Metaethical Agnosticism: Practical Reasons for Acting When Agnostic About the Existence of Moral Reasons

Ibid., p. 5.

See Alexander A. Guerrero, “Don’t Know, Don’t Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability and Caution,” Philosophical Studies, Vol. 136 (2007); Dan Moller, “Abortion and Moral Risk,” Philosophy, Vol. 86, No. 3 (2011); Graham Oddie, “Moral Uncertainty and Human Embryo Experimentation,” in K. W. M. Fulford, Grant Gillett, and Janet Martin Soskice, eds., Medicine and Moral Reasoning (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 144–161; and Nancy M. Williams, “Affected Ignorance and Animal Suffering: Why Our Failure to Debate Factory Farming Puts Us at Moral Risk,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Vol. 21 (2008).

See Ted Lockhart, Moral Uncertainty and Its Consequences (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000); Jacob Ross, “Rejecting Ethical Deflationism,” Ethics, Vol. 116 (2006); Sepielli, op. cit.; and Andrew Sepielli, “Moral Uncertainty and the Principle of Equity among Moral Theories,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 86, No. 3 (2013).

One might ask how we could have applicatory knowledge despite being theoretically and/or metaethically uncertain. I do not intend to articulate or defend any kind of hierarchical ranking or ordering of the different levels at which normative uncertainty can occur. It will be enough for my purposes if I can show that it’s plausible to have knowledge at the applicatory level while at the same time being metaethically agnostic.

See William FitzPatrick, “Moral Responsibility and Normative Ignorance: Answer a New Skeptical Challenge,” Ethics, Vol. 118 (2008); Elizabeth Harman, “Does Moral Ignorance Exculpate?” Ratio, Vol. 24 (2011); Gideon Rosen, “Culpability and Ignorance,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (2003); Gideon Rosen, “Skepticism about Moral Responsibility,” Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 18 (2004); Williams, op. cit.; and Michael J. Zimmerman, “Moral Responsibility and Ignorance,” Ethics, Vol. 107, No. 3 (1997).

I’m using this particular example because it is one of the two most popular examples in the literature on decision-making under theoretical uncertainty. The same things can be shown if the example involved getting an abortion instead of eating meat.

I would like to thank an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this concern.

There are situations, for example, where deciding whether to get an abortion or whether to eat meat is purely the result of a person’s decisions, and what the person did to get themselves into that situation may have been morally wrong. However, this does not seem to entail that both options in the current decision are morally wrong. There are two different decision-making contexts: (1) the one that got the person into a situation where they have to make their current decision, and (2) their current decision. Even though the person may have made a morally wrong choice that put them in the current decision-making context, the moral status of the available choices may change given the circumstances. The person could have done something morally wrong to get themselves into a situation where they have to decide whether to get an abortion or whether to eat meat, but this is a different decision than the one that got them into this situation in the first place. I am assuming that while the two decisions are connected or related, the moral status of the available options in this new decision can change given the circumstances.

I am not claiming this to be the correct interpretation of Pascal’s Wager. This is just one particular interpretation of Pascal’s Wager that is structurally similar to PAUMA. Even if this isn’t the correct way of understanding Pascal’s Wager, it’s a similar decision procedure to PAUMA.

Again, for an argument against the idea that being agnostic about the existence of moral reasons means either option is morally permissible, see Schroeder, op. cit.

See Lockhart, op. cit.

When I have been saying that someone is unsure of an action’s moral status, Lockhart, op. cit., refers to this as ‘might be morally wrong,’ and what I have been referring to as ‘morally permissible’ Lockhart refers to as ‘not morally wrong.’

See Guerrero, op. cit., and Moller, op. cit.

Ibid., p. 146.

Ibid.