Chair of Philosophy and Decision Theory

How should deontological theories that prohibit actions of type K — such as intentionally killing an innocent person — deal with cases of uncertainty as to whether a particular action is of type K? Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, who raise this problem in their paper "Absolutist Moral Theories and Uncertainty" (2006), focus on a case where a skier is about to cause the death of ten innocent people — we don’t know for sure whether on purpose or not — by causing an avalanche; and we can only save the people by shooting the skier. One possible deontological attitude towards such uncertainty is what Jackson and Smith call the threshold view, according to which whether or not the deontological constraint applies depends on our degree of (justified) certainty meets a given threshold. Jackson and Smith argue against the threshold view that it leads to implausible paradoxical moral dilemmas in a special kind of case. In this response paper, we show that the threshold view can avoid these implausible moral dilemmas, as long as the relevant deontological constraint is grounded in individualistic patient-based considerations, such as what an individual person is entitled to object to.

I argue that there are (only) two contingent factors that can render an instantiation of de dicto moral motivation — which is typically characterised by the agent’s conceiving of her goal in moral terms such as doing what’s right — less virtuous than some alternative motivation that would lead to the same (right) action: (1) The circumstances are such that it would be more virtuous to be moved directly by certain non-deliberative dispositions (such as an emotional attachment to one’s spouse), and (2) The circumstances are such that de dicto moral motivation has practical disadvantages (such as generating unnecessary moral reflections that waste precious time).

Published version (at ETMP) is available for free viewing at - http://rdcu.be/mOUK
Attached is a penultimate version.
Abstract:
De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent's conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation (at least in a certain broad sense of this term) would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the manner that is morally best (relative to her epistemic state) in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are (1) the appropriateness of the agent's uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and (2) the practical, moral importance of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith's (1994) argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson's (2014) argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue.

This is a handout for my presentation at the 2017 Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress (RoME) on Friday August 11th, 10:10 at Humanities 186. 
I welcome any comments, thoughts, etc. Feel free to drop me an email about it.

Abstract: Suppose an agent’s credence is divided between two purely normative theories: T1, according to which hurting animals is just as bad as hurting people; and T2, according to which hurting animals is not as bad as hurting people. In such a case, could the badness of hurting animals according to T1 be comparable to (for instance: equal to, worse than, or twice as bad as) the badness of doing so according to T2? Such comparison exemplifies what’s called “intertheoretic choice-worthiness comparisons.” Pace the critics, I argue that such comparisons can sometimes be practically meaningful; and their acceptance — justifiable. I identify one type of epistemic states of normative uncertainty where one should choose the stochastically dominant option on the basis of merely-ordinal intertheoretic choice-worthiness comparison. I identify another type of epistemic states where there’s room for maximizing expected intertheoretic choice-worthiness, within a certain reflective-equilibrium-like deliberative procedure.

Jennifer Rose Carr’s (2020) article “Normative Uncertainty without Theories” proposes a method to maximize expected value under normative uncertainty without Intertheoretic Value Comparison (hereafter IVC). Carr argues that this method avoids IVC because it avoids theories: the agent’s credence is distributed among normative hypotheses of a particular type, which don’t constitute theories. However, I argue that Carr’s method doesn’t avoid or help to solve what I consider as the justificatory problem of IVC, which isn’t specific to comparing theories as such. This threatens the implementability of Carr’s method. Fortunately, I also show how Carr’s method can nevertheless be implemented. I identify a type of epistemic state where the justificatory problem of IVC is not a necessary obstacle to maximizing expected value. In such states, the uncertainty stems from indecisive normative intuitions, and the agent justifiably constructs all the normative hypotheses (each on the basis of a different, internally-consistent subset of her normative intuitions) by reference to the same unit of value. This part of my argument complements not only Carr’s (2020) argument, but also some moderate defenses of explicit IVC. The combination of Carr’s paper and mine helps to illuminate the conditions for maximizing expected value under normative uncertainty without unjustified value comparison.

De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent's conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation (at least in a certain broad sense of this term) would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the morally-best manner (relative to her epistemic state) in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are (1) the appropriateness of the agent's uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and (2) the practical, moral importance of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith's (1994) argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson's (2014) argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue. Keywords De dicto desire. Fetishism. Moral motivation. Moral uncertainty. Moral inquiry. Thin concepts. Michael Smith. Brian Weatherson Michael Smith (1994: 75), Brian Weatherson (2014: 152), and others have criticized the motivation to do what is right as such, where the person pursues this goal under this particular description. Their criticism extends to similar motivations where the person conceives of her goal in other thin normative terms, such as to act in accordance with morality or to promote the good. Following Smith and Weatherson, I use the term de dicto moral motivation to denote any motivation of this kind. According to Smith and Weatherson de dicto moral motivation is less morally virtuous than what Smith (1994: 75) calls Bnon-derivative de re moral motivation^-where the agent pursues a morally worthy goal under a non-normative Ethic Theory Moral Prac