Rawls wide reflective equilibrium and emotions in decision making on

new technologies: justification and emotions

Jan Bergen, Zo Robaey, and Shannon Spruit

When deciding on action concerning new technologies, whose risks can only be
partially determined, more intuitive forms of value judgement can come into
play. Despite the limits of cost-benefit analyses or risk assessments, humans can
and must still make decisions. Although, there are different ways of
conceptualizing how these decisions are made, our group suggests looking at the
introduction of new technologies into societies as social experiments and uses
the Rawlsian wide reflective equilibrium as a method to understand how
decisions can be made in this particular set-up, i.e. social experiments under
various forms of the unknown. This paper examines what role emotions could
play in reaching a reflective equilibrium.

Rawls wide reflective equilibrium is generally described as a way to reach a

cognitive decision that result from deliberation between ones own (1) considered
moral judgement, (2) moral principles and (3) descriptive and normative
background theories (including judgement on the relative importance of different
moral values) and possesses a justificatory purpose that can be shared with
others. In this wide reflective equilibrium, emotions seem to have little place.
However, several scholars have reflected on the role of emotions in decision-
making. Earlier work has shown that emotions are indispensible for practical
moral judgement and tie in closely to the values one adheres to. Several
questions arise therefrom: How are emotions communicated in justifications? Are
they implicitly or explicitly part of Rawls wide reflective equilibrium? What could
happen if emotions were made an apparent variable in the wide reflective
equilibrium?

This paper presents a literature review specifically uncovering a link between

reflective equilibrium and emotions. This in turn allows creating new assumptions
on the method and improving it to fit situations where emotions play a dominant
role. This method is subsequently used in a larger project that conceptualizes
technologies as social experiments and uses the reflective equilibrium to judge
whether these experiments are justified. Inspired by this literature review and its
results, a brief case study will turn away from theoretical discussion and towards
a real world example on the Swiss moratorium against the commercial cultivation
of genetically modified organisms. Implementing GMOs on a large commercial
scale still entails many unknowns. The goal of the case study is to further explore
how a decision, which can appear to some as emotional, i.e. a fear that literally
paralyses all activities, can simultaneously be justified by civil society, experts
and politicians, thus bringing together justificatory processes and emotions.
Ultimately, this will bring us closer to understanding the use and integration of
emotions into Rawls wide reflective equilibrium.