On Moral Intuition And Moral Principle From The Perspective Of Reflective Equilibrium

In research in the field of ethics,reasoning about moral theories is usually conducted by working back and forth between general moral principles and intuitions about specific situations.At the same time,for scholars in the field of ethics,no matter whether they prefer moral principles or moral intuition when examining the fundamental questions of moral theory,these two are essential basic tools for them to answer the questions of moral theory.And moral principles and moral intuitions are often in conflict: at the crossroads of the trolley problem,the utilitarian moral principle is at odds with the intuition that you can’t take someone’s life.So what should you do when a conflict like this arises? Should one place more weight on moral principles or moral intuition,or give equal weight to both?At the same time,in almost all ethical discussions,people fail to reach a consensus on the conflict between moral principles and moral intuition.In other words,there is no agreement on what the ethical approach should be.For scholars who value moral principles,moral principles are self-evident.They not only have a privileged position for moral intuition,but also believe that moral intuition is produced on the basis of moral principles.However,for scholars who value moral intuition,moral intuition has more priority status,and moral principles are based on moral intuition.Obviously,these are two diametrically opposed views.Scholars who support moral principles trust the self-disclosure of moral principles and ignore its contingency,which often leads to some dogmatism or moral formalism.As for moral intuition,its essence is pluralism,which puts too much faith in people’s moral judgment and ignores the self-interests and various biases that may be included in moral judgment,thus leading to subjectivism and relativism.Here,the ethical method Rawls used in his A Theory of Justice,Reflective Equilibrium,enters into the field of discussion.Because the essence of this method is to find and eliminate the unreasonable elements in moral principles and moral intuitions,and to make them no longer mutually exclusive in the process of moral reasoning,especially in the discussion of the basis of moral theory.The reflective equilibrium approach holds that,all other things being equal,moral principles and moral intuitions should have equal weight,and that the relationship between the two should not be in opposition to each other but in harmony with each other.It can be seen that Rawls’ s ethical approach provides a new way to study the relationship between moral principles and moral intuition.Therefore,this thesis attempts to study the role and significance of this perspective in understanding Rawls theory and its practical ethics from the perspective of reflection balance.First of all,the first chapter of this paper will introduce the origin of the main problems discussed in this paper,the significance and value of the study of this problem,the degree of research on relevant issues at home and abroad,the research methods and ideas used in the discussion and some innovations of this paper.The second chapter will make some basic overview of the theoretical methods involved in the paper,the origin of reflection balance and the basic mode of the method are expounded and discussed.And discuss how one should approach and study moral theory when adopting reflective equilibrium.At the same time,it tries to conduct a programmatic discussion on the reflection balance,so as to provide a certain theoretical basis for the following research of this paper.Chapter 3 begins with a discussion of the limitations that moral principles may have in order to harmonize themselves with moral intuitions in the use of reflective equilibrium,and an analysis of the reflective structure of moral principles and its normative role in practice in a pluralistic democratic society.Chapter 4 will discuss what reasonable moral intuitions can be used in the research and reasoning of moral theories when adopting the reflective equilibrium approach,discuss where such moral intuitions come from,how they cooperate with moral principles to produce acceptable moral norms,and how they are applied in practice.The fifth chapter will put forward some existing problems after the analysis of the full text,and then make a summary of the full text.