Balance and Refinement

Beyond Coherence Methods of Moral Inquiry

Michael R. DePaul

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134952311
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

We all have moral beliefs. But what if one beleif conflicts with another? DePaul argues that we have to make our beliefs cohere, but that the current coherence methods are seriously flawed. It is not just the arguments that need to be considered in moral enquiry. DePaul asserts that the ability to make sensitive moral judgements is vital to any philosophical inquiry into morality. The inquirer must consider how her life experiences and experiences with literature, film and theatre have influenced her capacity for making moral judgments and attempt to ensure that this capacity is neither naive nor corrupted.

Part I
Strategy

1
The method of reflective equilibrium and the no contact with reality objection

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The most widely discussed coherence method of moral inquiry is the method of wide reflective equilibrium, first described by John Rawls¹ and later elaborated by Norman Daniels.² The ultimate aim of this method is to bring a person’s moral beliefs to a point where her considered moral judgments about particular cases and about general principles are explicated³ by a simple and elegant moral theory that coheres with her broader philosophical outlook better than theories that capture alternative moral conceptions. As a person attempts to bring this sort of order to her moral beliefs, none of the component types⁴ of belief are immune to revision. If the person’s judgment regarding a particular action runs counter to what is entailed for that case by a general principle she accepts, it is an open question whether the particular judgment or the general principle should be retained. Should the person realize that a much simpler moral theory would satisfactorily explicate a set of considered judgments only slightly different from those she now accepts, this may lead her to alter her considered judgments, but it need not. Even if the person is confronted with a philosophical argument against a moral theory, say an argument based on her conception of a person, she will not necessarily reject the moral theory. She may just as well choose to revise her conception of a person. Thus, reflective equilibrium favors no type of belief, requiring instead that conflicts be resolved on a case-by-case basis, by appeal to such factors as the degree to which the inquirer is committed to the conflicting propositions, and the connections between these propositions and the other propositions she accepts or rejects.

Reflective equilibrium is obviously a coherence method. As such, it is subject to a familiar objection: the no contact with reality objection. The method obviously leads a person to the moral theory that, all things considered, seems to her to be most likely to be true, but what guarantee is there that this theory is anything more than that? What reason can be offered for thinking that the moral theory a person accepts in reflective equilibrium is true? In order to warrant our allegiance, a method for moral inquiry must bring our moral beliefs into an appropriate sort of contact with moral reality. Unfortunately, no coherence approach can insure this kind of contact between theory and reality.⁵

One might try to respond to the no contact with reality objection in either of two ways: One might respond directly, by providing a reason for thinking that the moral theory we accept in reflective equilibrium is true, or one might respond indirectly, by undermining the demand that some such reason be offered. I believe that most philosophers would consider a direct response to the no contact objection vastly more satisfying, and so would not be tempted to adopt the indirect strategy unless convinced it is the only alternative. Therefore, even though I do not think that the direct strategy can succeed, I shall begin by examining this approach to the no contact objection. I hope to show in this chapter that the direct strategy does not succeed, thereby motivating the indirect answer to the no contact objection that I shall elaborate and defend in the succeeding chapters. I shall focus upon a version of the direct response that brings important recent work on coherentism to bear in answering the no contact objection. The response is suggested by Laurence BonJour’s work on coherence theories of empirical knowledge,⁶ and is explicitly applied to the problem as it arises in moral methodology by Norman Daniels, as one element in his very thorough defense of reflective equilibrium.⁷ The prominence of this response in the contemporary debate is not the only reason why it is important to understand its failure. For the response relies on an incorrect conception of the method of reflective equilibrium, and therefore coming to see why the direct response fails sets us on the road towards a more adequate conception of a coherence method.

