The aim of the present paper is to offer an interpretation of the Rawlsian original position coherent with its own theory of justice. An evaluation of the aforementioned mechanism is presented. Afterwards, in light of it, a solution of the existing overlapping between its elements is offered. The solution is to consider the formal constraints as «partial conclusions», excluding them from the original position. The original position, as an «intermediate stage» aimed at representing the philosophical foundations of Rawls's theory in (...) a way that could provide the deduction of the principles of justice, cannot include straightforwardly any characteristic of those principles, not even the formal ones. The remainder of the elements of the original position (the idea of a contract, the circumstances of justice, the veil of ignorance and the rationality of the parties), acting conjointly, allow for the deduction of the formal constraints themselves. In addition, they also engender the same effects on the exclusion of egoism as a proposal of principles of justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to synthesize the two most influential contemporary ethical approaches that appeal to moral intuitions, viz., Rawlsian reflective equilibrium and Audi’s moderate intuitionism. This paper has two parts. First, building upon the work of Audi and Gaut, I provide a more detailed and nuanced account of how these two approaches are compatible. Second, I show how this novel synthesis can both (1) fully address the main objections to reflective equilibrium, viz., that it provides neither necessary nor (...) sufficient conditions for the justification of our moral beliefs and (2) help ethical intuitionism to deal with the fundamental problem of peer disagreement over our basic moral intuitions. In doing so, I sketch out a novel and attractive diachronic way of thinking about peer disagreement more generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhat does it take for lawyers and others to think or talk about the same legal topic—e.g., defamation, culpability? We argue that people are able to think or talk about the same topic not when they possess a matching substantive understanding of the topic, as traditional metasemantics says, but instead when their thoughts or utterances are related to each other in certain ways. And what determines the content of thoughts and utterances is what would best serve the core purposes of (...) the representational practice within which the thought or utterance is located. In thus favoring a “relational model” in metasemantics, we share Ronald Dworkin's goal of explaining fundamental legal disagreements, and also his reliance on constructive interpretation. But what we delineate is a far more general and explanatorily resourceful metasemantics than what Dworkin articulated, which also bypasses some controversial implications for the nature of law that Dworkin alleged. (shrink)

The Queen's College, Oxford, UK In his article `Facts and Principles', G.A. Cohen attempts to refute constructivist approaches to justification by showing that, contrary to what their proponents claim, fundamental normative principles are fact- in sensitive. We argue that Cohen's `fact-insensitivity thesis' does not provide a successful refutation of constructivism because it pertains to an area of meta-ethics which differs from the one tackled by constructivists. While Cohen's thesis concerns the logical structure of normative principles, constructivists ask how normative principles (...) should be justified . In particular, their claim that justified fundamental normative principles are fact-sensitive follows from a commitment to agnosticism about the existence of objective moral facts. We therefore conclude that, in order to refute constructivism, Cohen would have to address questions of justification, and take a stand on those long-standing meta-ethical debates about the ontological status of moral notions (for example, realism versus anti-realism) with respect to which he himself wants to remain agnostic. Key Words: John Rawls • normative justification • realism versus anti-realism • methodological versus substantive principles. (shrink)

H.-J. Glock has made important contributions to discussions of rationality, reasons, and rules. This chapter addresses four conceptions of rationality that Glock identifies. One of these conceptions of rationality is that rationality consists in responsiveness to reasons. This chapter goes on to consider the idea that reasons became prominent in normative ethics because of their usefulness in articulating moral pluralism. The final section of the chapter connects reasons and rules and contends that both are ineliminable.

Moral metasemantic theories explain how our moral thought and talk are about certain properties. Given the connection between what our moral terms are about and which moral claims are true, it might be thought that metasemantic theorising can justify first-order ethical conclusions, thus providing a novel way of doing moral epistemology. In this paper, we spell out one kind of argument from metasemantic theories to normative ethical conclusions, and argue that it fails to transmit justification from premises to conclusion. We (...) give three reasons for this transmission failure, which together pose a serious challenge to such metasemantic arguments. (shrink)

