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Let us take stock. To what extent does the process of reflective deliberation provide a basis for comparative evaluation of alternative moral theories? There are three cases to consider. First, against a given set of considered judgments and background theories, two moral theories may be evaluated in relation to their respective abilities to encompass these beliefs. Here the coherence argument has some bite, since it permits a ranking of competing theories in terms of their fit with background beliefs. In the case in which all discussants share a significant number of considered judgments and background theories, the method of reflective deliberation can have justificatory force; it can provide reasons for the discussants to prefer one theory over another.

Second, it may be that two competing moral theories are equally consistent with the background beliefs, but inconsistent with one another. In this case the method ranks them equally and provides no basis for choosing between them. This possibility seems to be part and parcel of the coherence epistemology....

Third, the method provides no basis at all for comparing moral theories deriving from different sets of background beliefs. If two persons have irresolvable disagreements at the level of their background beliefs, then each will find a reflective equilibrium around different moral theories, and the method will be unable to rank these alternatives. This possibility suggests that Rawls's system of argument has strongly relativist implications: the correct moral theory depends upon the background beliefs with which one begins, and these may differ in important ways from one community to another.

Thus the method of reflective deliberation is a weak form of justification at best. This is so because the requirement of consistency upon which it depends is itself a weak constraint, and because the constraining beliefs involved in the process are themselves highly uncertain. We may well imagine that there are alternative moral theories which are equally good on coherence grounds as reconstructions of a fixed set of background beliefs. [Daniel Little, "Reflective Equilibrium and Justification"]