Abstract
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.
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Notes
It gets this moniker from the affiliations of its main proponents Richard Boyd, David Brink, Nicholas Sturgeon and Geoffrey-Sayre McCord with the said university.
While the notion of objectivity is contested, Both Brink and Boyd agree that it stands for a sense of the truth and falsity of moral statements being independent of our moral theory. Brink provides a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for objectivity: a domain is objective if there are truths independent of the evidence we possess for claiming them (Brink 1989, 14–17). In this paper, achieving moral objectivity should mean arriving at epistemically reliable representations of moral properties, or facts. At the very least, such a notion assumes that the truth and falsity of such representations can be independent of the evidence we have for it. For more on objectivity, see Tropman (2018).
While there have been a few efforts to provide a social turn to reflective equilibrium like Baderin (2017), our novelty is in attempting to model a social reflective equilibrium framework such that the commitments of Cornell realists towards naturalistic moral realism are reconciled with the social nature of moral inquiry. This contrasts with most traditional works on reflective equilibrium, which either do not require moral enquiries to be social or many contemporary works, which might take reflective equilibrium to be a social enterprise but dispense with any naturalistic metaethical commitments. Pace some accounts where there is only a nudge towards a collective reflective equilibrium, we offer a more substantive account of how the social turn and objectivity can be accommodated at both the level of considered moral judgments and coherence-seeking processes. We thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.
The appeal of CR also lies in the fact that it provides a way to ascribe cognitivist and realist commitments to ethical discourse without the metaphysical and epistemological ‘baggage’ that accompanies intuitionism (Brink 1999, 197).
For example, it is claimed that moral properties are theory-independent while scientific ones are not, and scientific properties are empirically testable while moral properties are not.
Boyd stresses the unified framework by conceptualising philosophy as a “normative science” with epistemology involved in understanding which belief-forming mechanisms are credible for obtaining truth (1983, 72).
Brink too claims that his coherentist theory of moral justification is "essentially John Rawls's method of wide reflective equilibrium" (1989, 104).
The burden of proof then is on critics like Tropman to show either that RE is not a plausible scientific epistemology or that while RE might be applicable in scientific inquiries, it fails in moral inquiries (perhaps because of the discontinuities between the two domains). Such a criticism though, is yet to formulated.
By Constructivists, we are referring to proponents of the Strong program like Bloor, who claimed that the methodology of science used to study reality is deeply theory-dependent and if such a methodology were to be trusted to fetch knowledge, then the reality which the scientists study itself must at least be partly constituted by their theoretical tradition.
Barnes and Bloor call it (the equivalence postulate) the “third feature of relativism”, which requires sociologists, historians, philosophers and the like to treat rationally and irrationally held beliefs to be subjected to similar appeals of applications of mind and influenced by similar patterns of “social organisation”. They argue that irrespective of whether they are considered true or false, beliefs must be subjected to similar scrutiny of their credibility and offered similar kinds of explanations. (1982, 23–28).
McPherson (2015, 655) has offered a similar analysis.
Rawls does not adequately clarify what achieving coherence entails. It is often suggested that it involves maximising relations of support and minimizing conflicts between the members of the belief set (Cath 2016). Consistency, systematicity, generality and simplicity have all been considered as desirable features of the resulting belief set Kappel (2006).
Background theories would include aligned non-moral judgments, such as the epistemic or pragmatic importance of various moral theories.
To be fair, in one of his earlier writings, Rawls uses the first person plural ‘we’ while referring to how we can arrive at considered moral judgments and claims that the legitimacy of considered moral judgments is to be granted when competent judges arrive at a consensus (1951, 180). However, he quickly abandons that in his later works as seen in the quote.
CR’s moral semantics built on Boyd’s causal regulation account has come under challenge from what has been referred to as the Moral Twin earth problem (Horgans & Timmons 1992). As mentioned earlier, the focus of our paper is on their epistemology, and hence we have chosen not to engage with it. However, several interlocutors including Brink have responded to the issue (Copp 2000; Brink 2001). Väyrynen (2018) and Geirsson (2005) have also provided useful accounts of possible responses from the naturalists.
See Timmons (1991) for a supporting claim that Brink and Boyd can be employed to show how we can have epistemic access to moral facts, although Timmons finds Boyd’s naturalistic semantics to be problematic.
Especially when coherence is sought under “impartial and imaginative consideration of the interests of the relevant parties” (Brink 1989, 132).
In a later work Brink (1999) talks of a dialectical equilibrium that could be closely seen in connection with our proposal. Brink however, doesn’t offer any defense of his position and restricts himself to the concept and its virtues.
Our response to Street is limited to her possible objections to CR’s naturalism and not a refutation of the Darwinian dilemma in general.
Street uses the term ‘evaluative’ to capture a broader range of judgments that are under the influence of evolutionary forces. We have replaced it with the narrower term ‘moral’ to maintain continuity.
Such criticisms are often called as input objections (Timmons 1991).
While there might be some tension in suggesting that it is reasonable to hold on to intuitions and in the same vein arguing for their removal from the set of considered moral judgments, it is to be noted that steadfastness seems to be applicable to those cases where a sheer inability to provide moral reasons for one’s judgment is called as dumbfounding, while conciliation is applicable in responding to recalcitrant intuitions.
While Baderin’s criticism is against Wolff and Avner de-Shalit (2013) conception of public reflective equilibrium and not specifically against CR’s reinterpretation of RE, the crux of her allegation can still apply to CR. We have not engaged with Baderin and Wolf & de-Shalit’s conceptions of public reflective equilibrium because their framing of the question is vastly different from ours, with their concern being how to accommodate “public opinion” to the practice of moral philosophy.
Rawls himself held a view compatible with CR’s stance in his (1951) article mentioned earlier. He held his method in ethics (RE) to be analogous to the study of inductive logic which is interested in formulating criteria to decide which empirical claims must be considered true.
This is in clear contrast to some contemporary works, which might take reflective equilibrium to be a social enterprise but dispense with any naturalistic metaethical commitments. For instance, while Brandstedt & Brannmark (2020) do offer a practical ‘ bottom-up’ interpretation of reflective equilibrium, their account is vastly different from ours. They explicitly give up the notion of moral truth, and the process of reflective equilibrium is employed “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” (2020, 355). Our account attempts to reconcile the notion of moral truths to the social process of moral inquiry. We thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.
Anderson clarifies that by democratic, she intends equal and dignified participation of all stakeholders in a moral dispute (Anderson 2016, 94).
For instance, with the parity thesis in mind, CR could grant that testimony plays an important role in the case of scientific beliefs also. CR’s reinterpretation not only works as a feasible method in the moral domain, it is also a better characterization of how scientific inquiries proceed.
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Ravish, S., Sirola, V.S. Can Social Reflective Equilibrium Delineate Cornell Realist Epistemology?. Philosophia 51, 2015–2033 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00654-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00654-9