Cornell realism (CR), a prominent meta-ethical position that has emerged since the last decades of the twentieth century, proposes a non-reductionist naturalistic account of moral properties and facts. This paper argues that the best version of CR’s chosen methodology for arriving at justified moral beliefs must be seen as a variant of reflective equilibrium. In comparison to the traditional versions, our proposal offers a ‘social’ reinterpretation of reflective equilibrium in delineating CR’s epistemology. We argue that it satisfactorily accounts for objectivity (...) and calls for the inclusion of the social nature of both moral and scientific inquiries. Emphasising the social dimension of their epistemological account also nudges debates in metaethics into incorporating the much-needed social dimension while dealing with questions of moral beliefs and facts that have been of CR’s concern. (shrink)

When introduced around 1925, interdisciplinarity, grounded in the notion of the unity of knowledge, was meant to reconnect the fragmented and specialized disciplines of academia. However, interdisciplinary research became more and more challenging as the plurality and heterogeneity of disciplinary perspectives and insights increased. Insisting on this divergence and diversity, Julie Thompson Klein has nonetheless contributed in important ways to convergence in interdisciplinarity with her work on the process of integration as interdisciplinarity's defining feature. Of course, she is aware that (...) the increasing inclusion of extra-academic stakeholders in transdisciplinary research constitutes a fundamental challenge to integrative interdisciplinarity. This challenge implies that next to academic contributions, experiential knowledge, interests, and norms must be recognized as valuable to the process, and stakeholder expectations of applicable results must be met. Exploring the future by extending this crucial development further, this article focuses on the actionability of knowledge as an additional criterion for effective interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, as it is in Action Research. With action options for stakeholders being an important goal for such research, it is argued that joint deliberation about these options must be part of the process, aiming for reflective equilibrium. At the same time, an important role for imagination is defended, enabling adequate consideration of action options with their ramifications and implications. The future of interdisciplinarity, it is concluded, will entail an important role for the actionability criterion and for the related role of imagination of potential outcomes, much greater roles than these now have. (shrink)

This paper straightforwardly addresses one of the strongest, from an ethical perspective, objections presented to the duty to die, the one concerned with the lack of a normative theory to support it, offered by Seay in his paper Can there be a “duty to die” without a normative theory? The aim of the paper is to provide strong metaethical grounds to support the duty to die without the need of a moral normative theory. First, the definition and main argument for (...) the duty to die will be presented. Second, Seay’s objection will be described and clearly explained. Third, our metaphysical assumptions and a preliminary metaethical discussion will be offered to situate and understand the context. Finally, we will show how the duty to die can be integrated within the metaethical approach previously presented, defending that there is no need of a normative theory to provide good justification and strong ethical grounds for the duty to die, because they will have already been provided by our metaethical argument. (shrink)

The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, (...) Brandt, Frankfurt, Nagel and Williams have taken it for granted, and have made use of it to supply metaethical foundations for a wide variety of normative moral theories. But the Humean conception of the self also leads to seemingly insoluble problems about moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification. Can it be made to work? (shrink)

The motivating question of this paper is: ‘How are our beliefs in the theorems of mathematics justified?’ This is distinguished from the question ‘How are our mathematical beliefs reliably true?’ We examine an influential answer, outlined by Russell, championed by Gödel, and developed by those searching for new axioms to settle undecidables, that our mathematical beliefs are justified by ‘intuitions’, as our scientific beliefs are justified by observations. On this view, axioms are analogous to laws of nature. They are postulated (...) to best systematize the data to be explained. We argue that there is a decisive difference between the cases. There is agreement on the data to be systematized in the scientific case that has no analog in the mathematical one. There is virtual consensus over observations, but conspicuous dispute over intuitions. In this respect, mathematics more closely resembles stereotypical philosophy. We conclude by distinguishing two ideas that have long been associated -- realism (the idea that there is an independent reality) and objectivity (the idea that in a disagreement, only one of us can be right). We argue that, while realism is true of mathematics and philosophy, these domains fail to be objective. One upshot of the discussion is that even questions of fundamental physics may fail to be objective in roughly the sense that the question, ‘Is the Parallel Postulate is true?’, understood as one of pure mathematics, fails to be. Another is a kind of pragmatism. Factual questions in mathematics, modality, logic, and evaluative areas go proxy for non-factual practical ones. -/- . (shrink)

