Artist: Kirill Maksimchuk

Book Symposium on Moral Uncertainty

Online symposium, 4 February 7.15pm - 5 February 3.30am (AEDT). To register - and to download a free copy of the book - click here.

How should we make decisions when we’re uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do?

Very often we are uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do. We do not know how to weigh the interests of animals against humans, how strong our duties are to improve the lives of distant strangers, or how to think about the ethics of bringing new people into existence. But we still need to act. Though economists and philosophers have extensively studied the issue of decision-making in the face of uncertainty about matters of fact, the question of decision-making given fundamental moral uncertainty has been neglected.

In Moral Uncertainty (Oxford University Press 2020) philosophers William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are rules that govern how one ought to make decisions under moral uncertainty. But which rule one should use depends on the content of one's moral hypotheses.

Schedule

7:15pm Introduction

7:30 – 8:30pm Christian Barry (ANU)

8:30 – 8:45pm break

8:45 – 9:45pm Katie Steele (ANU), Pamela Robinson (ANU)

9:45 – 1:00am Lunch and on-line mingle time

1:05 – 2:05am Christian Tarsney (GPI, Oxford)

2:05 – 2:30am break

2:30 – 3:30am Jeff Russell (USC)

This symposium is jointly organised by the Institute for Futures Studies (IFFS) and the Australian National University (ANU).