Justification

Abstract

On ethical questions, to express your opinion is not enough; you need to say something that justifies it or is capable of persuading others to accept it. The form that one thinks justification should take will depend on one’s views about the nature of ethics itself: that is, about whether moral judgements can be true or false, or are better understood as merely expressions of our attitudes. Proving an ethical first principle is notoriously difficult. Should we try, like Descartes, to come up with a self-evident first principle that can serve as a foundation for all our other ethical judgements? That is the method known as ‘foundationalism’. Or do we want to follow the example of John Rawls and use the method of ‘reflective equilibrium’, justifying ethical principles by how well they match our moral judgements, while also reconsidering the judgements themselves in the light of their coherence with plausible principles?