This article argues that the best way to pursue systematic normative ethical theorizing involves metaethical enquiry. My argument builds upon two central claims. First, I argue that plausible metaethical accounts can have implications that can help to resolve the methodological controversies facing normative ethics. Second, I argue that metaethical research is at least roughly as well supported as normative ethical research. I conclude by examining the implications of my thesis. Inter alia, it shows that the common practice of engaging in (...) systematic normative theorizing uninformed by metaethical commitments offers a significant and troubling hostage to metaethical fortune. (shrink)

John Rawls’ method of reflective equilibrium is the most influential methodology in contemporary ethics.This paper argues that this influence is undeserved, for two reasons. First, reflective equilibrium fails to accomplish two tasks that give us reason to care about methodology. On the one hand, it fails to explain how (or whether) moral knowledge is possible.This is because the method is explicitly oriented towards the distinct (and less interesting) task of characterizing our moral sensibilities. On the other hand, the method fails (...) to provide an informative way of adjudicating central methodological debates in ethics. Second, where Rawls’ method –and the background methodology he uses to motivate it –do have substance, that substance is implausible. The role of dispositions in the method entails that it endorses obviously irrational inferences. Further, the method makes substantively implausible distinctions between the dispositions that are allowed to play a methodological role. Rawls' background methodology appeals to the idea of a psychology in ‘wide reflective equilibrium’. However, both formal and empirical path-dependence considerations strongly suggest that there is nothing even minimally determinate that is someone’s psychology in ‘wide reflective equilibrium’. I close by exploring salient attempts to salvage the spirit of reflective equilibrium by abandoning elements of Rawls’ approach. I argue that none of these attempts succeed. I conclude that appeal to the method of reflective equilibrium is not a helpful means of addressing pressing methodological questions in ethics. In a slogan, reflective equilibrium is methodologically irrelevant. (shrink)

One merit claimed for john rawls's coherence method, Wide reflective equilibrium, Is that it transcends the traditional two tiered approach to moral inquiry according to which one must choose as one's starting points either particular moral judgments or general moral principles. The two tiered conception of philosophical method is not limited to ethics. The most detailed exposition of the conception can be found in r m chisholm's various discussions of the problem of the criterion. While chisholm's work has played a (...) major role in structuring the way epistemologists think about method, It has not similarly influenced the deliberations of moral theorists. But moral philosophers are not the only ones with myopia, For neither rawls's coherentist method nor classical moral intuitionism figure in chisholm's taxonomy. One aim is to correct the vision of both parties by expanding chisholm's taxonomy in order to make clear how intuitionism and rawls's coherentist method are related to the methods identified by chisholm. My other aim is to argue for coherentism of the sort defended by rawls against the other non-Skeptical methods I consider. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen and David Estlund claim that, because of their fact-dependent nature, constructivist theories of justice do not qualify as moral theories about fundamental values such as justice. In this paper, I defend fact-dependent, constructivist theories of justice against this fact-independency critique. I argue that constructivists can invoke facts among the grounds for accepting fundamental principles of justice while maintaining that the foundation of morality has to be non-empirical. My claim is that constructivists ultimately account for the normativity of fact-dependent (...) principles by referring to a fact-independent, moral conception of the person, which is not a principle of justice.1. (shrink)

Se presenta aquí brevemente la teoría de la justicia elaborada por Rawls, primeramente sobre una base moral, y luego (en el llamado segundo Rawls) la teoría de justicia desde una perspectiva política, con la que Rawls intenta justificar también la existencia del Estado, mediante un contrato social. Se analizan después las primeras críticas realizadas a su teoría. Se sostiene la tesis de que la conveniencia se convierte, sin desearlo, en utilidad, en Rawls, y ésta se convierte en sinónimo de justicia. (...) Se critica esta concepción dado que la elección hecha por la mayoría, para la conveniencia de la mayoría, no hace a una ley justa. Se advierte, además, que la idea de la igualdad considerada, sin más, sinónimo de justicia social, requiere una profunda reflexión. Se realiza, pues, un análisis de los presupuestos de la idea de justicia rawlsiana en cuanto parece identificarse con la idea de utilidad general y distorsionándose la misma idea de justicia. (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls defines a hypothetical contract situation and argues rational people will agree on reflection it is fair to contractors. He solves the rational choice problem it poses by deriving two lexically-ordered principles of justice and suggests the derivation justifies the principles. Its soundness aside, just what justificatory force does such a derivation have?On one view, there is no justificatory force because the contract is rigged specifically to yield principles which match our pre-contract moral judgments. (...) Rawls provides ammunition for this claim: “By going back and forth, sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual circumstances, at others withdrawing our judgments [about what is just] and conforming them to principle, I assume that eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted.”. (shrink)

