Feasibility as Deliberation-Worthiness

Abstract

Questions of feasibility are pervasive, divisive, and often normatively consequential, especially in politics. Take any important matter of public policy or institutional design: the introduction of a basic income; the achievement of a global emissions trading scheme; the relaxation of restrictions on immigration; the overhaul of corporate taxation; the legalization of recreational drugs; or whatever. In each case, claims about what is feasible and infeasible tend to loom large, generate significant differences of opinion, and to be treated as having an important bearing on what ought to be done. But how should we understand such claims? What is it that we are claiming when we claim that it is feasible or infeasible for a particular agent to achieve a particular outcome? And what does it take for such claims to be true?