Making Morality Work

Most of us hope to do what morality requires of us. But what if we cannot figure this out? A soldier may know, for example, that morality requires him not to kill innocent civilians, but he cannot determine whether the person careening towards him in an old car is an innocent civilian or a terrorist about to detonate a car bomb. Making Morality Work addresses this problem, asking whether we should reject moral codes that cannot be used by individuals hampered by imperfect knowledge. Holly M. Smith argues that the best moral codes solve this problem by offering two tiers, one of which tells us what makes acts right and wrong, and the other of which provides user-friendly decision guides that enable us to indirectly make decisions appropriate to the first tier moral standard. Making Morality Work opens a path towards resolving a deep problem of moral life.