This essay challenges widespread talk about morality's ‘normativity’. My principal target is not any specific claim or thesis in the burgeoning literature on ‘normativity’, however. Rather, I aim to discourage the use of the word among moral philosophers altogether and to reject a claim to intradisciplinary authority that is both reflected in and reinforced by the role the word has come to play in the discipline. My hope is to persuade other philosophers who, like me, persist in being interested in (...) long-standing questions about our morals to be considerably more suspicious about the word's actual value for us and to see those studying ‘normativity’ itself as having little to offer us when it comes to posing our questions about morals and debating the answers to them. (shrink)

I argue that there are liberal reasons to reject what I call “Global Individualism”, which is the conjunction of two views strongly associated with liberalism: moral individualism and social individualism. According to the first view, all moral properties are reducible to individual moral properties. The second holds that the social world is composed only of individual agents. My argument has the following structure: after suggesting that Global Individualism does not misrepresent liberalism, I draw on some recent insights in social ontology (...) to show that it is inconsistent with the satisfaction of an important liberal principle related to the protection of individual rights over time. As I hold, to solve this problem we need to accept group agents acting as moral agents, which in turn commits us to the weaker notion of normative individualism (a view that is consistent with the existence of some group moral properties). I conclude with the suggestion that even this solution is costly for liberalism, for the conjunction of group moral agency and normative individualism makes the latter unstable and compels liberals to a much less individualistic stance than expected. (shrink)

In the essay “Justice and Rights” of his book Taking Rights Seriously Ronald Dworkin puts forward an account of reflective equilibrium which has become an orthodoxy in interpreting John Rawls' theory of justice. My purpose here is to challenge this account, on the grounds that it presupposes an untenable view of the relation between belief and choice.

RESUMO Neste artigo pretendemos mostrar as vantagens do modelo epistemológico coerentista quando aplicado ao universo moral. O ponto de partida será apontar que a justificação da crença moral é dada pela coerência com um sistema coerente de crenças que é consistente e que isso pretende resolver o problema da dicotomia entre fato e valor. Posteriormente, apresentam-se as características centrais do coerentismo holístico e investiga-se o método do equilíbrio reflexivo. O próximo passo será fazer referência a três conhecidas objeções ao coerentismo, (...) a saber: o problema do isolamento, os sistemas coerentes alternativos e a circularidade viciosa. Por fim, procuramos responder a essas objeções apelando para os seguintes argumentos: holismo social, razoabilidade e estabilidade social. ABSTRACT In this paper we aim to demonstrate the advantages of the epistemological coherentist model when applied to the moral sphere. The starting point will be to show that the justification of moral belief is a matter of how beliefs fit together with a coherent system of beliefs that is consistent and that it tries to solve the issue of the fact/value dichotomy. Following this, we shall point out the core characteristics of the holistic coherentism and we will investigate the reflective equilibrium method. Next step is to show three standard objections to coherentism, namely, the isolation problem, the alternative coherent systems objection and the vicious circularity. Finally, we shall then try to respond these criticisms with the following arguments: social holism, reasonableness and social stability. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to propose the inclusion of the expertise of a prudent agent in the reflective equilibrium procedure, adding a disposition to identify reasonable beliefs that would be seen as the starting point of the method, which could avoid the criticism of conservatism and subjectivism. To do so, I will begin by analyzing the central characteristics of the method and its main faults. Afterwards, I will investigate the characteristics of prudence as a disposition to identify (...) the adequate means to achieve a good end. With this in mind, I will apply prudence to the procedure, so that it will be carried out by an agent who deliberates well, identifying reasonable moral beliefs and, then, we must justify them based on their consistency with ethical principles and with the factual beliefs of relevant scientific theories. Finally, I will argue that this deliberative process is consistent with ethical pluralism and democracy, and can be taken as a kind of moral knowledge. (shrink)

