Yuzhou Wang

By appealing to the Rawlsian maximin criterion, Catriona McKinnon’s “Playing Safe Argument” argues that we should take precautionary actions against climate change when the outcome of climate change is strongly uncertain. I argue that the Playing Safe Argument fails for three reasons. First, contrary to what McKinnon claims, the worst consequence of not taking precautionary action is not necessarily worse than the worst consequences of taking precautionary action, since the precautionary action may possibly fail. Second, our uncertainty about the consequences of climate change may not be strong enough to justify the use of the maximin criterion. Third, the Rawlsian theory is concerned with the situation of the least-advantaged rather than the population as a whole. Since the position of the worst-off may not be significantly changed whether or not precautionary actions were taken. Rawls’s maximin criterion does not unambiguously justify the Strong Precautionary Principle.

Pessimists about moral deference argue that there is something special about moral beliefs which make it impermissible for agents to defer on moral matters. In this paper, I argue that, even if pessimists are right that there is something special about moral beliefs, that is not enough to render moral deference impermissible. A stronger requirement—the rationality requirement—makes deferring to experts not only permissible but also rationally required. When one does not defer to one’s perceived moral expert, one either violates Belief Consistency or violates Belief Closure. The moral considerations, such as moral understanding or virtue, for not deferring to experts either fail to show that not deferring is a better option than deferring or fail to show that those moral considerations outweigh rationality requirements.

Richard Rowland, 1–16) defends the following principle: if we must suspend judgement about whether it is permissible for us to φ, then it is not permissible for us to φ. He calls this the Epistemic → Metaphysical principle. This paper considers two challenges to this principle. First, assuming that both conciliationism and EM are true, then in cases where you and your epistemic peers disagree on both the permissibility of φ-ing and the permissibility of refraining from φ-ing, neither φ-ing nor refraining from φ-ing would be permissible. Thus, the view entails that moral dilemmas, which many regard as impossible, are possible. Second, EM is in conflict with the Principle of Decisive Reasons, 760–782). While EM implies that you may be obligated to φ when it is not permissible for you to believe that you ought to φ, the Principle of Decisive Reasons implies that you ought to φ only if it is permissible for you to believe that you ought to φ. Given those two challenges, I conclude that EM should be rejected.