First published 2020
Moral choices often leave us paralyzed by uncertainty. How do we balance animal welfare against human needs? What obligations do we have toward strangers across the globe? Should we bring new people into existence? William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord address these dilemmas by examining how we make ethical decisions when fundamental moral principles clash. The authors draw parallels between moral uncertainty and social choice theory, arguing that different ethical frameworks provide varying levels of guidance for action. They propose an information-sensitive approach to moral decision-making that accounts for these differences. The book tackles the challenge of comparing incompatible moral theories and explores what their framework means for both theoretical ethics and real-world moral choices. Available as open access under Creative Commons licensing, this work fills a gap in philosophical literature by systematically addressing moral uncertainty.
Genres: philosophy, psychology, social-science, non-fiction, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: academic, informative
238 pages · Hardcover · Oxford University Press