Thursday, May 28, 2009 A member of the studio audience (or at least somebody who is listening out in the hallway) has asked me to speak about the possibility of "bad beliefs" in desire utilitarian theory. In my experience, there are so many times that people think they are doing the right thing, but they do not take the time to verify that they have good information & good beliefs to make the correct decision. Negligence, it would seem, is often the primary cause for moral wrong-doing. This is true. I have written many times about the moral crime of epistemic negligence. Now, there is a small problem when it comes to saying that negligence is the cause of something. Negligence (in desire utilitarian terms) is the absence of a sufficiently strong concern for the welfare of others. There is at least some linguistic difficulty in saying that something that does not exist can be a "cause". However, I consider this one of those pedantic concerns that is not worth a great deal of consideration. It is the case that a person with an insufficiently strong concern for the welfare of others will not take actions to prevent harm to others that a person with a stronger concern would have taken. And people generally have reason to promote a stronger concern for the welfare of others (since they and the people they care about are the 'others' whose welfare is at risk). However, notice here that the root of the