Is Normative Uncertainty Irrelevant if Your Descriptive Uncertainty Depends on It?

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (4):874-899 (2021)
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Abstract

According to ‘Excluders’, descriptive uncertainty – but not normative uncertainty – matters to what we ought to do. Recently, several authors have argued that those wishing to treat normative uncertainty differently from descriptive uncertainty face a dependence problem because one's descriptive uncertainty can depend on one's normative uncertainty. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the phenomenon of dependence poses a decisive problem for Excluders. I argue that existing arguments fail to show this, and that, while stronger ones can be found, Excluders can escape them.

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Pamela Robinson
University of British Columbia, Okanagan

Citations of this work

Metanormative regress: an escape plan.Christian Tarsney - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (5).
There Is No Such Thing as Expected Moral Choice-Worthiness.Nicolas Côté - 2023 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 53 (1):1-20.
The Subjective Ought and the Accessibility of Moral Truths.Frederick Choo - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (3):245-253.

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References found in this work

Higher‐Order Evidence and the Limits of Defeat.Maria Lasonen-Aarnio - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2):314-345.
Normative Externalism.Brian Weatherson - 2019 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Moral uncertainty and its consequences.Ted Lockhart - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Running risks morally.Brian Weatherson - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (1):141-163.

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