A really bad moral dilemma

Here would be a really bad kind of moral dilemma:

• It is certain that unless you murder one innocent person now, you will freely become a mass murderer, but if you do murder that innocent person, you will freely repent of it later and live an exemplary life.

If compatibilism is true, such dilemmas are possible—the world could be so set up that these unfortunate free choices are inevitable. If compatibilism is false, such dilemmas are impossible, absent Molinism.

We might have a strong intuition that such dilemmas are impossible. If so, maybe that gives us another reason to reject compatibilism and Molinism.

Real dilemmas, alas

I’ve been trying to avoid holding there are real moral dilemmas—ones where one is genuinely morally required to do something and to abstain from it. But here is a problem:

1. One is obligated to do what one believes to be obligatory.

2. Some people believe that ϕing is obligatory and that refraining from ϕing is obligatory.

3. So, some people are obligated to ϕ and not to ϕ.

Perhaps the most obvious case of (2) is killing in war. It seems to be not an uncommon view that (a) all killing is wrong, but (b) you should kill to defend the innocent in a just war.

Natural Law and the problem of contradictory moral norms

Given a Natural Law ethic, we could imagine a type of creature whose nature is such that even under normal circumstances, it is subject to incompatible moral obligations. We see such conflicts between creatures: the flourishing of the wolf is the languishing of the sheep. But we could imagine a being which has central instances of moral flourishing that also constitute central instances of moral languishing. Perhaps the being’s nature requires both mercy of it and a strict unrelenting justice. Or perhaps it requires both impartial justice and a favoring of kin.

Given that it is much easier to come up with conflicting systems of rules than with harmonious ones, we might well expect that the natures of moral creatures would have such conflicts of characteristic virtues. Thus, given Natural Law ethics, the absence of such general moral contradictions in us is something to be explained.

Given theistic Natural Law ethics, we can give two explanations. First, we could say that divine goodness is less likely to cause such natures to be instantiated. Second, all natures are ways of participating in God. Perhaps there just are no essentially contradictory ways of participating in God, and so such natures are impossible. (Note that this is compatible with the existence of exceptional circumstances where there are contradictory moral norms.)

Along similar lines, note that the Natural Lawyer has to face the same abhorrent action objection that the Divine Command Theorist does. It seems that the Natural Lawyer has to endorse conditionals like:

• If our nature were to command torture of the innocent, then such torture would be morally required.

But a theistic Natural Lawyer could say (parallel to what typical Divine Command Theorists do) that it is impossible for our nature to command such a thing, either because it would be contrary to God’s goodness to instantiate such a nature or because such a nature is impossible.

I am collecting ways in which Natural Law, and Aristotelian metaphysics in general, requires theism…

Another dilemma?

Following up on my posts (this and this) regarding puzzles generated by moral uncertainty, here is another curious case.

Dr. Alice Kowalska believes that a steroid injection will be good for her patient, Bob. However, due to a failure of introspection, she also believes that she does not believe that a steroid injection will be beneficial to Bob. Should she administer the steroid injection?

In other words: Should Dr. Kowalska do what she thinks is good for her patient, or should she do what she thinks she thinks is good for her patient?

The earlier posts pushed me in the direction of thinking that subjective obligation takes precedence over objective obligation. That would suggest that she should do what she thinks she thinks is good for her patient.

But doesn’t this seem mistaken? After all, we don’t want Dr. Kowalska to be gazing at her own navel, trying to figure out what she thinks is good for the patient. We want her to be looking at the patient, trying to figure out what is good for the patient. So, likewise, it seems that her action should be guided by what she thinks is good for the patient, not what she thinks she thinks is good for the patient.

How, though, to reconcile this with the action-guiding precedence that the subjective seems to have in my previous posts? Maybe it’s this. What should be relevant to Dr. Kowalska is not so much what she believes, but what her evidence is. And here the case is underdescribed. Here is one story compatible with what I said above:

1. Dr. Kowalska has lots of evidence that steroid injections are good for patients of this sort. But her psychologist has informed her that because of a traumatic experience involving a steroid injection, she has been unable to form the belief that naturally goes with this evidence. However, Dr. Kowalska’s psychologist is incompetent, and Dr. Kowalska indeed has the belief in question, but trusts her psychologist and hence thinks she does not have it.

