Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations
of the consequences that would result from the various available actions. For any given action,
however, the majority of its consequences are unpredictable at the time of decision. Many have
worried that this leaves us, in some important sense, clueless.
In this paper, I distinguish between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ possible sources of cluelessness. In terms
of this taxonomy, the majority of the existing literature on cluelessness focusses on the simple
sources. I argue, contra James Lenman in particular, that these would-be sources of cluelessness are
unproblematic, on the grounds that indifference-based reasoning is far less problematic than
Lenman (along with many others) supposes.
However, there does seem to be a genuine phenomenon of cluelessness associated with the
‘complex’ sources; here, indifference-based reasoning is inapplicable by anyone’s lights. This
‘complex problem of cluelessness’ is vivid and pressing, in particular, in the context of Effective
Altruism. This motivates a more thorough examination of the precise nature of cluelessness, and the
precise source of the associated phenomenology of discomfort in forced-choice situations. The latter
parts of the paper make some initial explorations in those directions.