The Epistemic Problem Does Not Refute Consequentialism

Abstract

Should radical uncertainty about the distant future dissuade us from judging options by referring to their consequences? I argue no. Some short-run benefits are sufficiently high that we should pursue them, even if our long-run estimates possess a very high variance. I discuss the relationship between the epistemic argument and 'fuzzy' rankings and also 'arguments from infinity'. Furthermore, extant versions of the epistemic argument require the assumption that we have no idea about the major consequences of our acts. Even a slight idea about some major consequences will render the epistemic argument less plausible. In most applications of the epistemic argument, long-run uncertainty is not the relevant confounding variable; on close examination the epistemic argument tends to trade on other principles altogether.

On Consequentialism and Fairness

“…Even if there were an unproblematic way of assessing the relative value of a state of the world, the extent to which we should value the distant future is yet another point of potential disagreement. It is common (for somewhat orthogonal reasons) to apply temporal discounting in economics, but it is not obvious that there is any good reason to do so when it comes to moral value (Cowen and Parfit, 1992 ; Cowen, 2006 ). Just as philosophers such as Peter Singer have argued that we should not discount the value of a human life simply because a person happens to live far away (Singer, 1972 ), one could argue that the lives of those who will live in the future should count for as much as the lives of people who are alive today.…”

“…Despite these difficulties, consequentialism would suggest that we should, to the extent that we are able, think not only about the immediate consequences of our actions, but about the longer-term consequences as well (Cowen, 2006 ). Indeed, considering the political nature of valuation, we arguably bear even greater responsibility for thinking about future generations than the present, given that those who have not yet been born are unable to directly advocate for their interests.…”

Utilitarianism and Heuristics

“…Cowen expresses at a first glance similar thoughts with his "big event consequentialism." 52 He as well proceeds from the idea of imprecision: "The Principle of Roughness (…) leads us to discriminate against relatively small benefits and losses. (…) Large upfront benefits are less likely to be overwhelmed by the roughness of our comparisons, and thus it is compelling to pursue large benefits."…”

Varieties of responsibility: two problems of responsible innovation

“…Since the actual outcomes of action are in many cases, and certainly in the case of innovation, uncertain, such consequentialist theories cannot be action-guiding (Lenman 2000). A possible solution is not to define rightness of actions in terms of the actual outcomes (and their goodness) but rather in terms of (reasonably) expectable outcomes (Cowen 2006).…”