A Tale of Two Johns (Part 2)

The title of this post is the sequel to this earlier post about John Dewey and John Rawls.   But I will change one of the Johns in this post.  This post is about John Haldane and John Rawls, and the two different (though related) insights they advanced which have major implications for egalitarianism, which basically changed the trajectory of my career over the past 20 years.

As noted in my earlier post, Rawls was the focus of my PhD thesis back in 1999, and for a period of time (1997-2004) I considered myself "A Rawlsian".  During that time I published the following articles, broadly defending or refining Rawls's project:

Colin Farrelly, “Does Rawls Support the Procedural Republic?” Politics 19(1) (1999): 29-35.

Colin Farrelly, “Incentives and the Natural Duties of Justice” Politics 20(1) (2000): 19-24.

Colin Farrelly, “Justice and a Citizens’ Basic Income” Journal of Applied Philosophy 16(3) (1999): 283-296.

Colin Farrelly, “Public Reason, Neutrality and Civic Virtues” Ratio Juris: An International Journal of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law 12(1) (1999): 11-25.

Colin Farrelly, “Genes and Social Justice: A Rawslian Reply to Moore”, Bioethics 16(1) (2002): 72- 83.

Colin Farrelly, “The Genetic Difference Principle” American Journal of Bioethics, 4(2) (2004): W21-28.

Colin Farrelly, “Dualism, Incentives and the Demands of Rawlsian Justice” Canadian Journal of Political Science 38(3) (2005): 675-95.

Then, after I had more fully processed a number of critical developments that occurred in the early 2000s, such as the sequencing of the human genome (which inspired me to learn more about human genetics, evolutionary biology and biogerontology), and Sept 11th (2001), and  my switching from teaching in philosophy departments to political science (in 2001), I became the "non-ideal" critic of Rawls that I still am today.  The shift is most evident in these two older publications, and a more recent book chapter: 

Colin Farrelly, “Justice in Ideal Theory: A Refutation” Political Studies 55 (2007): 844–864.

Justice, Democracy and Reasonable Agreement (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007).

“The “Focusing Illusion” of Rawlsian Ideal Theory” in John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions (edited by Sarah Roberts-Cady and Jon Mandle) (Oxford University Press, 2020).

When I reflect upon my "Rawlsian past" I put the allure it had for me at the time to what was perhaps Rawls's most influential insight in political philosophy- some inequalities in life are the product of choice, and other inequalities are the product of chance.  Justice, for Rawls, was concerned only with mitigating the latter.  This is the position known as "luck egalitarianism", the dominant theory in analytic political philosophy during the 1980s and 1990s.  While I enjoyed following these debates at the time, I really wish the discipline had instead taken more seriously a much more profound, and important, insight from the evolutionary biologist John Haldane.

Haldane was one of a number of important biologists (Fisher, Hamilton, and Medawar) in the middle of the 20th century that made significant contributions to the biology of aging.  The critical insight Haldane made, which has been a focal point of my academic research for nearly the past 20 years, is expressed eloquently by him in the following passage from his 1963 book review of the life tables for England and Wales (1841-1960).  Haldane remarked that "Natural selection sees to it that genes causing early death or sterility are fairly rare.  On the other hand post-reproductive mortality seems to be genetically determined to a large extent." (J.B.S. Haldane, Journal of Genetics (1963) 58: 464.)  The image below depicts what Haldane was saying.

Haldane's sentiment expresses a similar version of Rawls's insight about luck egalitarianism, namely that some inequalities are unchosen- but Haldane's insight has profoundly more important empirical insights and practical consequences.  Here are a few of the former:

(1) we have a biology.

(2) that biology has a history (a history shaped by the interplay between environment and genes).  

(3) genes are the basic unit of physical and functional heredity.

(4) aging is a product of evolutionary neglect.

(5) evolutionary history influences the pattern of disease, frailty and disability we see over the course of the human lifespan. [the social significance of this has only recently been realized, as populations now age due to reductions in early and mid-life mortality and declining birth rates]

In terms of the practical and social implications of Haldane's insights, I have spent 2 decades exploring these issues in the following research projects:

Genetics and Ethics: An Introduction (Polity Books, 2018).

Biologically Modified Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

“Imagination and Idealism in the Medical Sciences of an Aging World”  Journal of Medical Ethics 2022.

Colin Farrelly, “Responsible Biology, Aging Populations and the 50th Anniversary of the “War on Cancer”” Biogerontology 2021 Aug;22(4):429-44. 

Colin Farrelly, “How Should We Theorize About Justice in the Genomic Era?” in Politics and the Life Sciences 40(1) (2021): 106-25. 

Colin Farrelly, ”50 Years of the War on Cancer: Lessons for Public Health and Geroscience” Geroscience. 2021 Jun;43(3):1229-123. 

Colin Farrelly, “COVID-19, Biogerontology and the Ageing of Humanity” The Journals of Gerontology. Series A, Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 2021, 76(8), e92–e96.

