct. Even so, it does not automatically follow that we should legalize voluntary active euthanasia. One might argue against legally protecting the moral right to voluntary active euthanasia in light of the negative consequences such a practice would have in the real world. In particular, because of the way that medicine is practiced and hospitals are run, it is likely that many physicians would perform these procedures without following all of the requisite rules. Secondly, because family members might be more concerned with the extent to which mounting medical bills are eating into their inheritance, they might pressure the physician into killing elderly patients even when the patient herself has not given her unequivocal, morally valid consent. Thus, concerns like these explain why there is nothing necessarily inconsistent about simultaneously believing that there is a moral right to voluntary active euthanasia and that this moral right should not be legally protected.
If my analysis of the euthanasia case is correct, then there is room for one to agree with Wenar about the injustice of the current situation and yet still deny that we should institute his recommended solution. I do not know that John Ghazvinian and Andrei Illarionov are right about the unintended consequences Wenar’s policy would have, but I am convinced that Wenar’s moral diagnosis of the status quo is correct, so at the very least it is incumbent upon us to study the likely consequences of various attempts to ameliorate the current situation.
