Rawls' Concept of Reflective Equilibrium and Its Original Function in a Theory of Justice
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Transitional Justice As a Path to Distributive Justice: a Jurisprudential and Legal Case for Land Restitution in Kenya
Transitional Justice as a Path to Distributive Justice: A Jurisprudential and Legal Case for Land Restitution in Kenya Claude Kamau* Abstract Rawls’ theory of distributive justice may serve as a useful model in conceptual- izing a model of the ideal political economy – one that seeks to keep inequalities that have come about as a result of natural accident to a minimum. Moreover, his principles of justice can be used correctively, to address institutional inequalities that have the effect of entrenching social dislocation. Kenya has, over the decades up until now, been riven by injustices relating to land. This has led to the develop- ment of a small cluster of landed elites while the majority of citizens are effectively denied land access rights. This is regardless of the fact that most of the land so acquired by the former was acquired irregularly and with disregard of bona fide title of the original occupants. The concept and process of transitional justice may be viewed as the vehicle toward attaining corrective justice and accountability for offences committed in times of national crisis as a restorative measure. I. Introduction Kenya, being a constitutional democracy,1 is necessarily apt for an analysis of its political economy against the minimum standards imposed by the Consti- tution. The letter of the Constitution (and of the laws that have been legislated under it) is clear. The question this contribution addresses itself to is whether its * The author is a student at Strathmore Law School in Nairobi, Kenya. 1 It is noteworthy that Rawls models his theory against the political constitution of a constitutional democracy. -
Beyond Skepticism Foundationalism and the New Fuzziness: the Role of Wide Reflective Equilibrium in Legal Theory Robert Justin Lipkin
Cornell Law Review Volume 75 Article 2 Issue 4 May 1990 Beyond Skepticism Foundationalism and the New Fuzziness: The Role of Wide Reflective Equilibrium in Legal Theory Robert Justin Lipkin Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Robert Justin Lipkin, Beyond Skepticism Foundationalism and the New Fuzziness: The Role of Wide Reflective Equilibrium in Legal Theory , 75 Cornell L. Rev. 810 (1990) Available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol75/iss4/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cornell Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEYOND SKEPTICISM, FOUNDATIONALISM AND THE NEW FUZZINESS: THE ROLE OF WIDE REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM IN LEGAL THEORY Robert Justin Liphint TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................. 812 I. FOUNDATIONALISM AND SKEPTICISM ..................... 816 A. The Problem of Skepticism ........................ 816 B. Skepticism and Nihilism ........................... 819 1. Theoretical and PracticalSkepticism ................ 820 2. Subjectivism and Relativism ....................... 821 3. Epistemic and Conceptual Skepticism ................ 821 4. Radical Skepticism ............................... 822 C. Modified Skepticism ............................... 824 II. NEW FOUNDATIONALISM -
John Rawls' Theory of Justice As Fairness
ANDREAS FOLLESDAL 20121025 John Rawls' Theory of Justice as Fairness Approximately as appears in Guttorm Floistad, ed. Philosophy of Justice, Contemporary Philosophy, Springer 2014, 311-328 When do citizens have a moral duty to obey the government and support the institutions of society?1 This question is central to political philosophy. One of the 20 century's main response was John Rawls' theory of justice, "Justice as fairness", in the book A Theory of Justice, published 1971. The book Justice as Fairness was an improved and shorter presentation of Rawls' theory, published 2001 with editorial support by Erin Kelly, one of his former students. When asked how rights, duties, benefits and burdens should be distributed, the ideals of freedom and equality often conflict with each other. In domestic politics we often see such conflicts between calls for more individual freedoms and schemes for universal, egalitarian welfare arrangements. It is such conflict between liberty and equality that Rawls attempts to reconcile with his theory of justice. There are three main steps in Rawls' theory of justice. He assumes certain features characteristic of free societies, as well as some specific ideas about how society and people should be understood. Rawls believes that even people with different beliefs can agree with some principles to resolve basic conflicts over the distributional effects of social institutions. Secondly, he draws on the contract theory tradition in political philosophy, arguing that consent in some sense is necessary for the legitimate exercise of state power. Based on the requirement of consent, in a third step Rawls presents certain principles for a just society that citizens should be expected to support. -
Rawlsian Reflective Equilibrium
