Justice as Coherency: Reflective equilibrium and the justifying process

Abstract

This paper will examine the question whether or not the method of reflective equilibrium can account for justification as claimed, and will answer this question with ‘no’. This answer will be found by analyzing the method of reflective equilibrium, showing that the method needs justified input to generate justified output. In other words, for the produced coherency to be justified, the input of the method needs to be justified before brought into reflective equilibrium. As a consequence, the principles following from the method of reflective equilibrium might very well be justified, however this justification is not provided by the method itself. In order to find out if this problem can be overcome, the paper will focus on some of the arguments defenders of the method of reflective equilibrium have presented as well. It will be shown that they offer a better understanding of the method, but that their solution lies in adjusting the input of the method as well: leaving the problem of the lack of justifying force in the method unsolved. It will be concluded that reflective equilibrium as a justifying method seems to be an attractive device because of its epistemological and metaphysical neutrality, but that it merely produces coherency which cannot provide justification. For principles to be justified, the input of the method needs to be justified prior to the method of reflective equilibrium: the method itself does not have the recourses to justify.