ABSTRACT
Reflexivity makes after-thoughts, second-thoughts, and third-thoughts intellectual and practical virtues for moral agents, so long as these after-thoughts are able to reliably correct for incomplete, erroneous, or biased beliefs and judgments. The central argument of this chapter is that unless and until the defenders of reflexivity attend to the psychological and philosophical challenges, reflexivity is bound to be an article of unreconstructed Cartesian faith, rather than a pragmatic public process that might increase the scope and reliability of one's knowledge claims. In light of the intrinsic limits and biases to which first-person practices of self-reflection are prone, this chapter calls at once for less subjectivism and intellectual rationalism and for more pluralism and public-political scrutiny in one's efforts to motivate and institutionalize the practice of a genuinely social reflexivity. Reflexivity seems like a core requirement not only for an epistemically responsible agent, but for any kind of rational human agent at all.
