Coherence in Thought and Action by Paul Thagard

Author:Paul Thagard [Thagard, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

enormously in the degree to which they satisfy these constraints, which raises the question of what kind of government is best. Given the evidence that the best of modern states contribute substantially to freedom, flourishing, and fairness and the lack of evidence that anarchism in any form would even come close to performing so well, we can dispense with the skeptical question of whether the state is justified at all and move on to the much more interesting and important question of what kind of state is best.

10 WHAT KIND OF STATE?

The question of whether the state is justified is of purely philosophical interest, since hardly anyone seriously considers the complete abolition of the state. But the question of what kind of state to have is very much alive in many contexts. For example, in the wake of the collapse of communism, people in Eastern European countries are faced with deciding what kind of government should replace it.

Should they move towards a kind of laissez-faire capitalism at the opposite extreme from socialism, or should they look for a middle road closer to social democracies such as Sweden, or should they revert to a version of socialism without the extreme restrictions on freedom found under communism? Choices in most Western states are less extreme, ranging between social democracy and welfare capitalism in Western European states and Canada, and between welfare capitalism and laissez-faire capitalism in the United States. We can now explore how freedom, flourishing, and fairness fare in various societies to help answer the question of what kind of state is best.

Deciding what kind of state to adopt is primarily a matter of deliberative coherence subject to the three F-constraints. But what are the options? Derbyshire and 154

CHAPTER FIVE

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