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Moral priorities under risk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Chad Lee-Stronach
Chad Lee-Stronach*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
*
Email: chad.lee-stronach@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

Many moral theories are committed to the idea that some kinds of moral considerations should be respected, whatever the cost to ‘lesser’ types of considerations. A person's life, for instance, should not be sacrificed for the trivial pleasures of others, no matter how many would benefit. However, according to the decision-theoretic critique of lexical priority theories, accepting lexical priorities inevitably leads us to make unacceptable decisions in risky situations. It seems that to operate in a risky world, we must reject lexical priorities altogether. This paper argues that lexical priority theories can, in fact, offer satisfactory guidance in risky situations. It does so by equipping lexical priority theories with overlooked resources from decision theory.

Keywords

Ethicslexical prioritydecision theoryriskethics of artificial intelligencepublic policy
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 48 , Issue 6 , December 2018 , pp. 793 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2017

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