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The Wide and Narrow of Reflective Equilibrium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Margaret Holmgren
Margaret Holmgren*
Affiliation:
Iowa State University, Ames, IA50011, U.S.A.
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Extract

In a well-known series of articles, Norman Daniels has drawn a contrast between wide reflective equilibrium and a more traditional method of theory acceptance in ethics that would be employed by a sophisticated moral intuitionist. The more traditional method is geared towards achieving a narrow equilibrium, or ‘an ordered pair of (a) a set of considered moral judgments acceptable to a given person P at a given time, and (b) a set of moral principles that economically systematizes (a).’ Although we might achieve narrow reflective equilibrium by deducing particular moral judgments from self-evident moral principles, the more plausible approach is to start from our particular moral judgments. Here we begin by screening our intial moral judgments to eliminate those in which we have little confidence and those made under circumstances conducive to error. We then search for general moral principles that best account for the remaining ‘considered’ moral judgments.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 43 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1989

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Mark Timmons for several useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and my colleague, A. David Kline, for suggesting the title. I have also benefitted from Mark Timmons’ article, ‘Foundationalism and the Structure of Ethical Justification,’ Ethics 97 (1987) 595-609.

References

1 Norman Daniels, ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,’ The journal of Philosophy 76 (1979) 256-82; ‘Reflective Equilibrium and Archimedian Points,’ Canadian journal of Philosophy 10 (1980) 83-103; ‘On Some Methods of Ethics and Linguistics,’ Philosophical Studies 37 (1980) 21-36. These articles elaborate on the methodology of reflective equilibrium proposed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971), and on the distinction Rawls draws between wide and narrow reflective equilibrium, in ‘The Independence of Moral Theory,’ Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 48 (1974-5) 8.

2 Daniels, ‘On Some Methods of Ethics and Linguistics,’ 22

3 Daniels, ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,’ 258-9

4 Ibid., 257

5 In his Dewey Lectures, Rawls offers a constructivist interpretation of WRE, arguing that the justification of a theory of justice is a practical task rather than an epistemic task. See his ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,’The Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980), esp. 519. In ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Objective Moral Truth,’ Metaphilosophy 18, 2 (1987) 108-24, I argue that serious problems will arise in any constructivist interpretation of WRE.

6 Michael R. DePaul has emphasized the importance of distinguishing between the sets of considered moral judgments that are (provisionally) accepted at various stages in the process of achieving reflective equilibrium. See his article ‘Reflective Equilibrium and Foundationalism,’ Americal Philosophical Quarterly 23, 1 (1986) 59-69.

7 See especially Richard Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1979), chapter 1, and Peter Singer, ‘Sidgewick and Reflective Equilibrium,’ The Monist 58, 3 (1974) 516.

8 In ‘The Independence of Moral Theory,’ Rawls suggests that WRE might be taken as a methodology for characterizing one's moral sensibility. Daniels speaks to this point on ‘On Some Methods of Ethics and Linguistics.’ He argues that although NRE may be an appropriate methodology for describing our moral sensibilities (and in this role it would not presuppose any claims about the credibility of our considered moral judgments), the real task of moral theory is to justify moral theories and to adjudicate between competing moral conceptions. He goes on to argue that WRE is well-suited for this latter task.

In attributing a prima facie credibility to our considered moral judgments, we need not claim that any of them are in principle immune to revision. We need only claim that they must be regarded as credible unless we have good reason to revise or discard them.

9 Daniels, ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,’ 257

10 Daniels discusses the revision and/or elimination of considered moral judgments in the context of NRE in ‘On Some Methods of Ethics and Linguistics,’ 22-4 and in ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,’ 266.

11 Daniels suggests that moral judgments may be disanalogous to observations in science in that the former are more extensively theory-dependent. See ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,’ 270.

12 Ibid., 260

13 There is no suggestion in Daniels’ writings that relevant background theories will be nonmoral. He says ‘there is no assumption that the set (c) of relevant theories is a set of non-moral theories, which thus constitutes a reduction of the moral… to the non-moral’ (‘On Some Methods of Ethics and Linguistics,’ 25). On the other hand, he does not rule out the possibility that some relevant background theories will turn out to be nonmoral.

14 The argument I suggest is a reformulation of an argument proposed by Hardy Jones in ‘Are Fundamental Moral Principles Incapable of Proof?,’ Metaphilosophy 10, 2 (1979) 153-60. The validity of this argument as I have formulated it depends on whether the claim that we ought to guide out actions by P follows immediately from the fact that P constitutes our best approximation of moral truth.

15 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), 33

16 David Gauthier, Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1963), 126, and John Rawls, A Theory of justice, 28

17 Derek Parfit, ‘Later Selves and Moral Principles,’ in Alan Montefiore, ed., Philosophy and Personal Relations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1973), 153

18 Parfit, 148

19 Daniels, ‘Moral Theory and the Plasticity of Persons,’ 269

20 Daniels, ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,’ 259

21 For this argument to go through, we must stipulate that P is not a conjunction of different moral principles.