Two Conceptions of Coherence Methods in Ethics

Abstract

The method of reflective equilibrium defended first by John Rawls, and later by Norman Daniels, is the most widely discussed, most carefully specified version of a coherence approach to moral enquiry.1 However, in spite of the detailed work that has been done on it, even this coherence method remains open to at least two distinct interpretations which differ with respect to the kinds of revision of pre-philosophical beliefs the method allows. Simply put, on a conservative conception of the method a person will revise moral or philosophical judgements where it is necessary to eliminate incoherencies latent in his belief system, with the particulars of these revisions being dictated by the person's initial commitment to the relevant propositions. A more radical understanding of the method recognizes revisions that go beyond what is needed to make a person's initial system of moral and philosophical beliefs coherent, allowing a person to alter her degree of commitment to propositions in ways that are not dictated by the logical or evidential relations between these propositions and the other propositions the person accepts or rejects. On the more radical interpretation, then, a person can simply change his mind about a proposition, while on the conservative understanding any change in belief or degree of commitment must be grounded somehow in elements of the person's initial system of beliefs. The conservative conception has dominated recent discussions of moral epistemology and methodology, indeed, the radical conception of a coherence method has not even been recognized as a possibility. Yet it is only the radical conception that has a chance of being an adequate method of moral enquiry. In order to defend this claim I must first formulate more precisely the radical and conservative conceptions of a coherence method. I will then be in a position to support the radical conception through a consideration of the implications the two conceptions have for the epistemology of our moral beliefs and reflection on the way in which our moral views commonly develop.