Religious Models and Moral Principles

Abstract

In the introduction to this volume, a distinction is made between an epistemological and a pragmatic perspective on reflective equilibrium. In the first, reflective equilibrium is seen primarily as an coherentist procedure for justifying moral principle, and in the second as a pragmatic procedure for achieving moral consensus in a pluralist society. In this paper I would like to reflect on the role which religious beliefs might (or might not) fulfil within each of these perspectives. How we define this role, however, depends primarily on the way in which we understand the relationship between moral commitments and religious beliefs. The main body of my paper will be devoted to an analysis of this relationship. In the final section I will draw some conclusions from this analysis for the role which religious beliefs might fulfil within the procedure of reflective equilibrium.