Moral uncertainty and fetishistic motivation

Abstract

Sometimes it's not certain which of several mutually exclusive moral views is correct. Like almost everyone, I think that there's some sense in which what one should do depends on which of these theories is correct, plus the way the world is nonmorally. But I also think there's an important sense in which what one should do depends upon the probabilities of each of these views being correct. Call this second claim ''moral uncertaintism''. In this paper, I want to address an argument against moral uncertaintism offered in the pages of this journal by Brian Weatherson, and seconded elsewhere by Brian Hedden, the crucial premises of which are: (1) that acting on moral uncertaintist norms necessarily involves motivation by reasons or rightness as such, and (2) that such motivation is bad. I will argue that (1) and (2) are false, and that at any rate, the quality of an agent's motivation is not pertinent to the truth or falsity of moral uncertaintism in the way that Weatherson's and Hedden's arguments require.

Moral Hedging and Responding to Reasons

“…Those needs do not motivationally disappear in the motive of duty. They are part of the motive of duty.’ Sepielli, , also makes a similar point.…”

Moral uncertainty

“…For example, in the case above with the agent facing the choice to eat vegetarian food or to eat meat, the morally conscientious agent is intrinsically more averse to harming animals by eating them, the more certain she is that harming animals is a wrong‐making feature and the greater the extent is to which she thinks harming animals is such a feature. (Bykvist, ; Sepielli, )…”

“…For example, in the case above with the agent facing the choice to eat vegetarian food or to eat meat, the morally conscientious agent is intrinsically more averse to harming animals by eating them, the more certain she is that harming animals is a wrong-making feature and the greater the extent is to which she thinks harming animals is such a feature. (Bykvist, 2014;Sepielli, 2016) 3 | MY FAVOURITE THEORY AND DOMINANCE REASONING Another possible explanation of why moral uncertainty has not received much attention is that the challenge of moral uncertainty is thought to have an easy and obvious solution: If you are uncertain about which moral theory is correct (or which moral principle applicable to the situation at hand is correct), just follow the prescriptions of your "favourite theory," the theory you have most confidence in. This approach is very problematic, however, as (Lockhart, 2000) and (MacAskill, 2014) show.…”

“…The first thorough book-length project on moral uncertainty was (Lockhart, 2000). The discussion was revived in Andrew Sepielli's PhD thesis in 2010 and his papers (Sepielli, 2009(Sepielli, , 2010(Sepielli, , 2012a(Sepielli, , 2012b(Sepielli, , 2013(Sepielli, , 2016. The latest thorough treatment of this topic is to be found in Will MacAskill's PhD thesis in 2014 and the subsequent papers (MacAskill, 2013(MacAskill, , 2016.…”

The epistemology of moral disagreement

“…For discussion of exactly what cases like these can establish, see Harman (2015). For a response to one popular objection to principles like Epistemic → Metaphysical, see Sepielli (2016). 51 See Matheson (2016, pp.…”