Abstract: How should we criticize and improve our ethical beliefs? This chapter assesses the methods most employed, or given lip-service to, by philosophers today: piecemeal appeal to intuition and striving for wide reflective equilibrium. It argues that both have merit, but neither goes nearly far enough. The method of wide reflective equilibrium has plausibility in the natural sciences, but ethics lacks two of the features necessary for this plausibility: beliefs of high reliability (in the natural sciences, perceptual beliefs) and a certain kind of system.

Keywords: coherentism, ethical intuitions, ethics, foundationalism, method, reflective equilibrium,