Abstract
In this paper I explore an epistemic asymmetry that sometimes occurs regarding the moral status of alternative actions. I argue that this asymmetry is significant and has ramifications for what it is morally permissible to do. I then show how this asymmetry often obtains regarding three moral issues: vegetarianism, abortion, and charitable giving. In doing so, I rely on the epistemic significance of disagreement and the existence of moral controversy about these issues.
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Notes
Matheson (2016). MC applies to situations where the subject has considered the moral status of a certain action in a context. This is to avoid MC applying in some cases where it might be that the subject is justified in suspending judgment regarding the relevant claim, but the issue has simply never crossed their mind. MC takes no stand on the moral status of actions in such unreflective contexts.
This is the Wingspread Statement of the precautionary principle.
For more on the precautionary principle, see Bodansky (1992).
More on this distinction below.
For additional comparisons of MC with the precautionary principle, see Matheson (2016).
A principle like this is defended in Lockhart (2000).
It should be noted that there is no clear and uncontroversial connection between probabilities, or credences, and tripartite doxastic attitudes (belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment). Here I am taking it an 89% likelihood would fall above any threshold for suspension of judgment. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
Much of the literature on moral uncertainty surrounds ‘certaintist’ principles like MRM. For a further discussion on such principles, see Harman (2015), Sepielli (2014, 2016), and Weatherson (2014). Many objections to certaintist principles like MRM involve cases where the agent is quite sure, though not certain, that a certain course of action is morally permissible yet the principle in question forbids the action. For instance, see Weatherson (2014). Such objections fail to gain traction on MC since cases where one is (justifiably) quite certain that an action is permissible will not be cases where the antecedent of MC is met. The degree of moral risk that MC forbids is very significant and unnecessary moral risk.
MC is also bears some similarity to Guerrero’s (2007) Don’t Know, Don’t Kill principle (DKDK): “If someone knows that they don’t know whether a living organism has significant moral status or not, it is morally blameworthy for her to kill that organism, or to have it killed, unless she believes that there is something of substantial moral significance compelling her to do so.” (78–9) DKDK differs from MC in some important ways. For one thing, DKDK is only about killing. The antecedent of DKDK is both stronger and weaker than MC. DKDK requires that one not know that the action in question is a moral wrong, and there are ways of failing to know that do not amount to a justified suspension of judgment in the target proposition. However, DKDK also requires that one know that one does not know the moral status. This higher-order requirement makes it harder to meet the antecedent of DKDK. Finally, unlike MC, DKDK forbids certain actions even when there isn’t a known permissible alternative. In this way, it is stronger than MC.
We can imagine that there are two separate remotes for crushing the car. Vlad has one, and Uri has the other. Suppose that unlike Vlad, Uri does know that Lola’s daughter is not in the car. Suppose that Uri crushes the car. While in some sense this is the very action that Vlad performed, Uri’s improved epistemic position over Vlad has made all the difference. What Uri does is morally permissible, since in doing so he does not exhibit significant moral risk.
This follows McElreath et al. (2018). It is worth noting that being in a state of disarray is a binary characteristic. A proposition either is, or is not, in a state of disarray. While the feature that puts a proposition into a state of disarray (the extent of the disagreement) is graded, a proposition is only in a state of disarray when it is sufficiently controversial. There are also additional states that a debate may be in that include the distribution of opinions of non-experts. For reasons that will follow, those are being ignored here.
Benetar (2008) is a notable exception.
Hobson (2016) is perhaps an exception here.
Singer (1972). Singer also gives a more moderate line, where giving more would sacrifice something of significant moral value. We will examine a parallel version of MC below.
For a defense of MC against several other objections, see Matheson (2016).
See Enoch (2009) for one such argument.
See also Rowland (2017) for this point.
For instance, suppose that Ted believes that eating meat is permissible but is aware of the controversy. To meet the condition (i) of MC, Ted need not give up his belief. To meet (i) it simply must be true that the attitude that Ted is justified in adopting toward the proposition <eating meat in this context is permissible> is suspension of judgment. So, meeting (i) of MC does not require a doxastic condition, only an epistemic condition – that disbelief or suspension is the justified attitude to adopt toward the relevant proposition.
See Hills (2009).
For more on this point, see Rowland (2017).
See Weatherson (2014).
Weatherson also motivates his central claim by appealing to the implausibility of needing to constantly check the latest journals to see what people are saying about the relative importance of various moral principles in order to determine what to do. While this does not seem entirely implausible to me, the view on the table isn’t committed to such a consequence. While disagreement in philosophy is ubiquitous, it is also fairly stable. Disagreements in philosophy are not so volatile that one must constantly check and update the state of the debate.
This is not to say that everyone will share these same intuitive verdicts. However, even in making his case against the moral wrongness of moral risk, Weatherson acknowledges the intuitive appeal that cases of exercising moral caution have. He attempts to undercut these intuitions by noting that they have been used to support some false principles of action. However, if the motivation coming from such cases can be captured by a more plausible principle, like MC, then we lose such a reason to distrust these intuitions. The fact that these intutions can be misapplied does not mean they should be disregarded. I agree that the principles that Weatherson rejects should be rejected, but I think that MC can capture the relevant intuitions without the implausible consequences of the principles that Weatherson explores. For a further response to Weatherson on this point, see Field (2019).
This follows an objection examined in Matheson (2016).
It is important to not make this putative counterexample too easy. In order for MC to be met, it is important that the community that believes that interracial relations are morally wrong are not simply those in power, but that our subject is justified in believing that they are in the best epistemic position to determine the truth of the matter. So, the intellectual contexts that most quickly come to mind are not likely to satisfy MC. If our subject has a justified error theory about why the majority has the moral beliefs that they do, MC will not apply. For more on this point, see Bergmann (2009) and Sherman (2014).
For more on this point see Fricker’s (2007) discussion of bad epistemic circumstantial luck.
Perhaps this is a new kind of epistemic injustice. See Fricker (2007).
It is also worth noting that MC is not alone in this consequence, both CF and MRM leave open the possibility of such a scenario obtaining.
Rowland (2017) suggests a similar clause be added to MC. Rowland’s suggestion is ‘and refraining from doing A would not be extremely costly’.
See Guerrero (2007) for a similar qualification.
The weakening of moral caution mirrors Singer’s (1972) more moderate version of his principle regarding charitable giving. As Singer notes there, even such a moderate principle has quite significant ramifications.
One might worry that a liability of WMC is that it does not come with an explicit account of what a significant moral cost is. Rather than a liability, this is an asset. Just as MC accommodated disparate accounts of epistemic justification, WMC can accommodate disparate accounts of significant moral cost. While borderline cases will not be settled without an explicit account, many of the applications examined here are not plausibly borderline cases of significant moral sacrifice. See also Guerrero (2007) on this point.
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Acknowledgements
This paper benefitted from feedback from a number of individuals: Brandon Carey, David Killoren, Zoe Johnson King, Andrew Moon, Ted Poston, Richard Rowland, Joshua Smith, Sarah Vincent, participants at the ACU Melbourne workshop Moral Disagreements: Philosophical and Practical Implications, participants at the Bonn Disagreement Within Philosophy Workshop, audiences at the University of Florida and University of Richmond, as well as several anonymous referees.
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Matheson, J.D. Applying Moral Caution in the Face of Disagreement. Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10155-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10155-x