Please Join Us For:
Risk and Ambiguity in Ethical Decision-Making
A Colloquium with Dr. Lara Buchak
Lara Buchak is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton in 2009, and taught at UC Berkeley for 12 years before returning to Princeton. Her research interests include decision theory, social choice theory, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion.
Some of my choices are primarily guided by the interests of others: for example, which charities to give to or which political policies to vote for. Other of my choices have at least a significant component where I must take others’ interests into account, though perhaps I can weigh them against my own interests: for example, which environment-protecting measures to adopt in my personal life. This talk is about how to evaluate the other-affecting component of my decisions. In cases in which all of the empirical facts are known, it may be easy to say which decision is best for another person. But in cases of risk—we don’t know how the world will turn out—or ambiguity—we don’t even know the probability of the world turning out in various ways—things are less simple. This is particularly the case given the wide range of attitudes towards risk and towards ambiguity that a person could rationally take. After laying out a framework for thinking about these choices, I will argue for some principles that should govern them.
December 10th, 2021
4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Meyer Hall, Room 122
4 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003
• Must have an NYU ID card to attend in-person
• This event is COVID-19 prevention compliant and will be fully masked and socially distanced
• Outside attendance will be hosted over Zoom (RSVP required)
