Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Reflective equilibrium: The reflective equilibrium in Rawls is a method of moral reasoning that involves comparing and contrasting one's moral intuitions with one's principles of justice. The goal is to achieve a state of equilibrium in which one's intuitions and principles are mutually supportive. See also J. Rawls, Veil of ignorance, Society, Justice, Fairness._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Political Philosophy on Reflective Equilibrium - Dictionary of Arguments
Gaus I 226 Reflective equilibrium/Political philosophy/Lamont: theorists, the general population, and hopefully politicians, engage in a collective cognitive process through discussion and debate in order to come up with principles and policies to better cohere with the moral judgements and beliefs of the people. >Reflective equilibrium/Rawls. Of course, theorists can achieve such an equilibrium only by finding out what people believe (Miller, 1999(1): chs 3—4; Swift et al., 1995(2)). Fortunately, over the last couple of decades, there has been a sustained effort to collect the data necessary to this project (Elster, 1995(3); Hochschild, 1981(4); Kluegel and Smith, 1986(5); Miller, 1999(1)). Miller: David Miller (1999(1): ch. 4) has surveyed the empirical studies, partly summarizing the findings as follows: in people's thinking about social distribution, (there is) a tendency to favour more equality than presently exists in liberal democracies. This is partly to be explained by considerations of desert and need: people do not regard income inequalities of the size that currently obtain as deserved, and at the bottom of the scale they think it unfair that people cannot earn enough to meet their needs. (1999(1): 91) Frohling and Oppenheimer: In a series of experiments conducted to see what distributive principles people would choose, Frohlich and Oppenheimer (1992(6)) presented the subjects with four principles for distributing income: (l) maximizing the average income, (2) maximiz- ing the minimum income, (3) maximizing the average subject to a floor constraint (no income to fall below $x), and (4) maximizing the average subject to a range constraint (the gap between top and bottom incomes not to exceed $y). Maximizing the average subject to a floor constraint (or safety net) was chosen by the vast majority of individuals, while maximizing the average was a distant second. Lamont: The alternative used to gauge support for the difference principle - maximizing the minimum income - had very little support. Rawls: So while Rawls (1993(7): 8) popularized the theory of reflective equilibrium, his own theory of distributive justice gains little support from it. >J. Rawls. VsRawls: Some critics of his difference principle provide one reason for this. Although the argument, outlined above, for the difference principle gives moral weight to reducing the influence of factors over which people have no control, it gives little positive weight to choice and responsibility. Under the difference principle, the social structure is designed to maximize the position of the least advantaged group (characterized by Rawls, 1972(8): 97, as the bottom socio-economic quartile), no matter what choices individual members of that group have made. If the general public has a stronger view of the moral weight that should be given to responsibility, as Samuel Scheffler (1992)(9) has argued they do, then the degree of support the public believes is owed to the disadvantaged will depend on whether the disadvantage is due to a disability, a lack of motivation, or an individual lifestyle choice. Such considerations have influenced resource egalitarians and desert theorists (...). >Inequalities/Dworkin, >Inequalities/Resource-based view (RBV), >Distributive justice/ Resource-based view (RBV), cf. >Distributive Justice/Libertarianism. 1. Miller, David (1999) Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2. Swift, A., G. Marshall, C. Burgoyne and D. Routh, (1995) 'Distributive justice: does it matter what the people think?' In James R. Kluegel, David S. Mason and Bernard Wegener, eds, Social Justice and Political Change. New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 15—47. 3. Elster, Jon (1995) 'The empirical study of justice'. In David Miller and Michael Walzer, eds, Pluralism, Justice, and Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 81-98. 4. Hochschild, Jennifer L. (1981) What; Fair: American Beliefs about Distributive Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 5. Kluegel, James R. and Eliot R. Smith (1986) Beliefs about Inequality. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter. 6. Frohlich, N. and J. Oppenheimer (1992) Choosing Justice: An Experimental Appoach to Ethical Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 7. Rawls, John (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. 8. Rawls, John (1972) A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9. Schemer, Samuel (1992) 'Responsibility, reactive attitudes, and liberalism in philosophy and politics'. Lamont, Julian, „Distributive Justice“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications_____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Political Philosophy Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
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