Zimmerman, Michael J.. \textitIgnorance and Moral Obligation .Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. Ix+149. $55.00 (cloth).

Abstract

Practical deliberation under conditions of ignorance requires identifying the sense of moral obligation governing conscientious agents. In determining what an agent conscientiously ought to do, three primary positions arise: the objective view, which identifies obligation with the objectively best option; the subjective view, which ties obligation to what an agent believes is the best option; and the prospective view, which defines obligation based on the prospectively best option given available evidence. The subjective view fails because it cannot accommodate the principle that agents can be mistaken about their conscientiously held obligations. Conversely, the objective view fails because conscientious agents cannot deliberately perform acts they believe they ought to avoid, an issue evident in decision-making contexts where choosing an option with a guaranteed moderate outcome is morally required over gambling between optimal and disastrous alternatives. While the prospective view circumvents these flaws by aligning right action with maximizing projected value, it faces significant limitations when handling extreme risk, evaluative uncertainty, and deficient probability assignments. Ultimately, defining the prospective option as whatever is most reasonable in light of evidence causes the position to function more as an underspecified placeholder against objective and subjective extremes than as an independent, fully realized decision procedure. Furthermore, maintaining this perspective in the context of correlative rights requires abandoning general duties not to harm, replacing them with rights against the imposition of unreasonable risks. – AI-generated abstract.