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Constructivism about Intertheoretic Comparisons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2019

Stefan Riedener Open the ORCID record for Stefan Riedener [Opens in a new window]
Stefan Riedener*
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
*
stefan.riedener@philos.uzh.ch
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Abstract

Many people think that if you're uncertain about which moral theory is correct, you ought to maximize the expected choice-worthiness of your actions. This idea presupposes that the strengths of our moral reasons are comparable across theories – for instance, that our reasons to create new people, according to total utilitarianism, can be stronger than our reasons to benefit an existing person, according to a person-affecting view. But how can we make sense of such comparisons? In this article, I introduce a constructivist account of intertheoretic comparisons. On this account, such comparisons don't hold independently of facts about morally uncertain agents. They're simply the result of an ideal deliberation in terms of certain epistemic norms about what you ought to do in light of your uncertainty. If I'm right, this account is metaphysically more parsimonious than some existing proposals, and yet has plausible and strong implications.

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Article
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Utilitas , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 277 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

1 See e.g. Lockhart, T., Moral Uncertainty and its Consequences (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar; A. Sepielli, ‘Along an Imperfectly Lighted Path’ (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2010); W. MacAskill, ‘Decision-Making under Normative Uncertainty’ (PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2014); W. MacAskill and T. Ord, ‘Why Maximize Expected Choice-Worthiness?’, Noûs (forthcoming); S. Riedener, ‘An Axiomatic Approach to Axiological Uncertainty’, Philosophical Studies (forthcoming).

2 Gracely, E., ‘On the Noncomparability of Judgments Made by Different Ethical Theories’, Metaphilosophy 27 (1996), pp. 327–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 331.

3 Gracely, ‘Noncomparability’, p. 331.

4 Gracely, ‘Noncomparability’, p. 330.

5 See e.g. Hudson, J., ‘Subjectivization in Ethics’, American Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1989), pp. 221–9Google Scholar; Broome, J., Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World (New York, 2012), p. 185Google Scholar; Gustafsson, J. E. and Torpman, T. O., ‘In Defence of My Favourite Theory’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 95 (2014), pp. 159–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nissan-Rozen, I., ‘Against Moral Hedging’, Economics and Philosophy 31 (2015), pp. 349–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hedden, B., ‘Does MITE Make Right? On Decision-Making under Normative Uncertainty’, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 11, ed. Shafer-Landau, R. (Oxford, 2016), pp. 102–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ross, J., ‘Rejecting Ethical Deflationism’, Ethics 116 (2006), pp. 742–68Google Scholar, at 763.

7 See e.g. Harman, E., ‘The Irrelevance of Moral Uncertainty’, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 10, ed. Shafer-Landau, R. (Oxford, 2015), pp. 53–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weatherson, B., ‘Running Risks Morally’, Philosophical Studies 167 (2014), pp. 141–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hedden, ‘MITE’.

8 For arguments, see e.g. C. Tarsney, ‘Rationality and Moral Risk: A Moderate Defense of Hedging’ (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2017); Sepielli, A., ‘What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do …’, Noûs 47 (2013), pp. 521–44Google Scholar.

9 Lockhart, Moral Uncertainty, p. 84.

10 Sepielli, A., ‘Moral Uncertainty and the Principle of Equity among Moral Theories’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (2013), pp. 580–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 588.

11 MacAskill, ‘Decision-Making’, p. 89.

12 For instance, Lockhart's principle can require you knowingly to choose a course of action that's worse than some available alternative on every theory in which you have credence (see Sepielli, ‘Moral Uncertainty’). Sepielli's proposal can't apply to the numerous theories on which there are no best and worst conceivable options (as he notes). And variance-normalization faces some technical challenges in order to be well-defined (see MacAskill ‘Decision-Making’, p. 104n. and p. 76).

13 The same has been argued by MacAskill, ‘Decision-Making’, p. 134.

14 Tarsney, ‘Rationality and Moral Risk’; Tarsney, C., ‘Intertheoretic Value Comparison: A Modest Proposal’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 15 (2018), pp. 324–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See Tarsney, ‘Rationality and Moral Risk’, p. 312.

16 See Tarsney, ‘Rationality and Moral Risk’, p. 338.

17 Tarsney, ‘Intertheoretic Value Comparison’, p. 327.

18 Tarsney, ‘Intertheoretic Value Comparison’, p. 332.

19 Tarsney, ‘Intertheoretic Value Comparison’, p. 336.

20 See Tarsney, ‘Intertheoretic Value Comparison’, p. 338.

21 Ross, ‘Rejecting Ethical Deflationism’, p. 765.

22 Ross, ‘Rejecting Ethical Deflationism’, p. 763.

23 S. Riedener, ‘Maximising Expected Value under Axiological Uncertainty: An Axiomatic Approach’ (PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2015); Riedener, ‘An Axiomatic Approach’.

24 For a related worry, see Tarsney, ‘Intertheoretic Value Comparison’, p. 327.

25 If I understand her correctly, this is roughly the line taken by A. Hicks, ‘Moral Uncertainty and Value Comparison’, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 13, ed. R. Shafer-Landau (Oxford, forthcoming).

26 See e.g. Chisholm, R., ‘A Version of Foundationalism’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (1980), pp. 543–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kvanvig, J., ‘Conservatism and its Virtues’, Synthese 79 (1989), pp. 143–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCain, K., ‘The Virtues of Epistemic Conservatism’, Synthese 164 (2008), pp. 185–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 For objections to epistemic conservatism, see e.g. Christensen, D., ‘Conservatism in Epistemology’, Noûs 28 (1994), pp. 69–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vahid, H., ‘Varieties of Epistemic Conservatism’, Synthese 141 (2004), pp. 97–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Perhaps there's a quasi-intuitionist rationale for Conservatism, or something like it, with respect to moral beliefs: perhaps we have a (fallible, but non-negligible) faculty to detect first-order moral facts, and this gives us reasons to treat our moral beliefs as evidence, or to revise them as little as possible when we need to.

28 See e.g. Rawls, J., ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory’, Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980), pp. 515–72Google Scholar; Korsgaard, C., The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Ross, ‘Rejecting Ethical Deflationism’, p. 765.

30 For enormously helpful conversations and feedback, I thank John Broome, Hilary Greaves, Adam Lovett, William MacAskill, Christian Tarsney, Teruji Thomas, and audiences at the Global Priorities Institute Seminar and the ISUS 2018 Karlsruhe. I also thank the Global Priorities Institute for hosting me in Oxford while I was working on this article.