Deontological Decision Theory and the Grounds of Subjective Permissibility
Abstract:
What grounds deontological judgements of subjective permissibility? In virtue of what is an act subjectively permissible or impermissible? I will consider two possibilities: verdicts of objective permissibility; and objective moral reasons. On the first approach, subjective permissibility aims to optimally satisfy objective permissibility, given our uncertainty. On the second approach, subjective permissibility aims to optimally satisfy our objective moral reasons, given our uncertainty. An account of subjective permissibility adopts the verdicts approach if it takes objective verdicts as inputs. One example: ‘minimise expected objective wrongness’ (Graham [2010]; Olsen [2017]). The reasons approach is naturally associated with: ‘maximise expected objective deontic value’ (Colyvan et al. [2010]; Oddie and Milne [1991]). I will argue that the reasons approach is right, but that we have to put more of the ‘deontological’ into ‘deontological decision theory’, and rely less on the model of orthodox rational decision theory.
Date: 18 September 2017
Time: 2pm to 4pm
Venue: Malay Studies Conference Room (AS8-06-46)
About the Speaker:
Seth Lazar is an Associate Professor, and Head of the School of Philosophy, in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He writes on topics in political philosophy, and normative and applied ethics. In his last book, Sparing Civilians (Oxford, 2015), he defended the protection of civilians in war against political and philosophical threats that have arisen in recent years. He is editor of the Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War (Oxford, 2016), and The Morality of Defensive War (Oxford, 2014). His papers have appeared in Ethics (2009, 2015, 2017), Philosophy & Public Affairs (2010, 2012), Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2015), Nous (2017), Philosophical Studies (2017), and other leading philosophy and political science journals. His current project focuses on how deontologists can make decisions under risk and uncertainty. He is working on a book, provisionally called ‘Duty Under Doubt: Deontological Decision-Making with Imperfect Information’.
All are welcome