I agree there’s the ethical commensurability factor, but I’m not talking about moral intuintions, or domain specific knowledge, but about concrete reality—even if that reality is unknown. I’m saying that cross-cause comparison increases objective (not subjective) uncertainty by orders of magnitude.
I think my remarks above apply across different kinds of uncertainty (we discuss ethical, empirical and other kinds of uncertainty above). That said, I’m not sure I follow your intended point about objective uncertainty (your example given seems to be about subjective uncertainty about moral weight), but it seems to me my remarks would apply exactly the same to objective uncertainty.
To put it another way, in many cases moral weight doesn’t matter for within cause comparison, but it becomes critically imporant between causes… this huge objective increase in uncertainty here is an important if fairly basic point to recognise.
We make the point (using the same examples) that comparisons across causes introduce many huge uncertainties, that do not apply within-causes, at multiple points in the passages quoted above and elsewhere. So I fear we may be talking past each other if you see this point as missing from the article.
Thanks for the reply—I was just trying to make a small point, which I still think is missing from your analysis about a large objective uncertainty difference when comparing between causes rather than within. I might be missing it in your text but I can’t see it mentioned at all, maybe you considered it but didn’t write about it explicitly?
Thank you for the reply Nick.
I think my remarks above apply across different kinds of uncertainty (we discuss ethical, empirical and other kinds of uncertainty above). That said, I’m not sure I follow your intended point about objective uncertainty (your example given seems to be about subjective uncertainty about moral weight), but it seems to me my remarks would apply exactly the same to objective uncertainty.
We make the point (using the same examples) that comparisons across causes introduce many huge uncertainties, that do not apply within-causes, at multiple points in the passages quoted above and elsewhere. So I fear we may be talking past each other if you see this point as missing from the article.
Thanks for the reply—I was just trying to make a small point, which I still think is missing from your analysis about a large objective uncertainty difference when comparing between causes rather than within. I might be missing it in your text but I can’t see it mentioned at all, maybe you considered it but didn’t write about it explicitly?
All good either way its not the biggest deal!