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

哲学反思的力量有多大？当不同的政党在一个哲学问题上存在分歧时，它能促进共识吗？具有有限理性的非理想代理人需要多长时间才能证明他们的观点是正确的？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的力量来解决这些问题，即。反射平衡(简称RE)。Re经常在伦理学和哲学的其他部分受到呼吁，并成为一场激烈辩论的中心。RE的支持者对它寄予了很高的期望，并呼吁它例如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)太不可信而不能给予正当理由，(Ii)太难在实践中应用，(Iii)不足以导致共识的形成。然而，到目前为止，RE的支持者和批评者之间的辩论存在一个核心缺陷：对于RE到底是什么，缺乏共同点。大多数对RE的描述仍然太不具体和含糊，不能取得太大进展。这项拟议的研究的目的是对RE的力量进行一次新的、更彻底的调查。我们希望通过利用我们在最近的研究中获得的对RE的澄清来确定它可以实现什么以及它的局限性是什么。特别是，我们已经提供了RE的可操作性和可以使用计算机模拟进行评估的正式模型。为了应用RE，代理人从她对特定主题的承诺开始，然后通过与他们对抗一个系统的理论来向他们施加压力。因此，研究的基本单位是由一套承诺和一套理论组成的(双重)认知状态。我们的RE的可操作性有效地区分了该方法中的两种方面。静态方面包括关于认识状态的愿望，即。理论的系统性、其对承诺的解释能力以及承诺对最初观点的忠实性。我们的模型指定了量化这些愿望得到满足的程度的衡量标准；它进一步确定了愿望之间的权衡。相比之下，该方法的动力学方面包含了描述动态平衡过程的规则。在以前的研究中，我们开发了软件，其中规则可以以一种循序渐进的方式应用。为了评估RE的力量，我们建议回答以下研究问题：1.RE作为一种哲学上的证明方法有多可信？2.RE的可行性如何，特别是对于非理想的主体？3.RE在多大程度上减少了不同主体之间的分歧？4.如果将RE应用于对原因的判断，那么RE的元伦理含义是什么？

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?