The argument of this chapter is somewhat long, so it will perhaps be a good idea to provide a brief overview before diving in. We will obviously need more precise conceptions of both the no contact with reality objection and the basics of the method of wide reflective equilibrium. In the next section, I describe the method of reflective equilibrium as I believe it is ordinarily understood. Section 1.3 is devoted to what is generally taken to be the most serious objection to the method of reflective equilibrium, the objection I have called the no contact with reality objection. Our consideration of this objection will reveal that it can take two forms. A more specific version of the objection focuses on considered moral judgments, charging that unless these judgments are credible, reflective equilibrium cannot be counted on to yield a true moral theory. I shall refer to this as the no credibility objection. The more general version of the no contact objection is not especially concerned with considered moral judgments and the specific role they play in reflective equilibrium. The general version does not demand a defense of considered moral judgments in particular, being willing to settle for any reason for thinking that reflective equilibrium can be counted upon to bring us into contact with moral reality. I shall henceforth refer to this as the no contact objection. I propose to deal with these two versions of the no contact with reality objection separately, beginning with the no credibility objection.

Section 1.4 outlines what I take to be the most promising version of the direct response to the no credibility objection, due to Norman Daniels, and Section 1.5 further clarifies this response. Daniels admits that a defense of the credibility of our considered moral judgments is necessary, explains how such a defense must be constructed, and pleads that the objection is premature, since we are not far enough along towards wide reflective equilibrium for the defense to have emerged yet. I maintain that the objection and Daniels’ response both fail because they are based upon an incorrect understanding of the method of reflective equilibrium, and in particular, of the role our initial considered moral judgments play. I lay the groundwork for my argument in Sections 1.6 and 1.7 by describing a conservative version of reflective equilibrium, according to which considered moral judgments play the role presupposed by the no credibility objection and Daniels’ response, and a more accurate, radical conception, according to which considered moral judgments do not play such a role. In Section 1.8, I explain why the no credibility objection and Daniels’ response are both inappropriate if one conceives of reflective equilibrium correctly, i.e., radically.

Unfortunately, since it makes no presuppositions about the role of considered moral judgments in reflective equilibrium, the general version of the no contact objection does apply to the radical conception of reflective equilibrium I favor. I explain how, in Section 1.9; I also explain how Daniels’ sophisticated stalling tactic might be mobilized against the general no contact objection. However, as I argue in Section 1.10, this stalling tactic cannot ultimately succeed unless reflective equilibrium brings inquirers to converge upon a moral theory. But such convergence is not, after all, very likely. The prospects for a direct response to the no contact objection are, therefore, bleak, so we need to examine indirect defenses of reflective equilibrium. But that is the topic of Chapter 2.

1.2 THE METHOD OF REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM

Norman Daniels has suggested that we may abstractly characterize the method of reflective equilibrium as:

an attempt to produce coherence in an ordered triple of sets of beliefs held by a particular person, namely (a) a set of considered moral judgments, (b) a set of moral principles and (c) a set of relevant background theories.⁸

We can follow out this suggestion by specifying the particular sets of beliefs a person holds at each time as she follows the method of reflective equilibrium. This provides us with a nice way of representing a person’s progress as she follows the method as well as the method’s eventual goal. Accordingly, we can characterize a person’s progress towards a point of wide reflective equilibrium as follows.

A person will begin the task of constructing a moral theory with a wide variety of moral beliefs. Some of these beliefs will concern the rightness or wrongness of particular actions, either actual or hypothetical, and others will concern the evaluation of persons or situations, e.g., the belief that it is good that a friend and her husband have worked out their differences and are reconciled, or the belief that Caligula was wicked. But the inquirer’s moral beliefs need not all be particular. She might have beliefs about certain action types, personality traits, and kinds of things. For example, the inquirer might believe that one ought to keep one’s promises, that honesty is good and goes towards making a person virtuous, and that pleasure is good. The inquirer’s general moral beliefs may well be even more abstract than these examples suggest. For example, a person will most likely believe such things as that two actions sharing all their non-moral characteristics must be evaluated in the same way, and that a person can only be blamed for doing something if it was in her power to avoid doing it. The moral beliefs a person begins with, of all these various kinds and levels of generality, are called initial moral judgments. Let the set of these judgments be {IMJ}.

