Justification to other people › Does reasonable rejection assume morality already?

Another challenge concerns the normative content of reasonableness. If determining whether an objection is reasonable requires moral judgment, has contractualism explained anything? The challenge has force against a promise to derive all moral conclusions from wholly nonmoral facts. Scanlon's account does not make that promise.

An explanation can identify a structure within moral reasoning without eliminating substantive judgments from it. Comparing objections can show which features of a case need attention and which justifications fail to address someone's claim. That contribution still needs assessment: a label for the conclusion would not be enough.

The test is whether the account organizes our reasoning in an informative way. Does it explain why actual consent is insufficient? Does it distinguish a serious burden from an unjust demand? Does it reveal where a principle requires qualification? If the phrase reasonably rejectable merely repeats an unexamined verdict, the explanation has not yet earned its role.

This leaves room for criticism without dismissing the project at the outset. A reader can accept the importance of justification while questioning whether the contractualist formula captures all of the relevant considerations. The disagreement then concerns how the reasons fit together, rather than whether being considerate is generally desirable.