Thank you for engaging with my essay and I think you have identified the main issue left open.
I am not claiming that a reason-based approach always yields a determinate answer. In the malaria case, the strong reason to benefit the child conflicts with a large but uncertain animal-welfare reason and we may not be able to reach a conclusion.
In practice I envisage something like ordinary deliberation under uncertainty: identify the reasons, assess how well supported they are, compare magnitudes where comparison is possible, and look for robustness across reasonable ways of weighing them. Sometimes one reason will clearly dominate; sometimes a decision will remain finely balanced or genuinely unresolved.
My main disagreement with the global-welfare approach is therefore not that reasons solve cluelessness. They often do not. It is that we should not make a complete global comparison a prerequisite for recognising or acting on the reasons we do have. Global welfare may emerge as an overall judgement where the reasons can be integrated; where they cannot, I think we should represent that indeterminacy rather than attempt to manufacture a precise aggregate.
Thank you for engaging with my essay and I think you have identified the main issue left open.
I am not claiming that a reason-based approach always yields a determinate answer. In the malaria case, the strong reason to benefit the child conflicts with a large but uncertain animal-welfare reason and we may not be able to reach a conclusion.
In practice I envisage something like ordinary deliberation under uncertainty: identify the reasons, assess how well supported they are, compare magnitudes where comparison is possible, and look for robustness across reasonable ways of weighing them. Sometimes one reason will clearly dominate; sometimes a decision will remain finely balanced or genuinely unresolved.
My main disagreement with the global-welfare approach is therefore not that reasons solve cluelessness. They often do not. It is that we should not make a complete global comparison a prerequisite for recognising or acting on the reasons we do have. Global welfare may emerge as an overall judgement where the reasons can be integrated; where they cannot, I think we should represent that indeterminacy rather than attempt to manufacture a precise aggregate.