Colin Farrelly, “Aging, Geroscience and Freedom” Rejuvenation Research 22(2) 2019: 163-170.

“Insulating Soldiers from the Emotional Costs of War: An Ethical Analysis” forthcoming in Transhumanizing War: Performance Enhancement and the Implications for Policy, the Soldier, and Society (eds. C. Breede, S. von Hlatky and S. Bélanger) (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019).

Colin Farrelly, “Gene Patents and the Social Justice Lens” (commentary) American Journal of Bioethics 8(12) (2018) 49-51.

“Justice and Life Extension” in End-of-Life Ethics (edited by John Davis) (New York, NY: Routledge Publishing, 2016).

Colin Farrelly, “Empirical Ethics and the Duty to Extend the Biological Warranty Period” Social Philosophy and Policy 30 (2013): 480-503.

Colin Farrelly, “Normative Theorizing about Genetics” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 22(4) (2013): 408-419.

Colin Farrelly, “Why the NIH Should Create an Institute of Positive Biology” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 105 (2012): 412-15.

Colin Farrelly, “Biogerontology and the Intellectual Virtues” Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences 67(7) (2012): 734-46.

Colin Farrelly, “”Positive Biology” as a New Paradigm for the Medical Sciences” Nature’s EMBO Reports 13(2) (2012): 186-88.

Colin Farrelly, “Global Aging, Well-Ordered Science and Prospection” Rejuvenation Research 13(5) (2010):607-12.

Colin Farrelly, “Equality and the Duty to Retard Human Aging” Bioethics 24(8) (2010): 384-94.

Colin Farrelly, “Why Aging Research?” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1197 (2010): 1–8.

Colin Farrelly, “Mind the Gap: Senescence and Beneficence” Public Affairs Quarterly 24(2) (2010): 115-30.

Colin Farrelly, “Framing the Inborn Aging Process and Longevity Science” Biogerontology 11(3) (2010): 377-85.

Colin Farrelly, “Towards a More Inclusive Vision of the Medical Sciences” QJM: An International Journal of Medicine 102 (2009): 579-582.

Colin Farrelly, “Genetic Justice Must Track Genetic Complexity” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 17(1) (2008): 45-53.

Colin Farrelly, “Aging Research, Priorities and Aggregation” Public Health Ethics 1(3) (2008): 258-67.

Colin Farrelly, “Has the Time Come to Take on Time Itself?” British Medical Journal 337 (2008):147-48.

Colin Farrelly, “3 Wishes” Journal of Evolution and Technology 20(1) (2008): 23-28.

Colin Farrelly, “A Tale of Two Strategies: The Moral Imperative to Tackle Ageing” Nature’s EMBO Reports 9(7) (2008): 592-95.

whew... it has been quite the journey exploring these fascinating issues and seeing how my ideas have evolved over time!!  I have no regrets about stepping out of the theoretical armchair of ideal theory in 2005 and engaging in interdisciplinary research to tackle the real-world problems pertaining to human genetics, science policy and population aging.  And I feel like the journey is still only at the beginning stage for me.  There are so many other issues I would like to explore in the years to come. 

Haldane's insight compels one to adopt an interdisciplinary perspective, and the social and political implications of it are profound.  By contrast Rawls's insight now seems, if I am being open and honest, to be intellectually impoverished and politically inert. Perhaps it could have been the focus of a handful of journal papers over a 2-3 year period, but not something to debate and discuss for a few decades as a central problem for the discipline. 

Like in my original 2009 post "A Tale of Two Johns", I ask my readers to consider the following counterfactual...

Where would the field of political philosophy be today if the field had spent as much time and energy examining and debating Haldane's insight about how evolution impacts our life prospects as we have Rawls's luck egalitarianism?

Imagine if political philosophers had spent 20 years engaging with the social implications of the biology of aging rather than the abstract, conceptual dance initiated by luck egalitarianism.  The journals of the discipline would be littered with articles engaging with evolutionary biology, the social implications of population aging, and the fascinating technological implications of the genetic revolution and geroscience.  Instead we were left with a discipline that was ill-equipped to address science policy.  Perhaps the one issue that has gained traction in the last two decades is climate change, though that may have more to do with it's potential coherence to some of the conceptual, theoretical terrain of the abstract debates about justice than the complexities and nuance of the actual science and policy landscape.  But I digress...

I of course have a great deal of respect for the contributions of John Rawls himself, he was a great political philosopher (if I didn't think this, I wouldn't have spent so much of my time engaging with him as a thinker!).  My criticism is really of the dominance of the Rawls-industry that flourished for a number of decades from the 1970s into the early 2000s.  Things are different now.  But I think there are still important lessons to be learned by looking at the "opportunity costs" of ideal theory.  If we do not learn from the mistakes of the past, we are bound to repeat them again.... and again....!

Cheers, 

Colin