In Defense of Moral Luck

Why Luck Often Affects Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness

Robert Hartman

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351866873
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Philosophy
• Categoria: Philosophy History & Theory

The problem of moral luck is that there is a contradiction in our common sense ideas about moral responsibility. In one strand of our thinking, we believe that a person can become more blameworthy by luck. For example, two reckless drivers manage their vehicles in the same way, and one but not the other kills a pedestrian. We blame the killer driver more than the merely reckless driver, because we believe that the killer driver is more blameworthy. Nevertheless, this idea contradicts another feature of our thinking captured in this moral principle: A person's blameworthiness cannot be affected by that which is not within her control. Thus, our ordinary thinking about moral responsibility implies that the drivers are and are not equally blameworthy.

In Defense of Moral Luck aims to make progress in resolving this contradiction. Hartman defends the claim that certain kinds of luck in results, circumstance, and character can partially determine the degree of a person's blameworthiness. He also explains why there is a puzzle in our thinking about moral responsibility in the first place if luck often affects a person's praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. Furthermore, the book's methodology provides a unique way to advance the moral luck debate with arguments from diverse areas in philosophy that do not bottom out in standard pro-moral luck intuitions.

1
Introducing the Problem of Moral Luck

1. The Problem of Moral Luck

There is a contradiction in our commonsense ideas about moral responsibility. In one strand of our thinking, we believe that a person can become more blameworthy by luck. Consider some examples to make that idea concrete. Two reckless drivers manage their vehicles in the same way, and one but not the other kills a pedestrian (Nagel 1979). Two corrupt judges would each freely take a bribe if one were offered. By the luck of the courthouse draw, only one judge is offered a bribe, and so only one takes a bribe (Thomson 1989). Luck is the salient difference between the agents in each case pair. After all, the spatial location of the pedestrian is outside of each driver’s control, and being offered a bribe is outside of each judge’s control. But we blame the killer driver more than the merely reckless driver, and we blame the bribe taker more than the mere would-be bribe taker. This is because we believe that the killer driver and the bribe taker are more blameworthy—that is, they deserve more blame—than their counterparts.

Nevertheless, the idea that luck positively affects moral responsibility contradicts another feature of our thinking captured in this moral principle: The degree of a person’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness cannot be affected by that which is not within her control.¹ This moral principle yields the verdict that the drivers are equally blameworthy, because the only difference between them is something outside of their control. The moral principle also implies that the judges are equally blameworthy for the same reason. So, to put the contradiction in these concrete terms, our ordinary thinking about moral responsibility implies that the drivers are and are not equally blameworthy. It also implies that the judges are and are not equally blameworthy.

My project is to resolve this contradiction. In particular, I argue that only the first strand of our ordinary thinking is correct. Various kinds of luck can partially determine the degree of a person’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. In concrete terms, I argue that the killer driver and the bribe taker are more blameworthy than their counterparts.

I proceed in this chapter as follows: First, I outline the problem in more detail by introducing the canonical categories of luck and a skeptical argument from luck. Second, I review some contemporary progress on formulating the skeptical argument from luck. Third, I explicate five ways to resolve the contradiction. Fourth, I explain at least part of what is at stake in the debate. Fifth, I describe the dialectic of my overall argument. Sixth, I summarize the chapters to follow.

2. Categories of Luck and Nagel’s Skeptical Argument

Joel Feinberg (1962) was the first to introduce the idea that luck raises a difficulty for our commonsense conception of moral responsibility. The problem, however, was not widely appreciated until the publication of two papers in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society by Thomas Nagel (1976) and Bernard Williams (1976). Subsequently, Nagel (1979) and Williams (1981) revised their influential essays, and a flurry of responses were written in the following decades. Philosophers continue to publish solutions about how best to resolve this contradiction. Many of these papers respond to Nagel’s formulation of the problem.²

Nagel (1979, p. 25) defines luck as an absence of control, and he (1979, p. 26) defines moral luck as follows: “[A] significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, [and] yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment.”³ As Dana Nelkin (2013) observes, however, Nagel’s concept of moral luck is faulty, because the philosophically interesting concept is not about the blame people actually receive. Rather, it is about the blame people deserve regardless of whether anyone blames them. For this reason, we should define moral luck as occurring when factors beyond an agent’s control partially determine her positive praiseworthiness or blameworthiness. The term ‘positive’ in this definition is meant to rule out the idea that moral luck is responsibility-undermining luck. In Chapter 2, I unpack each part of this standard definition of moral luck.

Even though the idea of moral luck seems to be “incoherent” (Williams 1981, p. 21), “oxymoronic” (Williams 1993, p. 251), and “paradoxical” (Nagel 1979, p. 27), Nagel (1979, p. 28) points to apparent examples of it in our ordinary thinking and practices. He categorizes those examples according to the particular source of luck—namely, luck in results, circumstance, constitution, and causal determination. In what follows, I explicate the nature of each source of luck and present the characteristic examples.

