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Moral Uncertainty Kindle Edition

by William MacAskill (Author), Krister Bykvist (Author), Toby Ord (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.8 7 ratings

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Very often we're uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do. We don't know how to weigh the interests of animals against humans, how strong our duties are to improve the lives of distant strangers, or how to think about the ethics of bringing new people into existence. But we still need to act. So how should we make decisions in the face of such uncertainty?

Though economists and philosophers have extensively studied the issue of decision-making in the face of uncertainty about matters of fact, the question of decision-making given fundamental moral uncertainty has been neglected. Philosophers William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord try to fill this gap. Moral Uncertainty argues that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions. It defends an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions
by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, arguing that the correct way to act in the face of moral uncertainty depends on whether the moral theories in which one has credence are merely ordinal, cardinal, or both cardinal and intertheoretically comparable. It tackles the problem of
how to make intertheoretical comparisons, discussing potential solutions and the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics.

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Very often we are uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do. We do not know how to weigh the interests of animals against humans, how strong our duties are to improve the lives of distant strangers, or how to think about the ethics of bringing new people into existence. But we still need to act. So how should we make decisions in the face of such uncertainty?

Though economists and philosophers have extensively studied the issue of decision-making in the face of uncertainty about matters of fact, the question of decision-making given fundamental moral uncertainty has been neglected. In Moral Uncertainty, philosophers William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions and defend an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions. They do so by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, noting that different moral views provide different amounts of information regarding our reasons for action, and arguing that the correct account of decision-making under moral uncertainty must be sensitive to that. Moral Uncertainty also tackles the problem of how to make intertheoretic comparisons, and addresses the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics.

About the Author

William MacAskill is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the author of the bestselling book Doing Good Better (Avery 2015), and has published in philosophy journals such as Mind, Ethics, and The Journal of Philosophy. He cofounded the international non-profits Centre for Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, and Giving What We Can.

Krister Bykvist is a Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm. His articles have appeared in Economics and Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and Mind. His research concerns questions about our responsibility for future generations, the foundations of consequentialism, evaluative uncertainty, and the relationship between preferences, value, and welfare. He is currently co-leading an interdisciplinary project on climate ethics.

Toby Ord is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. He is the author of The Precipice (Bloomsbury 2020), which argues that safeguarding humanity's longterm potential is a central moral priority of our time. His earlier research focused on the ethics of global health and global poverty. He is the cofounder of Giving What We Can, an international society focusing on pledging part of our income to the most effective charities, and of the Effective Altruism movement.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08HDH4GGF
Publisher ‏ : ‎ OUP Oxford (September 9, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 9, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1183 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 240 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #5,194,011 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #3,329 in Epistemology (Kindle Store)
- #11,000 in Epistemology Philosophy
- #12,263 in Ethics & Morality

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4.8 7 ratings

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Toby Ord
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Toby Ord is a philosopher at Oxford University, working on the big picture questions facing humanity. His earlier work explored the ethics of global poverty, leading him to make a lifelong pledge to donate 10% of his income to the most effective charities helping improve the world. He created a society, Giving What We Can, for people to join this mission, and together its members have pledged over $1.5 billion. He then broadened these ideas by co-founding the Effective Altruism movement in which thousands of people are using reason and evidence to help the lives of others as much as possible.
His current research is on risks that threaten human extinction or the permanent collapse of civilization, and on how to safeguard humanity through these dangers, which he considers to be among the most pressing and neglected issues we face. In his new book, The Precipice, he explains the risks we face, the stakes for humanity, and how we can find a path forward. Toby has advised the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the US National Intelligence Council, and the UK Prime Minister's Office.
tobyord.com
theprecipice.com
givingwhatwecan.org
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William MacAskill
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I'm Will MacAskill, Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford. My academic research focuses on the fundamentals of effective altruism - the use of evidence and reason to help others by as much as possible with our time and money, with a particular concentration on how to act given moral uncertainty.
I am the author of Doing Good Better - Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference, and Moral Uncertainty. My latest book is What We Owe The Future.
I am the Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research, a co-founder and the President of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) and I helped to create the effective altruism movement. Through Giving What We Can, CEA encourages people to commit to donate at least 10% of their income to the most effective charities. CEA also runs over 100 effective altruism local groups, hosts regular effective altruism conferences, and does research into high-impact policy and philanthropic opportunities.
I also co-founded 80,000 Hours, a YCombinator-backed non-profit that provides research and advice on how you can best make a difference through your career.
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Jabarian Brian

