MORAL ENCROACHMENT UNDER MORAL UNCERTAINTY

This paper discusses a novel problem at the intersection of ethics and epistemology: there can be cases in which moral considerations seem to "encroach" on belief from multiple directions at once, and possibly to varying degrees, thereby leaving their overall effect on belief unclear.1 We introduce these cases - cases of moral encroachment under moral uncer-tainty - and show that they pose a problem for all predominant accounts of moral encroachment. We then address the problem by developing a modular Bayesian framework that, we argue, is sufficiently flexible and scaleable to accommodate the multifaceted uncertainty that we describe while still generating clear recommendations. Our framework has sev-eral practical upshots, so we close by articulating them: we examine the relationship between moral character and doxastic behavior and make suggestions for how to encourage people to revise their doxastic states in morally laudable ways, without deviating from core Bayesian norms.