Moral uncertainty resolution as belief binarization: An impossibility result

Abstract

Moral uncertainty resolution can be formally conceptualized as a belief-binarization problem, wherein an agent derives qualitative, action-guiding judgments from subjective credences distributed across competing moral views. This framing is particularly pertinent to ordinal moral theories, avoiding demanding assumptions concerning cardinal value measurability and intertheoretic comparability. However, an impossibility theorem establishes that no moral uncertainty resolution rule can simultaneously satisfy four basic desiderata: universality, complete and consistent adjudication, certainty preservation, and propositionwise independence. Standard threshold-based rules fail to circumvent this result, as they inevitably generate cyclical or logically inconsistent judgments analogous to the lottery and Condorcet paradoxes. Consequently, forming coherent action-guiding judgments requires relaxing at least one constraint. Relaxing propositionwise independence represents the most plausible escape route, licensing holistic aggregation procedures such as distance-based rules, Borda scoring, and uncovered choice sets. Moreover, because the underlying combinatorial property of blockedness holds across diverse propositional agendas, this impossibility extends beyond ordinal rankings to cardinal assessments and deontic logics, indicating a pervasive structural trade-off in resolving moral uncertainty. – AI-generated abstract.