T.V. Cunningham draft of 02.13.2014 – please do not quote w/o permission Rawslian Reflective Equilibrium Rawlsian Reflective Equilibrium Abstract: This paper proposes a Rawlsian conception of moral justification as a social activity. Through a close reading, Rawls’ view of ethical justification is shown to be significantly more dialogical and deliberative than is commonly appreciated. The result is a view that emphasizes the social nature of ethical justification and identifies information sharing between persons as the crux of justification in metaethics, in contrast to normative ethics. I call it Rawlsian reflective equilibrium to distinguish it from other varieties. Keywords: reflective equilibrium, moral justification, deliberation, Rawls Word Count: 3,327 1. Reflective Equilibrium and its Discontents Reflective equilibrium (RE) is a popular1 procedural account of moral and ethical justification.2 RE requires that an agent (i) begins in a state with certain initial moral judgments; (ii) proceeds to prune these based on her logico-empirical standards, resulting in a set of considered moral judgments; (iii) adduces moral principles that explicate those judgments; (iv) brings the set of judgments and principles into coherence by selecting among the members of the united set, according to the criterion of maximal consistency; and, (v) brings this latter set into maximal coherence with other relevant background theories (following DePaul 1993, 16-23). Despite its popularity, RE has received ample criticism. The general issue lies with the method’s apparent circularity: RE appears to rest entirely upon the judgments and principles adopted by the agent instantiating it, so whatever judgments, principles, or intuitions she begins with biases the composition of the “justified” set at equilibrium (e.g., Haslett 1987, 307). -
Justice As Fairness, Legitimacy, and the Question of Judicial Review: a Comment
Fordham Law Review Volume 72 Issue 5 Article 4 2004 Justice as Fairness, Legitimacy, and the Question of Judicial Review: A Comment Frank I. Michelman Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Frank I. Michelman, Justice as Fairness, Legitimacy, and the Question of Judicial Review: A Comment, 72 Fordham L. Rev. 1407 (2004). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol72/iss5/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE CONSTITUTIONAL ESSENTIALS OF POLITICAL LIBERALISM JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS, LEGITIMACY, AND THE QUESTION OF JUDICIAL REVIEW: A COMMENT Frank L Michelman* INTRODUCTION My aims in this Comment are modest and primarily exegetical: to assemble what John Rawls says about the question of judicial review, and to resolve two apparent puzzles posed by his remarks bearing on this question. The remarks I have in mind are all found in Rawls's book Political Liberalism,' mainly in Sections 52 and 63 ("The Idea of Constitutional Essentials" and "The Supreme Court as Exemplar of Public Reason") of Lecture VI ("The Idea of Public Reason").4 It is chiefly in these pages that Rawls reflects on whether and how judicial review may comport with a certain political conception of justice,' namely, the one he calls6 "justice as fairness" and commends as morally apt for our society. -
The Evidential Weight of Considered Moral Judgments
San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research 2009 The evidential weight of considered moral judgments Christopher Michael Cloos San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Cloos, Christopher Michael, "The evidential weight of considered moral judgments" (2009). Master's Theses. 3352. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.28pf-kx6u https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3352 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT OF CONSIDERED MORAL JUDGMENTS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Philosophy San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Christopher Michael Cloos December 2009 © 2009 Christopher Michael Cloos ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT OF CONSIDERED MORAL JUDGMENTS by Christopher Michael Cloos APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY December 2009 Dr. William H. Shaw Department of Philosophy Dr. Anand J. Vaidya Department of Philosophy Dr. Richard L. Tieszen Department of Philosophy ABSTRACT THE EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT OF CONSIDERED MORAL JUDGMENTS by Christopher Michael Cloos The input objection to reflective equilibrium (RE) claims that the method fails as a method of moral justification. According to the objection, considered moral judgments (CMJs) are not truth-conducive. Because the method uses inputs that are not credible, the method does not generate justified moral beliefs. -
Reliable Reasoning: Induction and Statistical Learning Theory
