Moral Uncertainty and Moral Culpability

Jay Geyer

Utilitas, 2018, vol. 30, issue 4, 399-416

Abstract: Most of the literature on moral uncertainty has been oriented around the project of giving a normative theory for actions under moral uncertainty. The need for such a theory presupposes that internalist factors such as moral beliefs and evidence are relevant to what an agent ought to do. Some authors, including Elizabeth Harman, reject that presupposition. Harman advances an argument against all such internalist views on the grounds that they entail the exculpation of agents who should strike us as morally culpable. I argue that Harman's argument is only sound with respect to a small subset of internalist views, a subset that no one in fact defends. Though Harman's argument misses its mark, it raises important questions about how internalist theories should be understood. I argue that internalist theories should be understood as issuing rational, not moral, prescriptions.

Date: 2018
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