Decision Making under Moral Uncertainty

Abstract

Sometimes we are uncertain about matters of fundamental morality, just as we are often uncertain about ordinary factual matters. This essay considers the prospects for “moral uncertaintism” — the view that we ought to treat the first sort of uncertainty more-or-less like we treat the second. Specifically, it addresses three of the most serious worries about uncertaintism — one concerning the assignment of intermediate probabilities to moral propositions, one concerning the (im)possibility of comparing values across competing moral theories, and one concerning the possibility of higher-level normative uncertainty — i.e. not just uncertainty about what one ought to do, but uncertainty in the face of uncertainty about what one ought to do, and so on, potentially ad infinitum.