Reliable Reasoning: Induction and Statistical Learning Theory Gilbert Harman and Sanjeev Kulkarni March 14, 2006 ii Reliable Reasoning Contents Series Forward v Introduction vii 1 The Problem of Induction 1 1.1 The Problem . 1 1.2 Inference and Implication . 3 1.3 Reflective Equilibrium . 7 1.4 Worries about Reflective Equilibrium . 9 1.5 Reliability . 14 1.6 A Look Ahead . 15 1.7 Conclusion . 18 2 Induction and VC-Dimension 21 2.1 Pattern Recognition . 21 2.1.1 Pattern Classfication . 22 2.1.2 Function Estimation . 23 2.2 Background Probability Distribution . 24 2.3 Reliability of Rules of Classification and Function Estimation 26 2.3.1 Reliability of a Classification Rule . 26 2.3.2 Reliability of a Rule of Function Estimation . 27 2.4 Inductive Learning . 28 2.4.1 Linear Classification and Estimation Rules . 29 2.5 Conditions for Satisfactory Enumerative Induction . 32 2.6 Popper . 35 2.7 Summary . 36 3 Induction and “Simplicity” 39 3.1 Introduction . 39 3.2 Empirical Error Minimization . 39 iii iv Reliable Reasoning 3.3 Universal Consistency . 40 3.3.1 Nearest Neighbor Rules . 41 3.4 Structural Risk Minimization . 43 3.5 Minimum Description Length . 44 3.6 Simplicity . 45 3.7 Function Estimation and Curve Fitting . 45 3.8 Goodman’s New Riddle . 46 3.9 Popper on Simplicity . 49 3.10 Empirically Equivalent Rules . 52 3.11 Important Ideas from Statistical Learning Theory . 53 3.12 Summary . 54 4 Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, and Transduction 55 4.1 Introduction . 55 4.2 Machine Learning: Perceptrons . -
1 DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE and the LAW of PEOPLES Samuel
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND THE LAW OF PEOPLES Samuel Freeman, University of Pennsylvania Part I: Background A Theory of Justice says that the distribution of income and wealth within a society is just when laws and economic institutions are designed so as to maximally benefit the least advantaged members of that same society. This standard for domestic distributive justice is to apply worldwide, to determine just distributions in every society in the world. In this regard Rawls has an account of global distributive justice. But he does not have, and he does not endorse, a global distribution principle. The difference principle applies globally, within each society, but it is not global in reach. Neither Political Liberalism nor The Law of Peoples retracts or alters this position. The primary focus of political liberalism is not ideal justice, but liberal legitimacy. It implies that laws regulating distributions in a democratic society can be legitimate, hence worthy of respect, even if they are not wholly just.1 Unlike the basic liberties and their priority, the difference principle is not required by liberal legitimacy; for legitimacy it suffices that a liberal society provide an adequate social minimum (adequate to free and equal persons’ realizing the moral powers and effectively exercising the equal basic liberties). The difference principle is one among several standards that pass the legitimacy test, all of which meet the criterion of reciprocity and the requirements of public reason. A society which protects the basic liberties and their priority, and affords equal opportunities and an adequate social minimum is 1 For Rawls’s distinction between the aims of TJ and PL, Cf. -
The Reflective Equilibrium in Rawls' Theory of Justice: the Perspective
META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy – VII (2) / 2015 META: RESEARCH IN HERMENEUTICS, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY VOL. VII, NO. 2 / DECEMBER 2015: 336-356, ISSN 2067-3655, www.metajournal.org The Reflective Equilibrium in Rawls’ Theory of Justice: The Perspective of Holistic Pragmatism Mihai Burlacu Transylvania University of Brasov Abstract Interpreting John Rawls’ ‘reflective equilibrium’ method from the perspective of Morton White’s holistic pragmatism entails both an epistemological and a methodological dimension. In this article, I reconsider White’s perspective regarding Rawls’ ‘reflective equilibrium’. This requires a critical examination of the method’s origins and development, with an emphasis on Nelson Goodman’s process of justification and the Duhem-Quine thesis. In order to examine the origins and development of the ‘reflective equilibrium’ method, I also draw upon the writings of Pierre Duhem, Willard Van Orman Quine, Nelson Goodman, Stephen P. Stich and Donald Gillies, among others. Subsequently, I interpret the criticisms that have been formulated against the process of justification elaborated by Goodman and adapted by Rawls. Afterwards, I explain the conceptual links between the ‘Duhem-Quine thesis’ and the ‘reflective equilibrium’ method. In the last chapter, I analyse White’s assertion that Rawls’ theory of justice is a variant of holistic pragmatism. I emphasize how White’s holistic theses coincide to a significant extent with the ideas devised by Rawls regarding the method of ‘reflective equilibrium’ in social justice, and in a more general sense, in ethics. Also, I expound why White’s doctrine is epistemologically holistic and methodologically monistic. Keywords: reflective equilibrium, holistic pragmatism, considered judgment, principles of justice, conjunction of statements, Duhem-Quine thesis, Duhemian conjunction 1. -
Five the METHOD of WIDE REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM IN