In this case, it doesn’t matter whether Dr. Kowalska believes the injection would be good for patient. What matters is that she has lots of evidence, and she should inject.

Here is another story compatible with the setup, however:

2. Dr. Kowalska knows there is no evidence that steroid injections are good for patients of this sort. However, her retirement savings are invested in a pharmaceutical company that specializes in these kinds of steroids, and wishful thinking has led to her subconsciously and epistemically akratically forming the belief that these injections are beneficial. Dr. Kowalska does not, however, realize that she has formed this subconscious belief.

In this case, intuitively, again it doesn’t matter that Dr. Kowalska has this subconscious belief. What matters is that she knows there is no evidence that the injections are good for patients of this sort, and given this, she should not inject.

If I am right in my judgments about 1 and 2, the original story left out crucial details.

Maybe we can tell the original story simply in terms of evidence. Maybe Dr. Kowalska on balance has evidence that the injection is good, while at the same time on balance having evidence that she does not on balance have evidence that the injection is good. I am not sure this is possible, though. The higher order evidence seems to undercut the lower order evidence, and hence I suspect that as soon as she gained evidence that she does not on balance have evidence, it would be the case that on balance she does not have evidence.

Here is another line of thought suggesting that what matters is evidence, not belief. Imagine that Dr. Kowalska and Dr. Schmidt both have the same evidence that it is 92% likely that the injections would be beneficial. Dr. Schmidt thereupon forms the belief that the injections would be beneficial, but Dr. Kowalska is more doxastically cautious and does not form this belief. But there is no disagreement between them as to the probabilities on the evidence. Then I think there should be no disagreement between them as to what course of action should be taken. What matters is whether 92% likelihood of benefit is enough to outweigh the cost, discomfort and side-effects, and whether the doctor additionally believes in the benefit is quite irrelevant.

Real dilemmas and conscience

Some people—notably, St. Thomas—think that you can have real dilemmas, ones where you are obligated to do each of two incompatible actions, but only when you've done something wrong. For instance, one might make incompatible promises to two different people, and then have a real dilemma, but of course it's wrong to make such incompatible promises.

But given the binding force of conscience, this is not a stable position to hold. For consider a situation S where one would be in a real dilemma, say the situation where one made incompatible promises to two different people. But now imagine a situation S^* which is epistemically like S and where the same actions are open to one, but where one did nothing wrong to get into S^*. Maybe one has a justified false belief that one has made incompatible promises to two different people (say, a bad friend convinces you that you made such promises but forgot about them). Then while one does not have duties of promise to do the two incompatible actions, one does have duties of conscience to do them.

A complete denial of real dilemmas is a more stable position, as is the position that where there is a real dilemma, something has gone wrong morally or epistemically (but not necessarily through one's having done anything wrong, morally or epistemically).

Elections question

Stalin and Mother Teresa are running for Prime Minister of Canada. Stalin has a well-publicized plan to murder all the Ukrainians, of whom there are a million. Moreover, his economic policies are stupid, resulting in the impoverishment of the middle class, and no improvement for the needy. Mother Teresa is not only virtuous, but also extremely well-informed about economics, and has policies that promise great economic improvement for the needy, and no loss for the rich. So far, the choice seems easy. The night before the elections, an omniscient and perfectly truthful being tells you—and you know that this is true—that if Stalin is elected, he will succeed in all his plans—a million Ukrainians will be murdered, and the economy will be destroyed. But the being also tells you that if Mother Teresa is elected, earthquakes will destroy Toronto and Montreal, directly killing two million people, and despite Mother Teresa doing the best that can be done, the country will be plunged into an economic depression, whose net effect is the same as that of Stalin's economic policies. If Stalin is elected, the earthquake will happen in an uninhabited area (maybe the military parades will redistribute the geological stress). Oh, and neither Mother Teresa, nor Stalin, nor anybody other than you knows about the earthquake issue--and nobody will believe you if tell them.

The results of electing Stalin are, thus, better than of electing Mother Teresa: a million die, while on Mother Teresa's watch, two million die. Whom should you vote for?

I am not claiming that this has any significant resemblance to the upcoming Canadian or U.S. or other elections.

[Edited: Added lack of others' knowledge of earthquake condition. Also, fixed a typo.]