ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests criteria of adequacy for decision procedures, introduces and defends a decision procedure that satisfies the criteria, and explores the ramifications this decision procedure has regarding the discussion of objective and subjective consequentialism. Four criteria of adequacy are suggested: (i) Decision procedures ought to answer Q, i.e. solve the problem of decision-guidance for moral theories; (ii) decision procedures ought to make it likely, under normal circumstances, that agents act in accordance with their accepted moral theories; (iii) decision procedures ought to be universal in certain respects; and (iv) decision procedures ought to be simple. Decision procedures recently suggested by Fred Feldman and Holly Smith violate these criteria. The chapter introduces and defends a decision procedure called DP that satisfies the criteria. DP solves the problem of decision-guidance for both objective and subjective consequentialism (and all other plausible moral theories). However, objective consequentialism, when combined with DP, is faced with a new problem: it guides objective consequentialists towards picking randomly among their alternatives. This problem is rooted in the fact that objective consequentialism cannot accommodate uncertainty in a satisfactory way. By contrast, subjective consequentialism, when combined with DP, takes into account uncertainty just the way it should.