Five THE METHOD OF WIDE REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM IN BIOETHICS Juha Räikkä 1. What Is Wide Reflective Equilibrium? The method of wide reflective equilibrium has been widely applied in practical ethics and especially in bioethics. In what follows I would like to say few words on the nature of this method. The method of wide reflective equilibrium (WRE) is a coherence method of justification in ethics. WRE was first introduced by John Rawls in his “The Independence of Moral Theory,” and one of WRE’s strongest proponents has been another American philosopher Norman Daniels.1 As Daniels describes WRE, it is a method which attempts to produce coherence in an ordered triple of sets of beliefs held by a particular person, namely (a) a set of considered moral judgments, (b) a set of moral principles, and (c) a set of relevant (scien- tific and philosophical) background theories.2 When using WRE, a person begins by collecting moral judgments (such as “abortion should be allowed”) which she finds intuitively plausible. Then she proposes alternative sets of moral principles (such as “killing human be- ings is wrong”) that have varying degree of fit with the moral judgments. Fi- nally, she seeks support for those moral judgments and moral principles from background theories (such as “a fetus is not a human being”) that are, in her view, acceptable. As Daniels writes, we can imagine the agent working back and forth, making adjustments to her considered moral judgments, her moral principles and her background theories. Finally, she arrives at an equilibrium point that consists of the ordered triple (a), (b) and (c). -
A Methodological Turn in Political Philosophy: Making Political Philosophy More Scientific?1 Tereza Křepelová Masaryk University, Brno
Public Reason 10 (2) - Public Reason 11 (1): 77-92 © 2019 by Public Reason A Methodological Turn in Political Philosophy: Making Political Philosophy More Scientific?1 Tereza Křepelová Masaryk University, Brno Abstract: The emergence of the first literature concerning the methodology of political philosophy, which we have witnessed over the last decade, indicates a general methodological shift within the discipline. This shift can be interpreted as a sign of the ongoing adjustment of political philosophy to the domain of science that had already begun when analytical political philosophy incorporated from logical positivism the premise of the unity of method of science and philosophy. The urge to have an epistemic source of justification for normative political theories lead analytical political philosophy to the development of various methodological frameworks from among which reflective equilibrium became the most influential one and nowadays it is being considered as the most widely used method in the contemporary political philosophy overall. Reflective equilibrium aims to provide knowledge that falls into the same category as scientific knowledge; however, it can also lead to various normative distortions resulting in the elimination of metaphysics, meta-ethics and religious claims from the normative part of political philosophical theorising. These normative distortions not only can result in epistemically wrong conclusions; above all, they implicitly affirm the normative propositions of political conceptions of liberalism. Hence, the prevalence and uncritical use of reflective equilibrium might narrow the topical scope and undermine the reflective and critical role of the discipline of political philosophy itself. Key words: political science, political philosophy, methodology, analytical political philosophy, logical positivism, political liberalism, epistemic value, epistemic justification, reflective equilibrium, philosophy of science. -
Contractarian Perspectives of International Society: an Analysis of John Rawls' Theory of Justice As Fairness
Contractarian Perspectives of International Society: An Analysis of John Rawls' Theory of Justice as Fairness Patricia Di Brigida Contractarianism developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during the Enlightenment. It was developed as a political theory to analyze the legitimacy of a government and the basis for political obligation of common people to such a government. In a climate where traditional beliefs were being questioned, credence in the divine right of kings was fading and political authority was beginning to be seen as analogous to human practices. Consequently, political legitimacy and obligation were to be dictated by the wills of the people, and not by God or by nature. Social contract theorists wanted an explanation for the existence of the state an~ the duty that people had afforded it. The contract would come to serve three purposes. It would explain the emergence of government, the people's obligation to it, and the limitations of such a government's power.l The author Will Kymlicka states "people would therefore agree to institute government, and cede certain powers to it, if governors agreed to use these powers to ensure security.,,2 Ina state of nature, all people are free and equal with no one person or entity holding any authority over others. In such a situation there is neither allegiance nor responsibility to others, resulting in a feeling of insecurity. Without government there is no control over people's actions and thus, no guarantee of personal safety. It is for this reason that people consented to government, and were then obligated to obey the laws that it had created.3 It is this idea of consent that was seen as a flaw in the theory because consent was never given by way of any real contract, therefore there were no commitments binding governments or citizens.~ Theorists then began looking for hypothetical consent.