Implementing a Cognitively Grounded Artificial Moral Advisor: A Multi-LLM Multi-Agent Approach Based on the Cognitive–Reflective Equilibration Model

Abstract

Large language model (LLM)-based artificial intelligence is increasingly used in ethically consequential human decision-making, yet fully autonomous machine ethics remains unrealistic, motivating architectures that support rather than replace human ethical judgment. This study introduces the Cognitive–Reflective Equilibration Architecture (CREA), a cognitively grounded artificial moral advisor that operationalizes the Cognitive–Reflective Equilibration Model (CREM), in which reflective reasoning guides ethical judgment from intuitive cognition toward a more advanced equilibrium among competing values, drawing on Piaget and Rawls. CREA implements CREM’s 20-step process through four stage-aligned reasoning agents—Cognitive, Reflective, Equilibration, and Evaluation—coordinated via multi-LLM orchestration, in which auxiliary models independently explore principles, generate counterarguments, and score supporting and opposing considerations to externalize reflective deliberation. The architecture was empirically evaluated by comparing four configurations—single-agent, multi-agent, multi-LLM, and multi-LLM with knowledge- and reasoning-bank augmentation—across four indicators of advice quality using 500 matched execution units per configuration. All comparisons are system-internal: advice quality was scored by CREA’s own multi-LLM measurement pipeline rather than by human ethicists, so the findings reflect relative differences among architectures under LLM-based self-evaluation, not normative validity. Within that scope, distributing reflective reasoning across multiple models was associated with higher reason-giving (justifiability) and normative-alignment scores relative to simpler configurations. CREA therefore offers an empirically characterized, auditable advisor architecture whose potential to scaffold human ethical judgment remains a hypothesis for user-centered validation rather than a demonstrated outcome.