Moral Uncertainty About Population Axiology

Moral Reasoning under Uncertainty

We present a Logic Programming framework for moral reasoning under uncertainty. It is enacted by a coherent combination of our two previously implemented systems, Evolution Prospection for decision making, and P-log for probabilistic inference. It allows computing available moral judgments via distinct kinds of prior and post preferences. In introducing various aspects of uncertainty into cases...

An Impossibility Theorem in Population Axiology with Weak Ordering Assumptions

It has been known for quite a while now that the on-going project of constructing an acceptable population axiology has gloomy prospects. Already in Derek Parfit’s seminal contribution to the topic, an informal paradox was presented and later contributions have proved similar results.1 All of these contributions invoke, however, some version of a principle – the Mere Addition Principle – which ...

Knightian uncertainty and moral hazard

This paper presents a principal-agent model in which the agent has imprecise beliefs. We model this situation formally by assuming the agent’s preferences are incomplete as in Bewley (1986) [2]. In this setting, incentives must be robust to Knightian uncertainty. We study the implications of robustness for the form of the resulting optimal contracts. We give conditions under which there is a un...

The Irrelevance of Moral Uncertainty

B ought to refrain from φing. Taking a 10% chance is taking a substantial chance of doing a deeply morally wrong thing. One should be very averse to risking doing a deeply wrong thing. It is better to do what is very likely a minorly wrong thing to do than to risk doing what is a deeply wrong thing to do. Suppose that B does φ, φing is in fact morally wrong, and a victim of B’s φing were to lat...

Moral uncertainty and the moral status of early human life.