Should Probabilistic Thinking Affect Moral Reasoning?
Economics and Meta-Ethics
Scott Alexander recently wrote about the ethics of killing Androids—what if there’s a 50/50 chance they feel pain? A 50/50 chance they possess “moral worth”—however you define it? Most of us would not want to take such a chance, all else being equal. But would about a 1/99 chance, he asks? How do you weigh risk and reward, downside and upside, when engaged in moral calculus?
You might dismiss such a type of question as crassly “consequentialist”; but you can apply the same question in terms of deontology and virtue ethics. What if I think there’s a 50% chance my action is a violation of my duty? Of my character?
Economists theorize about “indifference points” when it comes to decision making. Would I rather have ten dollars now or a thousand dollars in 100 years? We can apply the concept of an indifference point to moral reasoning as well, strange and terrible as that may sound. At what point does an act go from being morally neutral to being morally wrong? Or from neutral to positive?
While we are here, we should ask whether economic thinking has anything to teach us about moral reasoning—or whether, in fact, it takes more than it gives. But in doing so, we’d be engaging in economic thinking—discussing the “balance sheet” of certain kinds of ethical discourse.
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