Metanormativity: solving questions of moral and empirical uncertainty

Autor/innen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2020v19n3p790

Abstract

How can someone reconcile the desire to eat meat, and a tendency toward vegetarian ideals? How should we reconcile contradictory moral values? How can we aggregate different moral theories? How individual preferences can be fairly aggregated to represent a will, norm, or social decision? Conflict resolution and preference aggregation are tasks that intrigue philosophers, economists, sociologists, decision theorists, and many other scholars, being a rich interdisciplinary area for research. When trying to solve questions about moral uncertainty a meta understanding of the concept of normativity can help us to develop strategies to deal with norms themselves. 2nd-order normativity, or norms about norms, is a hierarchical way to think about how to combine many different normative structures and preferences into a single coherent decision. That is what metanormativity is all about, a way to answer: what should we do when we don’t know what to do?  In this study, we will review a decision-making strategy dealing with moral uncertainty, Maximization of Expected Choice-Worthiness. This strategy, proposed by William MacAskill, allows for the aggregation and inter-theoretical comparison of different normative structures, cardinal theories, and ordinal theories. In this study, we will exemplify the metanormative methods proposed by MacAskill, using has an example, a series of vegetarian dilemmas. Given the similarity to this metanormative strategy to expected utility theory, we will also show that it is possible to integrate both models to address decision-making problems in situations of empirical and moral uncertainty. We believe that this kind of ethical-mathematical formalism can be useful to help develop strategies to better aggregate moral preferences and solve conflicts.

Autor/innen-Biografien

Nicholas Kluge Corrêa, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, R.S.

Doutorando em Filosofia pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS). Atualmente trabalhando como pesquisador na área de ética de IA e alinhamento moral entre IA e humanos.

Nythamar Fernandes de Oliveira, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, R.S.

Ph.D em Filosofia pela State University of New York em Stony Brook. Atualmente é Professor Titular da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Coordenador de área (Filosofia) na CAPES (quadriênio 2018-22), Coordenador do Grupo de Pesquisa em Neurofilosofia (Instituto do Cérebro, InsCer), Editor da Revista Veritas, membro do Comitê de Bioética Clínica e membro da comissão coordenadora do Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas em Democracia, criado em 2009.

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Veröffentlicht

2020-12-16