Decisions Under Uncertainty

We had a week of Mill defending utilitarianism, and then a week of Williams criticizing it because utilitarianism is committed to the more general thesis known as consequentialism. This week we are going to get a defense of consequentialism from the philosopher Frank Jackson - the only living philosopher we have read this semester.

Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson taught for most of his career at Australian National University, from which he is now retired. His most famous work in philosophy is about language and the mind, but the paper that we are going to read for this class spawned a large area of research in moral philosophy that is focused on the question of whether our lack of knowledge about the effects of our actions is the right kind of thing to affect what it is morally right or wrong for us to do.

Uncertainty

You will see in Jackson’s article that he is trying to defend consequentialism from a very specific objection - that it doesn’t allow us to prioritize the interests of our friends and family over the interests of complete strangers. But in order to defend it in this way, he gives a very different interpretation of what it means to be a consequentialist than Mill does. The difference between these two interpretations is grounded in Jackson’s idea that uncertainty - our lack of sure knowledge about what will happen as the result of our actions - should affect not only what choices it is rational for us to make, but also which choices count as morally right or morally wrong. As you read it, try to keep track of the difference between what you think it is rational for people to do in the situations that Jackson describes, and what it is morally right or morally wrong for them to do.