Editing Reflective equilibrium (section)

==Criticism==
[[Paul Thagard]] has criticized the method of reflective equilibrium as "only like a smokescreen for a relatively sophisticated form of logical and methodological relativism" and "at best incidental to the process of developing normative principles".<ref>{{cite book |last=Thagard |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Thagard |date=1988 |title=Computational philosophy of science |url=https://archive.org/details/computationalphi00thag |url-access=limited |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |page=[https://archive.org/details/computationalphi00thag/page/n121 115] |isbn=978-0262200684 |oclc=16525738}}</ref> Among the "numerous problems" of reflective equilibrium, Thagard counted "undue reliance on intuition and the danger of arriving at stable but suboptimal sets of norms".<ref name="Thagard 2009">{{cite journal |last=Thagard |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Thagard |date=April 2009 |title=Why cognitive science needs philosophy and vice versa |journal=Topics in Cognitive Science |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=237–254 [248] |doi=10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01016.x|pmid=25164930 |doi-access=free }}</ref> In place of reflective equilibrium, Thagard recommended what he considered to be a more [[consequentialist]] method of justifying norms by identifying a domain of practices, identifying candidate norms for the practices, identifying the appropriate goals of the practices, evaluating the extent to which different practices accomplish these goals, and adopting as domain norms the practices that best accomplish these goals.<ref name="Thagard 2009"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Thagard |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Thagard |date=2010 |title=The brain and the meaning of life |url=https://archive.org/details/brainmeaningofli0000thag |url-access=registration |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |pages=[https://archive.org/details/brainmeaningofli0000thag/page/202 202]–217 |isbn=9780691142722 |oclc=416717721}}</ref>