This article examines the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) and its role in philosophical inquiry. It begins with an overview of RE before discussing some of the subtleties involved in its interpretation, including challenges to the standard assumption that RE is a form of coherentism. It then evaluates some of the main objections to RE, in particular, the criticism that this method generates unreasonable beliefs. It concludes by considering how RE relates to recent debates about the role of intuitions in (...) philosophy. (shrink)

In moral epistemology, the method of reflective equilibrium is often characterized in terms of intuitions or understood as a method for justifying intuitions. An analysis of reflective equilibrium and current theories of moral intuitions reveals that this picture is problematic. Reflective equilibrium cannot be adequately characterized in terms of intuitions. Although the method presupposes that we have initially credible commitments, it does not presuppose that they are intuitions. Nonetheless, intuitions can enter the process of developing a reflective equilibrium and, if (...) the process is successful, be justified. Since the method of reflective equilibrium does not essentially involve intuitions, it does not constitute a form of intuitionism in any substantial sense. It may be classified as intuitionist only in the minimal sense of not reducing justification to a matter of inference relations alone. (shrink)

When engaging with classical Chinese ethics, we might end up wondering what kind of moral theorizing we ultimately are confronted with. The accounts and answers to specific practical problems are dispersed throughout the texts and expressed via various codes of composition, ranging from sayings to theoretical reflections to poems. However, what exactly the aim of these theories consists in is not explicitly addressed by systematic second-order reflections. In this article I try to shed some light on the understanding of moral (...) theorizing that underlies the transmitted texts. For this, I adopt an issue-centered approach that attempts to indirectly address the understanding of moral theorizing via the question about the source of normativity. That approach will be tested by drawing on the accounts of Mengzi 孟子 and Cheng Yi 程頤. First conclusions will show that moral theorizing can be understood as the simultaneous business of a moral anatomist and a moral painter. (shrink)

Carnap and Goodman developed methods of conceptual re-engineering known respectively as explication and reflective equilibrium. These methods aim at advancing theories by developing concepts that are simultaneously guided by pre-existing concepts and intended to replace these concepts. This paper shows that Carnap’s and Goodman’s methods are historically closely related, analyses their structural interconnections, and argues that there is great systematic potential in interpreting them as aspects of one method, which ultimately must be conceived as a component of theory development. The (...) main results are: an adequate method of conceptual re-engineering must focus not on individual concepts but on systems of concepts and theories; the linear structure of Carnapian explication must be replaced by a process of mutual adjustments as described by Goodman; Carnap’s condition of similarity can be analysed into two components, one securing a relation to the specific extensions of the pre-existing concepts, one regulating the transition to the new system of concepts; these two criteria of adequacy can be built into Goodman’s account of reflective equilibrium to ensure that the resulting concepts promote theoretical virtues while being sufficiently similar to the concepts we started out with. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relation between medical ethics and general moral theory, the argument being that medical ethics is best seen as independent from general moral theory. According to this independence thesis, here explicated in terms of what is called a disunitarian stance, the very idea of applied ethics, which is often seen as underlying medical ethics, is misguided. We should instead think of medical ethics as a domain-specific ethical inquiry among other domain-specific ethical inquiries. On this alternative kind of (...) picture, such ethical inquiries should start with looking at the particularities of the domain under consideration and then proceed from there. Some possible consequences of this idea for medical ethics are then identified and discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that solutions to normative challenges associated with autonomous driving, such as real-world trolley cases or distributions of risk in mundane driving situations, face the problem of reasonable pluralism: Reasonable pluralism refers to the fact that there exists a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive moral doctrines within liberal democracies. The corresponding problem is that a politically acceptable solution cannot refer to only one of these comprehensive doctrines. Yet a politically adequate solution to the normative challenges (...) of autonomous driving need not come at the expense of an ethical solution, if it is based on moral beliefs that are (1) shared in an overlapping consensus and (2) systematized through public reason. Therefore, we argue that a Rawlsian justificatory framework is able to adequately address the normative challenges of autonomous driving and elaborate on how such a framework might be employed for this purpose. (shrink)

