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Reflective Equilibrium Without Intuitions?

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Many of these arguments are not new at all. See, e.g., the references in Huemer 2005:102–3.

  2. To simplify matters, I will ignore background theories and considerations specific to wide reflective equilibrium when they play no role in my subsequent arguments.

  3. This technical use of “commitment” follows Elgin 1996:102–9 and Scheffler 1954. For a discussion of some other uses, see Shpall 2012.

  4. For the sake of simplicity I will (as it is usually done) assume that we deal with the commitments of an individual epistemic subject and with commitments that have propositional content. Furthermore, I will not discuss whether we should follow Rawls (1999a:42) in requiring that commitments be considered; that is, not formed under the influence of emotion, inattention and the like. The arguments in Sect. 4–6 will, if anything, become stronger, not weaker if commitments need to be considered.

  5. My use of “initial” is not related to “antecedent” as used in “antecedent commitments” (in contrast to Elgin’s use of “initial”; Elgin 1996:107, 110).

  6. See van Cleve 2011 and Roche 2012, as well as the references given there. Several questions remain to be addressed, for example: How is initial credibility (as analysed in the formal research just mentioned) related to “permissive justification” which figures prominently in well-known coherentist positions (Sayre-McCord 1996; Sinnott-Armstrong 2006:ch. 10.6.4)? How strongly (if at all) is the initial credibility of a belief determined by its source (in the sense discussed in Sect. 3)?

  7. Discussions about intuitions do not invariably use the term “intuition”; relevant contributions are also found under labels such as “self-evident belief” (e.g. Shafer-Landau 2003) or “emotion” (see Brun and Kuenzle 2008).

  8. I use “propositional” in a loose sense, without an implicit link to a specific understanding of propositions. I only assume that intuitions involve some attitude such as belief or inclination to belief, and that their content can stand in inference relations.

  9. “Non-discursive”, “immediate”, “spontaneous” and “direct” are sometimes used in the same sense.

  10. My interpretation of (non-)inferentiality is based on Sinnott-Armstrong’s (2006:ch. 9.1; 2008; 2011). Others, e.g. Cappelen (2012:9), discuss inferentiality as a kind of justification. I will address questions about justification in Sect. 6.

  11. Some of these positions are incompatible with reflective equilibrium as presented in Section 2, e.g. the view that intuitions need no justification. Huemer’s conservatism is another case in point. Conservatism is not the hallmark of reflective equilibrium (as suggested in Huemer 2005:117) but can only be found in some accounts of narrow reflective equilibrium (e.g. Cohen 1981). It is certainly not part of wide reflective equilibrium as defended by Daniels (1996), DePaul (2011) and Elgin (1996), which, ironically, closely resemble Huemer’s (2008) revisionist “alternative” to reflective equilibrium.

  12. “Recalcitrant” is borrowed from Cappelen (2012). “Incorrigible” is also often used, but it is ambiguous, meaning either impossible to give up or having an epistemic privilege of being immune from revision.

  13. Some prefer an even wider notion which includes unconscious and implicit reasoning that is in principle accessible to consciousness (Huemer 2005:267n4). The condition (NI) I suggest below covers such positions as well.

  14. Understanding intuitions as beliefs (rather than inclinations to believe or seemings) raises the additional problem that many commitments are not intuitions because they are not strong enough to count as beliefs.

  15. Rawls incidentally characterizes (1999a:17) considered judgements as intuitive. An explanation for this might be that he does not think of antecedent commitments in general, but of commitments we would hold in the hypothetical initial situation, in which we started moral theorizing from scratch. However, already the first steps towards a reflective equilibrium can yield commitments which are held just because they are derived from the first attempt at coming up with a moral system.

  16. Of course, intuitionist epistemologies need not accept reflective equilibrium or may rely on another account of reflective equilibrium such as Huemer’s (2005:117) conservative strategy of minimizing revisions of intuitions (for a discussion of prominent intuitionist theories see Burkard 2012).

  17. I will not take the converse perspective and discuss which of the positions labelled “intuitionism” are compatible with reflective equilibrium. Neither will I address specific metaethical views traditionally associated with intuitionism, such as pluralism (cf. Rawls 1999a:ch7–8).

  18. Audi (2004:45–8) holds that intuitions can be justified as “conclusions of reflection”, but it is debated whether he succeeded in explaining how such justification can be non-inferential (see Streumer 2005; Audi 2008:483–6).

  19. See the remarks and references given in Section  2, esp. note 6.

  20. DePaul does not directly deal with the justification of commitments but frames his discussion in terms of beliefs that seem sufficiently likely to be true. He argues that “in the final analysis, what determines revisions, and hence the shape of the position one holds in RE, will have to be what seems true on its own. Inference can serve to ‘transfer’ the appearance of truth […] from one or more beliefs to one or more other beliefs, but it does not seem to have the power to manufacture the appearance of truth ex nihilo” (DePaul 2011:81).

  21. Cf. BonJour 1985:26–9. Weak foundationalism holds that some beliefs have a minimal degree of non-inferential justification (“initial credibility”), well below the degree required for knowledge. Moderate foundationalism holds that some beliefs are non-inferentially justified to the degree required for knowledge. Strong foundationalism would hold that some such beliefs are infallible.

    Strictly speaking, BonJour’s refers to further aspects of foundationalism, which are not included in my distinction between minimal and ambitious intuitionism. Specifically, BonJour’s weak foundationalism is conservative because it aims at preserving a maximum of antecedent commitments. This conservatism is incompatible with the method of reflective equilibrium (see also Elgin 1996:110; 2005:166.)

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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper have been presented in Berne, Constance, Potsdam, Tübingen and Zürich. I would like to thank the audiences as well as Christoph Baumberger, Claus Beisbart, Monika Betzler, Anne Burkard, Michael DePaul, Catherine Elgin, Anton Leist and Peter Schaber for helpful discussions and comments.

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  1. University of Zurich, Centre for Ethics, Zollikerstr. 117, 8008, Zurich, Switzerland

    Georg Brun

  2. ETH Zurich, Institute for Environmental Decisions, CHN H 73.1, Universitaetstrasse 16, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Georg Brun

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Brun, G. Reflective Equilibrium Without Intuitions?. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 17, 237–252 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9432-5

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