In philosophy, cluelessness refers to radical uncertainty about whether any given action is preferable to any other, from an impartial perspective (i.e., considering all the possible consequences of both actions).^[1]

The primary motivation for cluelessness has been the problem of unawareness of many of those possible consequences (see Roussos 2021, slides; Thorstad 2025; DiGiovanni 2025a; Buhler 2025)^[2].

DiGiovanni (2026) proposes the following unawareness argument for cluelessness:

• Let’s say that we c-prefer^[1] A over B if the reason we prefer A is an impartial altruistic comparison of the actions’ possible consequences.
• P1. Normative premise: To justify c-preferring A over B, it’s not enough to say (e.g.) that A seems heuristically good. Rather, we need to argue that A has higher “expected value” broadly speaking, meaning: In some sense we “expect” that, if we were idealized agents who could aggregate all of A’s and B’s possible consequences into literal EVs, then we’d say A has higher EV. (We ourselves don’t need literal EVs to justify c-preferences, hence the scare quotes.^[2]) Otherwise, it’s unacceptably arbitrary to c-prefer A.
• P2. Conceptual premise: If our understanding of A’s and B’s possible consequences is sufficiently coarse-grained, then we don’t have an argument for “expecting” our idealized self’s EV for A to be higher, lower, or equal to B’s.^[3] So A’s and B’s “EVs” are incomparable. In particular:
  • a. Against precise EVs: We shouldn’t represent actions’ degrees of c-preferability with literal precise expected values.
  • b. Against “best guesses”: Even if we don’t use literal precise EVs, we shouldn’t always force ourselves to compare A’s and B’s “EVs”.
• P3. Empirical^[4] premise: Due to unawareness (at least), our understanding of any pair of actions’ possible consequences is indeed very coarse-grained — enough that the conclusion of (P2) follows (i.e., these actions’ “EVs” are incomparable). In particular, the actions’ “EVs” are too severely imprecise to compare them, regardless of whether we (a) formally model these “EVs” or (b) appeal to informal/heuristic arguments.
• Conclusion: We aren’t justified in c-preferring any action over any other.

For example, there are reasons to think that the long-term effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate would be overall good or c-preferable—say, by fostering more patient and pro-social attitudes. This would mean that taking action to increase economic growth could have much better effects than not taking the action. We have some reasons to think that the long-term effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate would be bad —for example, via increased carbon emissions leading to climate change. This would mean that not taking the action that increases economic growth could be a much better idea. It is not immediately obvious that one of these is better than the other, but we also cannot say they have equal expected value. Rather, the EV is indeterminate. 
We care about the overall effects of a marginally higher economic growth rate (~P1). If we have no reason to believe that our best guess (on whether it is overall net good or bad) is truth-tracking because of substantial unawareness, we should not follow this best guess (~P2). Given how coarse our awareness of the possible consequences of a marginally higher economic growth rate in fact is, we indeed are in such a situation (~P3).

DiGiovanni offers a comprehensive list of potential objections to his argument, and their rebuttals, as well as clarifications on what this argument does (not) claim. He also mentions two attempts to find action-guidance despite cluelessness: i) consequentialist bracketing, and ii) a metaepistemic wager.

Consequentialist bracketing

While the term consequentialist bracketing was first used by DiGiovanni (2025b)^[3], the idea was formalized by Kollin et al. (2025). It basically aims at providing a principled way of excluding some paralyzing considerations from our decision-making (i.e., "bracketing them out") to find action-guidance. Still, it comes with (at least) the following potential problems:

1. Consequentialist bracketing can make contradictory recommendations depending on what is considered the value location, and picking a particular one seems arbitrary (Clifton 2025; DiGiovanni 2025b).^[4]
2. Even if it doesn't, it is not clear what it implies. Neartermism? (Kollin et al. 2025; DiGiovanni 2025b.) Or should we even bracket out some unsignable near-term effects? Or a halfway form of longtermism? (Clifton 2025; Buhler 2025.)
3. It violates the sure-thing principle, although DiGiovanni argues this may not be an issue.
4. It may seem ad hoc, to the point where it might not appear any more compelling/justified than pretending we are not clueless in the first place.

