[2] Although Reiner does not clearly delineate the connection between his three short sections, the crunch seems to come in the second ("Rules and Tacit Knowledge"), where he castigates me (and Brown) for failing to notice that the failure of efforts to reduce judgment to rule following does not entail that "judgment does not consist in 'conformance' to rules" (paragraph 4). This, he claims, lands me (and Brown) with a "black-box picture of judgment" (paragraph 4) which has the effect of setting "an unnecessarily low standard for rationality" (paragraph 8). To underscore the point: Reiner's claim is that these drastic consequences follow because I fail to allow for the possibility that judgment acts in conformance with rules. But at this crucial juncture -- and this is the main thrust of my response -- Reiner's reasoning is flawed. He apparently fails to notice that I nowhere deny the possibility that judgment may act in conformance with rules; rather this issue is simply not of direct relevance to the core argument of my paper. As I make abundantly clear from the outset, my primary concern, following Brown, is with establishing that, despite traditional neglect, judgment has a significant role to play in the process of reliable belief formation. Accordingly, in the paper, following (and, where it seems necessary, correcting) Brown, I focus on delineating important aspects of its justificatory role. Whether the operation of judgment is itself rule-governed in either a strong or weak (conformance) sense is not an issue of primary concern to me in this connection -- though, as already noted, I see the issue as significant in its own right.
[3] Reiner, however, appears to believe that I cannot avoid concern with the internal operation of judgment. In his concluding paragraph, he once again characterizes the Brown/Healy approach as a "black box" approach, and asserts that, on this view, "rationality becomes nothing more than dogmatic conformance to tradition and to the norm's of one's community" (paragraph 13). But this inference represents a gigantic leap for which no reasoning is given. Indeed, without further development, it appears to be an arbitrary and gratuitous inference. Accordingly, it does nothing to lessen my conviction that Reiner and I are dealing with quite different topics, and that the defense of my thesis does not require position taking on the topic of his concern. Having made that point, I should note that, from a justificatory perspective, I share Reiner's concern that the arbitrary (or distorted) operation of judgment could pose a threat to rationality. That is precisely why in the core section of my paper (dealing with "good judgment") I explicitly outline checks which are necessary to safeguard the reliability of its operation. But, again, in line with my focal concern, this is done from a justificatory perspective. My concern in that paper simply does not extend to the question of whether judgment is itself rule-governed in its operation. If I were pressed to take a stand on this matter, I would say that the issues that Reiner raises in this regard represent good reasons why, prima facie at any rate, one might believe that judgment operates at least in conformance with rules. But at the risk of laboring the point, let me note that the differences in our concerns, alluded to from the outset, are epitomized by the fact that, while Reiner seems primarily concerned with establishing that judgment follows rules in at least the weak sense of conforming to them, my interest (in that paper, at any rate) lies in elucidating the necessary justificatory role of judgment, given that belief formation can not itself be reliably determined by following rules (for the arguments on this score, see Brown's book and my article). Again, then, I must say that, concerned as they are with a different focal theme, I do not see Reiner's remarks as constituting a challenge to the position on judgment that I defend. His concerns may be complementary, but they are, nonetheless, different.