Topics Ethics

Question What are the limits on my obligation to be sure about something before acting? I know that my life is finite, so I can't study economics, history, sociology, and psychology, as well as law (this last is what I do professionally). And yet I am called on to comment on laws or problems that, to provide a sure answer to would require knowledge of all of those things and more. So do I do nothing, and let the problems of the world go by, people starve and murder and so on, or do I act knowing that I may in fact cause more harm because I am factually incorrect about something, for example the harmfulness of GM crops, or the likelihood of re-offending, or the weight to be given to tribal rituals.

Accepted:
November 10, 2005

Comments

This is a very good question. My thinking about it owes a lot to the philosopher Michael Bratman.

The obvious, quick answer is that there are few or no certainties, life is a gamble, and so you have to run with the odds. But this answer really doesn't get us very far. How much time should you spend acquiring evidence and assessing the odds of various outcomes for your options? Too little, and you're at fault for not having explored and deliberated more; too much, and you waste your time at best, and at worst miss the chance to do anything of value. So, the obvious, quick answer is that you should explore and deliberate just the right amount. But again that doesn't get us very far. How much time should you spend exploring and deliberating about how much time to use exploring and deliberating about your options? You see the worry---there is no hope for you if you commit yourself to providing an answer to every question of this kind.

But is there any alternative, apart from being irrational? One thought is that instead of trotting out new justifications for every cognitive move we make (say, to stop deliberating, or to seek more information), we can---and maybe we must---rely on cognitive habits. These habits lead us in various cases to seek information, to stop deliberating, to reassess old plans or policies, and so on. They operate without our justifying them to ourselves every time, and so they don't lead to the sort of rational gridlock we just encountered. But does that mean that what they lead us to do is irrational and unjustified? Certainly not; we may be very reasonable in relying on these habits, which makes for a big difference between habit-driven cognitive moves and blind impulses. Also, we can (and should) cultivate good cognitive habits---ones that among other things strike the proper balance between the use of cognitive resources and the need to act in a world that won't wait.