In Defense of Fanaticism
Ethics 132 (2):445-477 (2022)
Abstract
Which is better: a guarantee of a modest amount of moral value, or a tiny probability of arbitrarily large value? To prefer the latter seems fanatical. But, as I argue, avoiding such fanaticism brings severe problems. To do so, we must decline intuitively attractive trade-offs; rank structurally identical pairs of lotteries inconsistently, or else admit absurd sensitivity to tiny probability differences; have rankings depend on remote, unaffected events ; and often neglect to rank lotteries as we already know we would if we learned more. Compared to these implications, fanaticism is highly plausible.Author's Profile
Reprint years
2021
DOI
10.1086/716869
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Citations of this work
Infinite aggregation and risk.Hayden Wilkinson - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy:1-20.
References found in this work
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman - 1974 - Science 185 (4157):1124-1131.
Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment.Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman - 1983 - Psychological Review 90 (4):293-315.