Uncertainty and Risk
Uncertainty and Risk
When a given action could result in one outcome, but could also result in a different outcome, and one of those outcomes is better than the other, that action involves risks. If the person who is acting is not sure what the outcome will be, he or she is uncertain, or put differently, is acting under uncertainty. So far in this course, we have abstracted away from uncertainty and risk. But our topic today is how these factors might affect what it is morally okay to do.
Some Methodology
In contrast to bare physical distance, the fact that a choice is risky or that an agent does not know for certain what the outcome will be at least seems like the kind of thing that could be morally relevant. At the very least, it should take a good argument to convince us that it is not. But so far in this class, we have ignored or abstracted away from these factors, and assumed when we described possible examples both that we know what will actually happen if the agent takes each choice, and that the agent who is making the choice knows what will happen. There are at least two good reasons to make these assumptions when we first start doing moral philosophy, even though we know that they do not truly describe most interesting real-life situations, and hence even though we know that the answers that we get when we make these assumptions are only an approximation, at best, to the final answers that we get when we try to add uncertainty to the equation.
First, assuming that there is no uncertainty is an idealization that makes ethical questions easier to think about, and lets us control for the other factors that we want to understand. Real-life choices are hard and involve many complicating factors. So it is sound methodology if we want to understand how each of these factors interact, to start by trying to separate them and consider each one separately in as controlled a way as we can. So, for example, if we want to understand the significance of the doing/allowing distinction, then we should try to set aside differences in uncertainty, in order to be able to focus more clearly on what we do want to understand. This reason for idealizing away uncertainty has much in common with the reasons for making idealizing assumptions in science. For example, when we assume for purposes of constructing simple models that gas molecules are point-sized, or that there is no friction, our model only approximates the behavior of the physical system that we are trying to understand, but it is a good first step, and understanding how things work in the absence of friction is a good first step to understanding how they work with friction.
Second, there is a very theoretical reason why it makes sense to start by trying to understand choice without uncertainty before generalizing to include uncertainty. And that is that philosophers, mathematicians, and economists, among others, generally believe that we know a lot about how to make choices under uncertainty. The theoretical framework that tells us how to make choices under uncertainty is called normative decision theory. On the most standard version of decision theory, the way to determine what choice you should make in any situation is to first assign values to the possible outcomes that could follow as a result of your choice, and then weight those values by the probability that those outcomes will follow as the result of any given choice that you might make. Then the action for you to take is the one that has the highest weighted value - or, in a phrase that echoes a philosopher we've recently encountered in class, Jeremy Bentham - the highest expected utility. There is a lot of disagreement, at least within philosophy, about exactly how decision theory should work. But generally speaking, what people disagree about is how the question of what you ought to do under uncertainty depends on the ranking of options independently of your uncertainty, and not whether it does. So even though there are a lot of open and difficult questions in normative decision theory, there is a lot of consensus that the question of how options rank independently of uncertainty is prior to, and needs to be answered before, the question of what you should do when you are uncertain.
When Does Uncertainty Matter Most?
These methodological considerations explain why it makes sense to abstract away from uncertainty, at least when we first start to do ethical theory. But in real life, there are some situations in which uncertainty is harder to avoid than others. Sometimes you can resolve your uncertainty if you just do more research. For example, if you are not sure whether failing to turn in any assignments in Phil 166 will adversely affect your pass/fail grade, you could easily resolve that uncertainty by reading the syllabus, which specifies that a passing grade in every major portion of the course grade is required in order to receive a passing grade in the course. But in other cases, uncertainty is not so easy to avoid.
For example, when you were trying to decide whether to enroll at USC, it would have been impossible for you to figure out in advance whether you would meet the love of your life in your freshman dormitory, get into the fraternity or sorority of your choice, or get at least one 'B+' in your sophomore year. And it would be impossible for you to know exactly how you will feel about USC after you graduate. These things are impossible to know in advance, because they depend on too many other things that you are not in a position to find out.
But another reason why it can be hard to avoid uncertainty is that sometimes the pace of events requires you to act now. For example, in the Trolley case there are no May 1st deadlines which allow you to do more research or a campus visit. You have to act now, and choosing not to act is just one more alternative. Cases in which immediate action is required are among those that are likely to involve ineliminable uncertainty. You can't research whether you or the backpacker are more likely to bring the trolley to a halt if you land on the tracks in front of it - you can only go with what you already know about this. And cases of self-defense - at least, of personal self-defense, as opposed to the self-defense involved in a sovereign state going to war - nearly always involve such ineliminable uncertainty - you can never be 100% confident that the intruder you wake to find in your bedroom is there to harm you or is just as scared to find you home when they came to steal your laptop. So self-defense is a particularly good topic with respect to which to introduce the wrinkle of how things are affected by uncertainty.
Today's Reading and Listening
For this class, we will be listening to a 45-minute podcast and reading an article. The article is particularly difficult by the standards of those that we are reading for this course, and so you should reserve plenty of time to spend re-reading it - especially the first half. Both introduce new ideas in addition to self-defense under uncertainty. The podcast introduces an idea called moral exploitation, and the article introduces issues about racial injustice in the context of self-defense. We will not spend substantial time in class discussing moral exploitation, but we will be listening to two more podcast episodes that are very closely related to this one, and the podcast gives a particularly compelling example of the issue that is raised in the article - of how it is fair to distribute risks.
Moral Exploitation Podcast
The podcast is again from Barry Lam's Hi-Phi Nation podcast series. We'll listen to two more episodes, next week. Because it introduces a really compelling example of the kind of question about the distribution of risks that the article is about, I strongly recommend that you listen to it first. As you listen, pay special attention for a disagreement between two soldiers about the right attitude for soldiers to take when considering tradeoffs between risks to innocent civilians and risks to fellow soldiers. The example in which they disagree is the kind of case that we are interested in this week.
Click here for supplementary materials for this podcast on the Hi-Phi Nation website, including a full transcript.
Moral Exploitation
One of the concepts the podcast discusses is the idea of 'moral exploitation', which is exploitation that works by imposing moral burdens. The following comic illustrates moral burdens in a way that does not turn on exploitation:
Renee Bolinger
Renee Bolinger completed her PhD in philosophy here at USC about two years ago, and now teaches at Princeton University. Her research is about the fair allocation of risks in cases where agents need to make choices involving uncertainty or risks - our exact topic for this class.
Finally, the Reading
Our reading for this class is Bolinger's paper, 'Racial Bias in Defensive Harm', which is published in the Journal of Political Philosophy, and which she wrote as a philosophy graduate student here at USC. As you read, try to apply what she says about self-defense to the case from the podcast, in which the two soldiers disagree about how to balance risks to soldiers with risks to innocent civilians. And think about what you know or have read about prominent cases of police violence against young black men in the United States over the last few years. What kind of criticism is Bolinger advancing of our criminal justice system?