Acceptable risk under moral uncertainty

Abstract

While there is a considerable literature on acceptable risk, which considers questions like under what condition is it acceptable to impose risks on others, this literature has neglected the issue of moral uncertainty. Moral uncertainty is uncertainty about what moral theory is right. I explore whether, and if so how, moral uncertainty is relevant for (moral) decisions about acceptable risk. To do so, I first consider whether a popular decision procedure to deal with moral uncertainty, Maximizing Expected Choiceworthiness (MEC) is an appropriate procedure for accounting for moral uncertainty in decisions about acceptable risk. I conclude it is not, due to reasons of intertheoretic incomparability and lack of justifiability of the resulting decisions. I then consider several alternatives–such as ignoring moral uncertainty, following the decision-maker’s favorite moral theory and decision rules that avoid intertheoretical tradeoffs–that also turn out to be wanting. Next, I argue that the problems of MEC and alternative decision procedures go back to fundamental assumptions about how to deal with moral uncertainty. If these assumptions are lifted, the road is open to a more deliberative and coherentist approach to decision-making about acceptable risk under moral uncertainty that avoids the discussed problems.