Many normative theorists want to contribute to making the world a better place. In recent years, it has been suggested that to realise this ambition one must start with an adequate description of real-life practices. To determine what should be done, however, one must also fundamentally criticise existing moral beliefs. The method of reflective equilibrium offers a way of doing both. Yet, its practical usefulness has been doubted and it has been largely ignored in the recent practical turn of normative (...) theorising. This paper offers a complementary methodology to the method of reflective equilibrium, referred to as Rawlsian constructivism, which brings forth its practical merits. With the support of Rawlsian constructivism, the method of reflective equilibrium becomes a tool for public reasoning about practical problems which aims to facilitate shared solutions. The process of reflective scrutiny is used, not in the search of moral truth, but rather to highlight what stands in the way of solutions to problems agents face in different domains of social life. The practical value lies in scrutinising reasons for action that are taken for granted, explicating new rationales for action and highlighting neglected points of agreement. The paper exemplifies this approach with a process of justifying individual obligations to combat climate change. Normative theorists who share the practical agenda have correctly noted the importance of bottom-up investigations of subject domains. This paper argues that the next step should be to utilise this version of the method of reflective equilibrium to explore the potential for morally progressive solutions to these problems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to suggest that a necessary condition of autonomy has not been sufficiently recognized in the literature: the capacity to critically reflect on one’s practical attitudes (desires, preferences, values, etc.) in the light of new experiences . It will be argued that most prominent accounts of autonomy—ahistorical as well as history-sensitive—have either altogether failed to recognize this condition or at least failed to give an explicit account of it.

In this paper, I analyze the particular conception of reciprocal justification proposed by Nelson Goodman and incorporated by John Rawls into what he called reflective equilibrium. I propose a way of avoiding the twin dangers which threaten to push this idea to either of two extremes: the reliance on epistemically privileged observation reports (or moral judgments in Rawls version), which tends to disrupt the balance struck between the two sides of the equilibrium and to re-establish a foundationalism; and the denial (...) of any privileged status to such reports (or judgments), which makes the equilibrium into a theoretical monolith. (shrink)

The ‘convergence conception’ of political liberalism has become increasingly popular in recent years. Steven Wall has shown that convergence liberals face a serious dilemma in responding to disagreement about whether laws are publicly justified. What I call the ‘conjunctive approach’ to such disagreement threatens anarchism, while the ‘non-conjunctive’ approach appears to render convergence liberalism internally inconsistent. This paper defends the non-conjunctive approach, which holds that the correct view of public justification should be followed even if some citizens do not consider (...) enacted laws to be publicly justified. My argument sheds light on the fundamental structure of convergence liberalism. (shrink)

Public justification in political liberalism is often conceptualized in light of Rawls’s view of its role in a hypothetical well-ordered society as an ideal or idealizing form of justification that applies a putatively reasonable conception of political justice to political matters. But Rawls implicates a different idea of public justification in his doctrine of general reflective equilibrium. The paper engages this second, more fundamental idea. Public justification in this second sense is actualist and fundamental. It is actualist in that it (...) fully enfranchises actual reasonable citizens. It is fundamental in that political liberalism qualifies conceptions of political justice as reasonable to begin with only if they can be accepted coherently by actual reasonable citizens. Together, these features invite the long-standing concern that actualist political liberalism is objectionably exclusionary. I argue that the exclusion objection, while plausible, is more problematic in own right than it seems if actualist and fundamental public justification hypotheticalizes and discursive respect is compatible with substantive discursive inequality. This leaves proponents and critics of political liberalism with deeper questions about the nature of permissible discursive inequality in public justification. (shrink)

The discussion develops the view that public justification in Rawls’s political liberalism, in one of its roles, is actualist in fully enfranchising actual reasonable citizens and fundamental in political liberalism’s order of justification. I anchor this reading in the political role Rawls accords to general reflective equilibrium, and examine in its light the relationship between public justification, pro tanto justification, political values, full justification, the wide view of public political culture and salient public reason intuitions. This leaves us with the (...) question of how a more plausible, post-Rawlsian political liberalism should understand the commitment to discursive respect and robust discursive equality that is reflected in its view of actualist and fundamental public justification. (shrink)

