Reflective Equilibrium and Moral Consistency Reasoning

Abstract

It is more than a half-century since Nelson Goodman [1955] applied what we call the Reflective Equilibrium model of justification to the problem of justifying induction, and more than three decades since Rawls [1971 Rawls, John 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]] and Daniels [1979 Daniels, Norman 1979. Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics, The Journal of Philosophy 76/5: 256–82.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] applied celebrated extensions of this model to the problem of justifying principles of social justice. The resulting Wide Reflective Equilibrium model (WRE) is generally thought to capture an acceptable way to reconcile inconsistency between an intuitively plausible general principle and an intuitively plausible judgment about a particular case. Recently a different model for reconciling moral inconsistency has emerged: Moral Consistency Reasoning [Campbell and Kumar 2012 Campbell, Richmond and Victor Kumar 2012. Moral Reasoning on the Ground, Ethics 122/2: 273–312.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2013a Campbell, Richmond and Victor Kumar 2013a. Pragmatic Naturalism and Moral Objectivity, Analysis 73/3: 446–55.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Kumar and Campbell 2012 Kumar, Victor and Richmond Campbell 2012. On the Normative Significance of Experimental Moral Psychology, Philosophical Psychology 25/3: 311–30.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Campbell 2009 Campbell, Richmond 2009. The Origin of Moral Reasons, in Ethics and All That Jazz: Essays in Honour of Jordan Howard Sobel, ed. Lars-Göran Johansson, Jan Österberg, and Rysiek Śliwiński, Uppsala Philosophical Studies 57: 67–97. [Google Scholar]: 86–7; Campbell and Woodrow 2003 Campbell, Richmond and Jennifer Woodrow 2003. Why Moore's Open Question Is Open: The Evolution of Moral Supervenience, The Journal of Value Inquiry 37: 353–72.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Wong 2002 Wong, David. 2002. Reasons and Analogical Reasoning in Mengzi, in Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, ed. Xiusheng Liu & Philip J. Ivanhoe, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing: 187–220. [Google Scholar]]. MCR applies when two moral judgments give opposing assessments of (what appear to be) relevantly similar particular cases. Though WRE and MCR are strikingly different, each arguably captures a rationally acceptable method for reconciling moral inconsistency. Moreover, as will be shown, they function in complementary ways. Are they parts of a more comprehensive model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency that would explain the attractions of each?This essay first spells out the relevant differences between the models and then formulates a more general model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency. §1 reviews the emergence of Goodman's model that he offers in the spirit of epistemology naturalized, almost a decade before Quine coined the term [1969a Quine, W.V. O. 1969a. Epistemology Naturalized, in W.V. O. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press: 69–90. First presented in Vienna on September 9, 1968 to the Fourth International Congress of Philosophy.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]]. §2 analyses six salient features of WRE to be compared with six contrasting features of MCR in §3. §4 presents the general model.