At the frontier research and accessible to all. A Must Read.

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2021

In Moral Uncertainty, philosophers William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord tackle the following underappreciated moral problem, bearing implications in every corner of our lives. When we have to make a moral choice, we face an inner conflict: which option A or B should you choose if you are uncertain about which one is morally good? The history of moral philosophy has produced moral theories, providing you recommendations to choose a specific course of action. If you believe in Kant's philosophy or Bentham's philosophy, you will act upon their respective recommendations. But take a step back. What should you do if you are uncertain as to follow Kant's or Bentham's lead? This is the question left unanswered by moral philosophy, that the authors tackle.

The challenge is to avoid producing another moral theory in answering this problem as it has been done so far. This is where this book's originality lies. It succeeds in proposing different innovative solutions that anyone who is uncertain about what to do and desires to avoid the particular lead of one particular moral theory can use. The first solution they propose will be helpful for anyone who faces individually such a moral problem. The second solution will be helpful for anyone concerned to adress such a problem at the society level. The authors developed them carefully, using a wide range of techniques from philosophical decision theory, economic philosophy, welfare and political philosophy, meta-ethics, and ethics. This impressive deep and large work at the frontier research renders the book a rare and seminal contribution.

As a Ph.D. student in philosophy and economics writing on this problem for my doctoral thesis, this book has been the basis for my research. Original solutions span from the individual level to the collective level throughout the entire book. I cannot but recommend more anyone interested in the topic or specialists eager to confront themselves with frontier-edge research in philosophy. The book's elegancy lies in the following fact. While this problem has become at the center of recent debates in technical circles in academic philosophy, it is written so that non-technical audiences can read and learn from it. It is instrumental in informing the public and renew the current political debate where more political tolerance between communities is needed.

Brian Jabarian,
Ph.D. Candidate, Panthéon-Sorbonne University

(Disclaimer: I know one of the authors)

Top reviews from other countries

Signe Savén

Excellent overview of decision-making under moral uncertainty

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 11, 2020

Verified Purchase

What should you do when you don’t know what to do, morally speaking? When you face a decision where different moral theories speak in favour of different options, how should you go about to decide which option to choose?

Moral Uncertainty offers an account of how to approach this issue. The authors argue that moral uncertainty should be handled analogously to empirical uncertainty, meaning that when you are uncertain about what to do, you should strive to maximize expected choiceworthiness. This is done rather straightforwardly for theories that are intertheoretically comparable and order their options on an interval scale, and under different conditions, the account is extended by the Borda Rule and variance voting. In addition to this account, the authors discuss some implications of moral uncertainty for metaethics and practical ethics, arguing that non-cognitivism has a difficult time accommodating moral uncertainty, and that the implications of moral uncertainty for practical ethics are more complex than what has been assumed so far. They also provide an account of how to assess the expected choiceworthiness of gaining new moral information.

I find this book to provide a great overview of the field of moral uncertainty. It’s creative and exploratory, and finds a good balance between generality and detail, making it accessible even to those new to the field. I especially like the clear language and the use of examples to illustrate different points, as well as its wide scope. It's an enjoyable read that is likely to inspire new thoughts in the reader. I strongly recommend it to all ethicists and to anyone else who isn’t sure about what to do when they don’t know what to do.

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