Elgin has presented an extensive defence of reflective equilibrium embedded in an epistemology which focuses on objectual understanding rather than ordinary propositional knowledge. This paper has two goals: to suggest an account of reflective equilibrium which is sympathetic to Elgin’s but includes a range of further developments, and to analyse its role in an account of understanding. We first address the structure of reflective equilibrium as a target state and argue that reflective equilibrium requires more than an equilibrium in the (...) sense of a coherent position. On the one hand, the position also needs to be stable between a ‘conservative’ pull of input commitments and a ‘progressive’ pull of epistemic goals; on the other hand, reflective equilibrium requires that enough of the resulting commitments have some credibility independent of the coherence of the position. We then turn to the dynamics of reflective equilibrium, the process of mutual adjustment of commitments and theories. Here, the most pressing internal challenges for defenders of reflective equilibrium arise: to characterize this process more exactly and to explain its status in relation to reflective equilibrium as a target state. Finally, we investigate the role of reflective equilibrium in Elgin’s account of understanding and argue that objectual understanding cannot be explained in terms of reflective equilibrium alone. An epistemic agent who understands a subject matter by means of a theory also needs to be able to use this theory and the theory needs to meet some external rightness condition. (shrink)

This article argues that Honneth’s ‘plural conception of justice’, founded on a theory of recognition, does not succeed in distancing itself from Rawls’ liberal theory of justice. The article develops its argument by evaluating three major objections to Rawls’ liberalism raised by Honneth in his recent articles on justice: namely, first, that the parties responsible for choosing principles of justice are too individualistic and their practical reasoning too instrumentalist; second, that by taking as its ‘object-domain’ the negative liberty of persons, (...) Rawls’ theory fails to promote the actual realization of liberty; and finally, that Rawls’ method of principle justification undermines the ‘priority’ of its Kantian ‘formality’ by presupposing a substantive commitment to a conception of individual good. Arguing that Honneth’s interpretation of Rawls’ theory contains important errors, the article concludes that both theories share the basic intention of securing for all citizens the material and institutional conditions for the actualization of otherwise merely formal liberties or, in Honneth’s terms, mutual self-realization. (shrink)

Two deficiencies characterize the vast critical literature that has accumulated around Dworkin's theory of law. On the one hand, the main lines of the debate tend to get lost in the crossfire of objections by critics and rejoinders by Dworkin — with little dialogue between the critics, or any systematic interrelation or resolution of these largely isolated disputes. On the other hand, such arguments on various points of Dworkin's Jurisprudence tend to neglect or obscure underlying issues in philosophical ethics. The (...) present essay is a critical analysis addressing each of these deficiencies in an attempt both to clarify and to advance the debate. The analysis hinges on three basic propositions: (1) that this debate in Jurisprudence has overlooked relevant issues about the nature of moral values; (2) that theories of law, in general, are best assessed in terms of separate descriptive and normative issues, corresponding to a fact/value distinction in ethics; and (3) that the debate on Dworkinian rights has assumed a confused and historically superficial contrast with the utilitarian tradition, in ethical theory as well as in philosophy of law. (shrink)

In spite of its dominance, there are well-known problems with Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium (MRE), as a method of justification in meta-ethics. One issue in particular has preoccupied commentators, namely, the capacity of this method to provide a convincing account of the objectivity of our moral beliefs. Call this the Lack-of-Objectivity Charge. One aim of this article is to examine the charge within the context of Rawls’s later philosophy, and I claim that the lack-of-objectivity charge remains unanswered. A second (...) aim of this article is to examine the extent to which, despite Rawls’s express intention to avoid reliance on Kant’s moral philosophy, supplementing Rawls’s political constructivism with some Kantian elements, in particular Kant’s idea of a universal principle of right, not only addresses some of the issues raised by the lack-of-objectivity charge, but also does so without compromising the ability of the Rawlsian account to accommodate the pluralism of conceptions of the good, which he takes to be a fact of modern democracies. I argue for a revised justificatory methodology, which combines Rawls’s MRE and Kant’s Critical Method. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that benevolence is not the whole of the moral life, but it is not as widely appreciated that benevolence is an irreducible part of that life. This paper argues that Kantian efforts to characterize benevolence, or something like it, in terms of reverence for rational agency fall short. Such reverence, while credibly an important part of the moral life, is no more the whole of it than benevolence.