The method of reflective equilibrium recognizes that a person has little choice but to begin the process of theory construction wherever she happens to be, that is, with her initial moral judgments. But as it is usually described, the method does not allow literally all of these initial judgments to be used in the construction of a moral theory. For it is likely that some of a person’s initial judgments will not have been formed in circumstances where, as Rawls puts it, “our moral capacities are most likely to be displayed without distortion.”⁹ Thus, the first step a person must take in following the method of reflective equilibrium is to filter her initial moral judgments, retaining only those made “in circumstances where the more common excuses and explanations for making a mistake do not obtain.”¹⁰ The judgments that survive this filtering are the person’s considered moral judgments. We shall label the set of these judgments {CMJ₁}.

It may seem that the filtering process involved in a person’s moving from her initial to her considered moral judgments is perfectly innocuous, but whether it actually is will depend upon how the filtering is understood. For one thing, it isn’t entirely clear what the optimum circumstances for making moral judgments are. Rawls certainly tried to give uncontroversial examples of cases where a person’s judgments are likely to be biased, but despite his efforts even his suggestions are questionable. For example, his claim that considered moral judgments must be made in a calm emotional state has been criticized on the grounds that our feelings of moral outrage reliably indicate egregious wrongdoings, and his claim that judgments made in circumstances where we stand to gain or lose seems to beg the question against the egoist.

There is a more fundamental problem with the conception of the filtering process. As Rawls and others describe it, the epistemic standards that considered moral judgments must meet seem to be laid down independently of any consideration of the epistemic principles accepted by the person seeking to bring her beliefs into reflective equilibrium. Rawls tells us that judgments about which we are hesitant or not confident should be ignored, as should judgments made “when we are upset or frightened, or when we stand to gain one way or the other.”¹¹ But what if a person does not recognize these kinds of judgments as being epistemically defective? Even if the person does hold epistemic principles according to which such judgments are defective, the person might be less strongly committed to these epistemic principles than to the initial moral judgments they count against. In this case, it is arguable that the person ought to modify her epistemic principles rather than her moral judgments.

It seems then that, at least as it is usually described, reflective equilibrium sins against the spirit of coherentism by granting certain of the inquirer’s epistemic beliefs a privileged status, or worse, by granting a privileged status to epistemic principles that may not even be believed by the person who must conform to them. We would do well, therefore, not to take a person’s considered moral judgments to be those initial moral judgments that meet some externally imposed epistemic standard. I suggest that we instead conceive of these judgments as follows. A person is unlikely to be completely happy with all of her initial moral judgments. By this I mean that after a little reflection the person will probably grant that not all of her initial judgments were made in optimal circumstances, i.e., in circumstances she herself would take to be conducive to making an accurate judgment. A person must therefore begin by thinking over her initial moral judgments with an eye to eliminating those that seem to her to have obvious epistemic deficiencies. We shall take the beliefs that survive this preliminary internal audit to be the person’s considered moral judgments.¹²

It might seem that there is no substantive difference between Rawls’ conception of considered moral judgments and the conception just introduced, but there is. We can pinpoint the difference by asking why a person should start with her considered rather than her initial moral judgments. Two reasons have been offered. (1) According to Rawls, since a person’s considered moral judgments are those formed in circumstances where the common excuses for making mistakes are absent, these judgments reliably display a person’s faculty of moral judgment.¹³ (2) Even though considered moral judgments are not immune to revision, they are taken to have gained something in the way of epistemic credentials as a result of surviving the filtering of initial moral judgments.¹⁴ According to the conception of considered moral judgments I have put forth, neither of these reasons applies. Beginning with considered rather than initial moral judgments is entirely a matter of convenience. Initial judgments that do not survive the filtering process are not eliminated because they were formed in circumstances where the judge is prone to error, nor are they ignored because they do not accurately reflect the person’s faculty of moral judgment. These initial judgments are eliminated because they conflict with the person’s simplest, most firmly held epistemic principles.¹⁵ Because of this conflict it is a safe bet that these judgments would be eliminated eventually, so it is convenient to drop them early on, thereby avoiding problems that might arise later on because of the influence these judgments might have had on the inquirer’s moral beliefs.¹⁶

