Dealing with Moral Uncertainty: Do Logical Properties Help?

Wulf Gaertner

doi:10.4236/ojpp.2021.111001

Abstract

If an agent is unsure about which moral theory or principle should guide her action in a decision situation, she faces moral uncertainty. In recent years, various strategies have been explored to deal with this type of uncertainty. In this paper, we briefly mention two strategies from the literature that make use of credence distributions over moral theories, namely “my favourite theory” and “maximizing expected choice-worthiness”. As an alternative, we propose a two-step procedure which uses the concept of aggregation over structural properties. It is standard in the theory of collective choice and has recently been applied to the Kuhnian problem of theory choice as well. The idea is to explore how a morally-motivated rational agent may assess different moral theories on the basis of fundamental properties. These properties are ranked on a common scale of qualitative verdicts. This method enables an outside observer to make comparisons across competing moral theories and then conclude to what degree these theories fulfil a set of postulated properties. By doing so, we try to render the reasons more transparent that lie behind different types of credence ascriptions.

Highlights

Moral uncertainty describes a situation in which a decision-making agent is unsure about what the correct guiding moral principle or theory is
If an agent is unsure about which moral theory or principle should guide her action in a decision situation, she faces moral uncertainty
We replace the idea of assuming or postulating credence distributions over moral theories by a proposal that formulates a two-step procedure. This process makes use of an aggregation mechanism which has been widely discussed in the theory of social choice and has recently been applied to the problem of theory choice as well (Gaertner & Wüthrich, 2016)

Summary

Introduction

Moral uncertainty describes a situation in which a decision-making agent is unsure about what the correct guiding moral principle or theory is. We replace the idea of assuming or postulating credence distributions over moral theories by a proposal that formulates a two-step procedure. This process makes use of an aggregation mechanism which has been widely discussed in the theory of social choice and has recently been applied to the problem of theory choice as well (Gaertner & Wüthrich, 2016). This approach tries to make the reasons that motivate the ascription of credences more transparent and has a number of desirable properties that, in our view, credence-based theories do not offer. Credences in our proposal are not based on probability distributions over moral theories but are grounded on structural properties that alternative moral theories possess or should possess if a normative position is taken

A Novel Approach to Decision-Making under Moral Uncertainty

Step 1

Step 2

Steps 1 and 2 Again: An Evaluation of Specific Moral Theories

Concluding Remarks