Public policies come in many forms and address an enormous variety of subjects. Depending on the nature of the issue in question, policy makers may therefore find it useful, perhaps even essential, to consult experts across a wide range of fields: economists, psychologists, historians, physicians, statisticians, environmental scientists, chemists, engineers, legal scholars, education specialists, nutritionists, diplomats, just to name a few. Where in all of this do philosophers fit? What distinctive contributions can they make to deliberations about public policy? This Handbook is an attempt to answer that question by illustrating the many ways that philosophical reasoning can fruitfully be brought to bear on matters of public policy.
One distinctive contribution philosophers can make to thinking about public policy takes place at a relatively theoretical level: they can help us think more carefully and critically about abstract and general moral principles that most people find themselves appealing to across a broad range of public policy contexts. Most people, for example, have at least a general sense that considerations of distributive justice are important in many areas of public policy, but they may not have thought more specifically about what exactly distributive justice means. Most people also have a general sense that equality matters in many public policy contexts, but they may not have thought clearly about just what equality amounts to or about what exactly it is that should be equalized. Chapter 31 provides a careful analysis of a variety of principles of distributive justice that might be thought most appropriate for informing economic policy and takes the reader through some of the apparent strengths and limitations of each. Similarly, Chap. 32 helps the reader work their way through a variety of forms of egalitarianism with the goal of determining the conception of equality that should be viewed as most important in a liberal society, and Chap. 33 in part pursues a similar project with respect to gender equality in particular. In other cases, many people may not even be aware that conclusions about some particular policy matter depend in part on taking a stance on some more abstract question, and it may take a philosopher to come along and reveal the connection between the concrete and the abstract. Chapter 49, for example, discusses the ways in which different policy positions regarding the controversial practice of surrogacy may turn out to depend on different theoretical views about the metaphysical relationship between pregnant woman and fetus.
While these kinds of philosophical contributions often take place within a general framework largely abstracted from specific policy issues, there are also a number of important ways that philosophers can more directly help us make progress when thinking about more concrete questions. One way they can do this is by using the tools of philosophical argument and analysis to try to defend a particular position on a given policy issue. Many of the contributions to this volume do this. Some focus on relatively specific issues such as imposing mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses (Chap. 5), banning computer-generated child pornography (Chap. 29), and granting pharmaceutical companies temporary exclusive user rights to the clinical data they use to show that their products warrant market approval (Chap. 44). Others aim to stake out a specific position on relatively broader questions such as whether religion should receive special protection in our legal system relative to non-religious forms of conscientious belief (Chap. 22) and whether non-human animals should have political standing (Chap. 23).
While arguing for a specific policy position clearly makes an important contribution to discussion of the particular policy issue in question, arguing against a particular position on a specific matter of public policy can also prove extremely valuable. In the current debate over physician-assisted suicide, for example, most people hold either that it should be illegal across the board or that it should be legal, but only in cases where the person who wishes to die is terminally ill. Chapter 53 argues that this second position should be rejected. The argument of this chapter maintains that if there are good reasons to permit physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill people, these reasons are also good reasons to permit it for all competent adults who wish to die. The debate, on this account, should not be between allowing physician-assisted suicide for none and allowing it for the terminally ill but between allowing it for none and allowing it for all. The conclusion of the argument of this chapter does not tell us whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed for none or allowed for all but by trying to show that the increasingly popular intermediate position is inconsistent and untenable, it nonetheless makes an important contribution to resolving the debate over physician-assisted suicide.
And, indeed, even arguing not against a particular position but just against a particular argument for a particular position can produce important results. The other chapter on physician-assisted dying in this volume (Chap. 52), for example, focuses exclusively on one kind of slippery slope argument that has often been defended by those who are opposed to medically assisted dying. The chapter argues against this kind of argument and, in doing so, extracts several important lessons that can usefully be extended to many other policy debates in which slippery slope arguments have played a role. A number of other entries in this collection also help us make progress in particular policy debates by trying to rule out certain arguments or certain positions even if they do not purport to thereby rule in only one.
And sometimes philosophical analysis and argumentation can help move a public policy discussion forward without taking a particular stand on any of the options currently on the table. One way it can do this is by helping to identify theoretical criteria by which any particular option in a particular policy debate should be judged. Chapter 15, for example, draws a distinction between ideal theory and non-ideal theory, identifies some objections to ideal theory, argues that prominent arguments on both sides of the open borders debate are subject to some of these objections, and concludes that any satisfactory position on issues of migration justice must therefore satisfy the methodological desiderata of non-ideal theory. This conclusion by itself does not tell us whether we should support or oppose a policy of open borders, but it does tell us where to look for an answer and, just as importantly, where not to look.
Another way philosophers can help move a policy debate forward without endorsing one side over another is simply to help us better understand the nature of the considerations that can be offered in support of each side. The debate over permitting health care professionals to refuse to provide certain services that would ordinarily be a part of their professional responsibilities on the grounds that they are conscientiously opposed to them, for example, at times involves appeals to a wide variety of considerations and values that can be difficult to keep track of. Chapter 46 is valuable largely for providing a critical survey of some of the most influential arguments that have been offered on both sides of that debate, and a number of other chapters in this collection are useful, at least in part, for the same reason.
In addition to the variety of ways in which philosophers can contribute to discussions of public policy, there are also a variety of methods they can turn to when doing so. One method starts by appealing to a general theory of some sort and then tries to extract from that theory a conclusion about some particular policy issue. Chapter 37, for example, largely draws on Marxās theory of credit in an attempt to illuminate contemporary problems surrounding student loan debt. Chapter 47 turns to the pragmatism of John Dewey for insights into a number of p...