ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the interaction between value incommensurability and risk. It focuses on value comparisons between risky actions whose outcomes are bound to be incommensurable in value, whatever state the world might be in. It is seemingly obvious that such actions would themselves have to be incommensurable. Relatedly, it is seemingly obvious that one action cannot be better than another if its outcome would not be better than the outcome of the other action, whatever state the world might be in. But, as I argue, these intuitions are misleading: there are cases in which they lead us astray.
The problem in its main outline was posed by Caspar Hare (2010). While Hare views it as a problem concerning rational preferences and rational choice, one can also see it, as this chapter does, as a challenge for formal axiology. I approach it using a formal account of value relations inspired by the Fitting-Attitudes Analysis of value. This allows me to explain how one action can be better than another even though their outcomes are bound to be incommensurable. But the account I rely on also leads to a residual issue that I do not know how to resolve.