The inquirer’s next step towards a point of reflective equilibrium would be to formulate a set of moral principles, i.e., a moral theory, that explicates her considered moral judgments. Let a person’s first attempt at an explication be {MT₁}. If {CMJ₁} and {MT₁} do not cohere, or if {MT₁} is not as simple and elegant as the inquirer would like, and it is safe to assume that {CMJ₁} or {MT₁} will fail in one of these ways, then she will have to make some adjustment if her beliefs are to cohere. So, for example, the inquirer might realize that P, a principle in {MT₁}, entails an evaluation of a certain action at odds with one of the members of {CMJ₁}, J, which is a judgment about that action. Upon a little reflection, the person might figure out a way of qualifying P so that it entails J. If we let the set of beliefs obtained by removing P from {MT₁} and replacing it with the appropriately altered principle be {MT₂}, we can represent the person’s moral beliefs after this first step with the ordered pair <{CMJ₁}, {MT₂}>. It is unlikely that one such change will produce a coherent system of beliefs, so the person will have to make numerous adjustments and readjustments in both her considered moral judgments and moral principles. She will therefore move through a series of pairs of sets of beliefs. When the person completes the process of mutual adjustment, so that she accepts a simple and elegant moral theory¹⁷ that coheres with her considered moral judgments, her beliefs are said to be in narrow reflective equilibrium. We may let the last, coherent pair in the series be <{CMJ_n}, {MT_n}>.¹⁸

The fact that neither a person’s considered moral judgments, nor her moral theory, are favored as she attempts to bring her beliefs into narrow equilibrium is sufficiently significant to warrant my calling attention to it once again. If the general principles that a person first formulates conflict with one of her considered moral judgments, say a judgment about a particular case, and this judgment is strongly held and relatively central to her belief system, then undoubtedly she will adjust the theory. However, if a person has been working at a set of principles for some time, so that these principles seem to account for a large number of her considered judgments in a nice, intuitive way, and moreover, the theory is simple and elegant and conflicts only with some more marginal considered judgments, then it is the judgments that will be revised. Cases of conflict between a provisional theory and a considered moral judgment must be resolved individually; the inquirer must choose what to revise solely on the basis of what she is most strongly committed to, on the basis of what seems to her to be most likely to be true.

In order to complete the final phase of the method, an inquirer must attempt to disrupt her state of narrow reflective equilibrium. The person is to accomplish this by considering alternatives to {MT_n} along with philosophical arguments designed to decide among these alternative theories. Norman Daniels has suggested that we think of this process as an attempt to achieve coherence among the beliefs a person holds in narrow reflective equilibrium and the background theories she accepts.¹⁹ The idea is that philosophical arguments bearing upon the decision among moral theories must proceed from the inquirer’s broader views, e.g., philosophical or psychological beliefs regarding the nature of persons or rational decision making, or sociological views about such things as the role of morality in society. Thus, when an argument for an alternative to {MT_n} is successful, it shows that the theory accepted in narrow equilibrium does not cohere well with the background beliefs which served as the argument’s premises. Thus, letting {BT₁} be the background theories the person accepts, a philosophical argument against {MT_n}, which the person found compelling, would serve to show that while <{CMJ_n}, {MT_n}> represents a coherent system of beliefs, <{CMJ_n}, {MT_n}, {BT₁}> does not. If philosophical arguments were always decisive, the person’s considered judgments and moral theory would be coerced into coherence with her background beliefs. But such coercion is no part of the scenario envisioned by reflective equilibrium. Rather, just as narrow equilibrium is attained by mutual adjustment of considered judgments and the principles making up a moral theory, coherence among considered judgments, moral theory, and background theory is supposed to be attained by a process of mutual adjustment. Once again, no type of proposition is granted a privileged status. When an argument reveals a conflict between background philosophical beliefs and moral beliefs, it is an open question which will be revised.²⁰ The decision must be made on the basis of a person’s degree of commitment to the propositions involved, and the logical and evidential relations among these propositions and the other propositions she accepts or rejects. If all goes well, after the person has considered the alternatives to the moral theory she accepted in narrow equilibrium and considered the relevant philosophical arguments, she will be able to attain once again a coherent system of belie...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Strategy
• Part II: Rationality
• Part III: Warrant
• Notes
• Bibliography