Agreement between moral theories › Where a reader can press the argument

The first pressure point concerns the choice of formulations. Does a revision have support within the approach it is meant to improve? Someone drawn to Kantian ethics may resist a reformulation that appears to abandon the very constraint they wanted to defend. The proper response is to examine the reasons for the revision, rather than declare that any resistance is a misunderstanding.

A second concerns the best outcome. The word optimific can hide disagreement about the good. An account that includes distribution, suffering, achievement or other values must explain how they enter its comparisons. Calling a principle the best does not establish that everyone could rationally will it. The convergence argument needs the relevant conception of value and the relevant account of rational choice.

A third concerns individuals who bear severe burdens. A principle might improve outcomes overall while asking a particular person to accept a large loss. The route from that improvement to reasonable non-rejectability must address the person's objection. Simply pointing to the total benefit would assume a disputed answer to the contractualist question.

A fourth concerns idealization. Universal acceptance is a hypothetical condition, whereas actual moral decisions occur amid disagreement and incomplete information. We need to distinguish a criterion of right action from a procedure a person can use with limited knowledge. A theory might offer the former without making the latter easy. It would be misleading to sell the Triple Theory as a practical device that produces immediate consensus.

These are tests of the argument, rather than claims that a named critic has decisively refuted it. They help locate the reasoning that needs examination. A focused objection identifies a formulation, a premise or an inference. It gives us more to work with than a general impression that reconciling theories is either inspiring or impossible.