Landsburg's characters tend toward the hypothetical — Benny the Burglar and Manny the Mugger; Jane the A student and Mary the B student; Albert and Alvin, two imperfect altruists — and his arguments, as he puts it at one point, can sound like "idle Sunday dorm-room chitchat".
It is this sense of Humanity as an end-in-itself on which Kant's arguments for imperfect duties rely.
So I leave thinking the Paris agreement – for the first time setting expectations for all nations and for the world – might just be a strong enough signal to give real momentum towards slowing global warming despite the dysfunctional international process and the imperfect national promises and the arguments over detail that will continue interminably at such conferences.
Imperfect though Trump may be, the argument goes, he has all the right enemies: Beltway insiders, academics, "social scientists, media pundits, and policy professionals," as Clarence Thomas's tutor John Marini wrote.
Essentially, the argument described it as imperfect but useful: A statistical convenience that reduced a complex relationship into something approximate, yet could provide guidance about risk and return under certain circumstances.
But the line was imperfect.
While the available data was imperfect, it did not undermine his central argument about widening inequality, he said.
But it seems doubtful such an argument – that the deal, while imperfect, is the least bad option on the table – would be likely to persuade Republican critics.
The argument that thorny issues require collaborative, imperfect compromise is intrinsic to the case for sticking with the EU.
The argument that the eternal consciousness is imperfect in everyone, but more developed in some, has important consequences for such criticisms.