A metaepistemic wager

This is a proposal considered by DiGiovanni (2025a; 2025b). The idea is to act in accordance with your precise best guess on the off chance precise Bayesianism is decision-theoretically superior to imprecise Bayesianism or similar. However:

• i) Given our reasons for cluelessness that motivate this proposal to being with, why would wagering on some best guess A be any less arbitrary than wagering on the hypothetical reverse best guess B? As DiGiovanni (2025a) writes: “if there are reasons our intuitions about an unfamiliar domain could systematically deviate from the truth, and we don’t know how to weigh these up against the reasons for truth-tracking, it seems indeterminate whether our intuitions are truth-tracking overall!”
• ii) To the extent that this proposal relies on metanormative bracketing, #3 and #4, above, bite just as hard. It may also get its own version of #1 (see DiGiovanni 2025b; Buhler's comment).

References and further reading

(The recommendations made on this page may be a good place to start.)

Buhler, Jim. 2025. "Discussions of Longtermism should focus on the problem of Unawareness." October 20. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ygetruijHKYpmkWAs/discussions-of-longtermism-should-focus-on-the-problem-of

Burch-Brown, Joanna M. 2014. “Clues for Consequentialists.” Utilitas 26 (1): 105–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820813000289.

Clifton, Jesse. 2025. "Bracketing cluelessness: A new theory of altruistic decision-making." September 24. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pecCRYaAzsfZkeAzi/bracketing-cluelessness-a-new-theory-of-altruistic-decision

DiGiovanni, Anthony. 2025a. “The Challenge of Unawareness for Impartial Altruist Action Guidance.” June 2. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/rHqdsrieinyhM5KDv.

DiGiovanni, Anthony. 2025b. “Resolving Cluelessness Nihilism with Metanormative Bracketing.” October 29. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5CHnJD8tXkpvsZv85/resolving-radical-cluelessness-with-metanormative-bracketing

DiGiovanni, Anthony. 2026a. “Clarifying some misunderstandings of the unawareness argument.” Sept 1. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LiicMNNYiLpocw3wZ/clarifying-some-misunderstandings-of-the-unawareness

DiGiovanni, Anthony. 2026b. “Cluelessness: Summary of the argument, why it matters, and counterarguments.” June 19. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NesgdEY6yPrE9wDap/cluelessness-summary-of-the-argument-why-it-matters-and-1

Friederich, Simon. 2025. “Causation, Cluelessness, and the Long Term.” Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 12 (0). https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.7428.

Greaves, Hilary. 2016. “XIV—Cluelessness.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (3): 311–39. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aow018.

Greaves, Hilary, and William MacAskill. 2025. “The Case for Strong Longtermism.” In Essays on Longtermism: Present Action for the Distant Future, edited by Hilary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191979972.003.0003.

Impartial Partially. 2026. "Bottom-Up Bracketing: A Person-Centered Response to Cluelessness." October 17. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qpQSEy7n2WjxazFnf/bottom-up-bracketing-a-person-centered-response-to

Kollin, Sylvester, Jesse Clifton, Anthony DiGiovanni, and Nicolas Macé. 2025. “Bracketing Cluelessness.” September. https://longtermrisk.org/files/Bracketing_Cluelessness.pdf.

Kruus, Nicholas. 2025. “Axiological Cluelessness.” No. 2025031503. Preprint, Preprints, March 20. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202503.1503.v1.

Lenman, James. 2000. “Consequentialism and Cluelessness.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (4): 342–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2000.00342.x.

Mogensen, Andreas L. 2021. “Maximal Cluelessness.” The Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1): 141–62. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaa021.

Roussos, Joe. 2021. “Unawareness for Longtermists.” https://joeroussos.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/210624-Roussos-GPI-Unawareness-and-longtermism.pdf.

Schwitzgebel, Eric. 2024. The Washout Argument Against Longtermism. https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/WashoutLongtermism.htm.

Tarsney, Christian. 2023. “The Epistemic Challenge to Longtermism.” Synthese 201 (6): 195. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04153-y.

Tarsney, Christian, Teruji Thomas, and William MacAskill. 2024. “Moral Decision-Making Under Uncertainty.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2024, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/moral-decision-uncertainty/.

The Global Priorities Institute. (2024). Philosophy Research Agenda: Version 1 (November 2024). University of Oxford. https://www.globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/GPI-Philosophy-Research-Agenda-Version-1-November-2024.pdf

Thorstad, David. 2025. “The Scope of Longtermism (Part 4: Unawareness).” Reflective Altruism, March 7. https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/03/07/the-scope-of-longtermism-part-4-unawareness/.

Williamson, Patrick. 2022. “On Cluelessness.” https://doi.org/10.25911/ZWK2-T508.

Yim, Lok Lam. 2019. “The Cluelessness Objection Revisited.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119 (3): 321–24. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoz016.