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Moral uncertainty and permissibility: Evaluating Option Sets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Christian Barry  and
Patrick Tomlin
Christian Barry*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Patrick Tomlin
Affiliation:
Politics and International Relations, University of Reading, Reading, UK
*
Corresponding author. christian.barry@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

In this essay, we explore an issue of moral uncertainty: what we are permitted to do when we are unsure about which moral principles are correct. We develop a novel approach to this issue that incorporates important insights from previous work on moral uncertainty, while avoiding some of the difficulties that beset existing alternative approaches. Our approach is based on evaluating and choosing between option sets rather than particular conduct options. We show how our approach is particularly well-suited to address this issue of moral uncertainty with respect to agents that have credence in moral theories that are not fully consequentialist.

Keywords

Moral uncertaintyTed Lockhartconsequentialism and non-consequentialismmoral-belief-relative permissibility
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , December 2016 , pp. 898 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

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