Moral Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Much of contemporary ethics argues around idealized thought experiments in which the agent has complete information about the consequences of each action and the other morally relevant features of the choice. This entry examines the problems that appear once that assumption is dropped, and asks which notion of ought, objective, subjective, or prospective, should govern evaluation.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Weigh by expectation: judge an act by its expected consequences given the agent's information, not the actual result. - Pick the standpoint: distinguish the objective ought, the subjective ought, and the prospective ought. - Choose robustness: when probabilities are unreliable, use a criterion that does not flip on small changes.
Anchor fast decisions
Once uncertainty enters, the object of evaluation shifts from the actual outcome to the expected value relative to the agent's information state. The objective ought looks at how things are, the subjective ought at what the agent believes, the prospective ought at the available evidence. When the probabilities themselves are uncertain, the ordering by expected value is no longer unique, and decisions fall back on imprecise probabilities or robustness criteria.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-decision-uncertainty/verified
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