Acting without knowledge of rightness

Some philosophers think that for your right action to be morally worthy you have to know that the action is right.

On the contrary, there are cases where an action is even more morally worthy when you don’t know it’s right.

1. Alice is tasked with a dangerous mission to rescue hikers stranded on a mountain. She knows it’s right, and she fulfills the mission.

2. Bob is tasked with a dangerous mission to rescue hikers stranded on a mountain. He knows it’s right, but then just before he heads out, a clever philosopher gives him a powerful argument that there is no right or wrong. He is not fully convinced, but he has no time to figure out whether the argument works before the mission starts. Instead, he reasons quickly: “Well, there is a 50% chance that the argument is sound and there is no such thing as right and wrong, in which case at least I’m not doing anything wrong by rescuing. But there is a 50% chance that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and if anything is right, it’s rescuing these hikers.” And he fulfills the mission.

Bob’s action is, I think, even more worthy and praiseworthy than Alice’s. For while Alice risks her life for a certainty of doing the right thing, Bob is willing to risk his life in the face of uncertainty. Some people would take the uncertainty as an excuse, but Bob does not.