Feasibility: individual and collective

Journal article

Since there is so much we can do together – good and bad – we are subject to numerous normative requirements to perform certain actions and to abstain from others. In what follows I will argue that some intuitively feasible requirements, especially those that are collective, are not in fact feasible. I thereby aim to offer a revised account of what counts as a feasible action. In particular, I argue that we can best preserve the spirit of what is known as the conditional account of feasibility if we move to what I call the constrained account.

What is at stake in offering an account of feasibility is twofold. First, we gain conceptual intuitiveness – it’s better if the concepts we use seem intuitively right to us. Second, our account of feasibility has implications for the content of our normative requirements. This is so if, as many do, we accept that ‘ought’ implies ‘is feasible’. But it is also the case even if we reject it, just as long as we agree, as I think we should, that feasibility bears on the content or the status of what is required.

Authors: Stemplowska, Z

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: Social Philosophy and Policy
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 273-291
• Publication date: 2016-12-07
• Acceptance date: 2016-05-12
• DOI: 10.1017/S0265052516000273
• EISSN: 1471-6437
• ISSN: 0265-0525