How far does reflective equilibrium take us? Investigating the power of a philosophical method

反思平衡能带我们走多远？

• 批准号: 412679086
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Gregor Betz
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Philosophie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/412679086?language=en
• 关键词: How; far; does; reflective; equilibrium

How powerful is philosophical reflection? Can it promote consensus, when different parties disagree on a philosophical problem? How far does it take non-ideal agents with bounded rationality in justifying their views? In this project, we aim to address such questions by analyzing the power of a popular philosophical method, viz. reflective equilibrium (RE, for short). RE is often appealed to in ethics and other parts of philosophy and has become the center of an intensive debate. Proponents of RE have invested high expectations in it and appealed to it e.g. to underpin a realist understanding of certain domains of discourse. Critics, by contrast, have argued that RE is (i) too implausible to grant justification, (ii) too difficult to apply in practice and (iii) not powerful enough to lead to consensus formation. So far, the debate between proponents and critics of RE suffers from a central shortcoming though: It lacks a common ground as to what exactly RE amounts to. Most characterizations of RE have remained too unspecific and vague to allow much progress. The aim of the proposed research is a new and much more thorough-going investigation of the power of RE. We wish to determine what it can accomplish and what its limitations are by drawing on a clarification of RE that we have obtained in recent research. In particular, we have available an operationalization of RE and a formal model that can be evaluated using computer simulations. To apply RE, an agent starts out with her commitments about a specific topic and then puts pressure on them by confronting them with a systematic theory. The fundamental unit of investigation thus is a (dual) epistemic state that consists of a set of commitments and a theory. Our operationalization of RE usefully distinguishes two kinds of aspects within the approach. The static aspects comprise the desiderata on epistemic states, viz. systematicity of the theory, its ability to account for the commitments and the faithfulness of the commitments to the initial view. Our model specifies measures that quantify to which extent these desiderata are fulfilled; it further fixes a trade-off between the desiderata. The dynamical aspects of the method, by contrast, encompass rules that characterize a dynamic process of equilibration. In previous research, we have developed software in which the rules can be applied in a stepwise manner.To assess the power of RE, we propose to answer the following research questions: 1. How plausible is RE as a method of justification in philosophy?2. How practicable is RE, in particular for non-ideal agents? 3. To what extent does RE reduce disagreement between different agents?4. What are the meta-ethical implications of RE, if it is applied to judgments about reasons?

哲学反思的力量有多大？当不同党派在一个哲学问题上意见不一时，它能促进共识吗？具有有限理性的非理想代理人在证明他们的观点时需要走多远？在这个项目中，我们的目标是通过分析一种流行的哲学方法，即反思平衡（RE，简称）的力量来解决这些问题。RE经常在伦理学和哲学的其他部分中被引用，并已成为激烈辩论的中心。可再生能源的支持者对它寄予了很高的期望，并呼吁它支持对某些话语领域的现实主义理解。相比之下，批评者认为RE（i）太不可信，无法提供理由，（ii）太难在实践中应用，（iii）不够强大，无法形成共识。到目前为止，可再生能源的支持者和批评者之间的争论有一个核心缺点：它缺乏一个共同点，即可再生能源到底是什么。可再生能源的大多数特征仍然过于不具体和模糊，无法取得很大进展。拟议的研究的目的是一个新的和更彻底的调查的权力RE。我们希望确定它可以完成什么，它的局限性是什么，我们已经在最近的研究中获得的澄清。特别是，我们有一个可操作的RE和一个正式的模型，可以使用计算机模拟进行评估。为了应用RE，代理人开始与她对一个特定主题的承诺，然后通过与他们面对一个系统的理论来对他们施加压力。因此，研究的基本单位是一种（双重）认识状态，它由一系列承诺和一种理论组成。我们的可操作性RE有效地区分了两种方面的方法。静态方面包括对认识状态的要求，即理论的系统性、解释承诺的能力以及承诺对初始观点的忠实性。我们的模型指定的措施，量化到何种程度，这些desiderata满足，它进一步修复了desiderata之间的权衡。相比之下，该方法的动态方面包含了表征动态平衡过程的规则。在之前的研究中，我们开发了可以逐步应用规则的软件。为了评估RE的力量，我们建议回答以下研究问题：1. RE作为哲学中的一种辩护方法有多合理？2.可再生能源的可行性如何，特别是对于非理想的代理人？3. RE在多大程度上减少了不同代理人之间的分歧？4.如果RE被应用于对理由的判断，那么RE的元伦理含义是什么？