Resultant luck⁴ occurs when factors outside of an agent’s control partially determine how her action turns out.⁵ For example, suppose that Sally is at a party where she gets drunk and drives home (Nagel 1979, p. 29). On her way home, she swerves and merely hits a curb. Now, suppose that, when Sally is driving drunk, she not only swerves and hits a curb, but she also kills a pedestrian who happens to be standing on the curb. The only difference between these outcomes is a matter of luck, because the spatial location of the pedestrian is outside of her control in both cases. Since, however, it appears that Sally deserves more blame in the scenario in which she kills someone, it appears that her action is resultantly morally lucky. That is, it appears that the way her action foreseeably⁶ turns out partially determines her degree of blameworthiness.⁷

Circumstantial luck takes place when a person faces a morally significant challenge that is beyond his control. For example, suppose Dietrich is born into a German family near the beginning of the twentieth century (Nagel 1979, p. 34). Eventually, Dietrich has to make a decision about whether to join with the Nazi regime. In those circumstances, Dietrich freely chooses to become a Nazi and performs blameworthy actions appropriate to his role. But if he had been presented with a job opportunity in Argentina just prior to Nazi ascent, he would have emigrated and lived a quiet life as an Argentinian citizen. The circumstances in which Dietrich happens to find himself, then, significantly influence what actions he performs. But since it appears that Dietrich is worthy of more blame in the actual circumstances in which he becomes a Nazi than he would have been if he had received the job offer in Argentina, his voluntary acts appear to be circumstantially morally lucky.⁸

A situation involves constitutive luck when factors beyond a person’s control partially determine the capacities, temperament, or dispositions that she possesses. David Enoch and Andrei Marmor (2007, p. 426) helpfully distinguish between direct constitutive luck, which occurs when an agent has non-voluntarily acquired dispositions, and indirect constitutive luck, which occurs when a person’s non-voluntarily acquired dispositions or capacities influence which actions she performs and forgoes. So, direct constitutive moral luck occurs when constitutive luck affects a person’s positive praiseworthiness or blameworthiness for a trait, and indirect constitutive moral luck occurs when constitutive luck affects a person’s positive praiseworthiness or blameworthiness for an action.

Nagel (1979, pp. 32–33) focuses on direct constitutive luck. Suppose Lucy is non-voluntarily cold-hearted and feels indifferent to a stranger’s suffering. Nagel (1979, pp. 32–33) asserts that she appears to be blameworthy for her bad trait, and, since her indifference is inherited from her habituating community to a significant extent, her blameworthiness appears to be partially determined by factors outside of her control. Lucy, then, appears to be directly constitutively morally lucky. But other philosophers such as Michael Zimmerman (1987; 2002) focus on indirect constitutive luck. Suppose that Lucy’s non-voluntarily acquired indifference inclines her to ignore the beggar as she walks by and that she voluntarily does so. If some feature of her habituation had gone differently and she had been less indifferent, she would have freely chosen to help the beggar in that circumstance. So, whether or not she helps the beggar is partially determined by her habituation. Since Lucy appears to be worthy of no praise in the actual circumstance in which she does not help, her voluntary act appears to be indirectly constitutively morally lucky.⁹

Causal luck occurs when the laws of nature and antecedent states of affairs that are outside of an agent’s control causally determine what he does (Nagel 1979, p. 35). Suppose that Phil is causally determined to kill Bill and that the causal chain leading up to the murder stretches back to the Big Bang. Phil has no control over the laws of nature or states of affairs prior to his birth that causally determine his killing Bill. Since, however, it appears that Phil deserves blame for murdering Bill, his act appears to be causally morally lucky. This claim about causal moral luck appears to me to be even more controversial than the previous claims about moral luck.¹⁰ As I explain later in this section, the problem of moral luck is typically confined to puzzles associated with only resultant, circumstantial, and constitutive luck and is so restricted for good reason.

Nevertheless, these judgments about particular cases appear to conflict with the nature of moral evaluation. After all, moral judgment is not about what happens to the agent but is of the agent (Nagel 1979, p. 36). So, attributions of a person’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness should be confined to features that reflect only her agency (cf. Williams 1985, p. 194). This restriction is commonly referred to as the ‘Control Condition,’ and the proposition that formulates it is commonly referred to as the ‘Control Principle.’ Nagel (1979) puts the Control Principle in two ways: “[P]eople cannot be morally assessed for what is not their fault, or for what is due to factors outside of their control” (p. 25), and “one cannot be more culpable or estimable for anything than one is for that fraction of it which is under one’s control” (p. 28). The Control Principle is a bedrock assumption in our ordinary moral thinking. As Nagel (1979, p. 26) writes, “The control condition does not suggest itself merely as a generalization from certain clear cases. It seems correct in the further cases to which it is extended beyond the original set.” And as Williams (1993, p. 252) recognizes, “resistance to luck is not an ambition gratuitously tacked onto morality: it is built into it.”¹¹

One way to think about the contradiction in our ordinary thinking about moral responsibility is to frame the problem as a skeptical argument against our self-conception as morally responsible agents. In Hartman (2014, p. 71), I sketch a version of the argument as follows:

Control Principle: If an action (or its consequences) is significantly affected by factors outside of its agent’s control, then those factors significantly diminish the agent’s praiseworthiness or blameworthiness for that action (or its consequences).

Luck Premise: All actions and their consequences are significantly affected by factors outside of their agent’s control.

Conclusion: Every agent’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness is significantly diminished for all actions and consequences.

How much does luck diminish an agent’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness from the ordinary degree of ascription? It depends on how much luck there is in our lives. For beings like us, luck surrounds and permeates each action. It is outside of one’s control what prior states of affairs causally determine the act and what subsequent states of affairs are causally linked thereafter. In addition to luck surrounding the act, luck affects the agent at the moment of choice, because she faces moral challenges outside of her control and has non-voluntarily acquired dispositions that incline her in one or another direction. It is no wonder that Nagel (1979, p. 35) concludes from this line of reasoning that “the area of genuine agency, and therefore of legitimate moral judgment, seems to shrink under this scrutiny to an extensionless point.” That is, no one is morally responsible for anything. Importantly, however, Nagel (1979, p. 34) does not embrace the skeptical conclusion, because doing so would be to privilege the Control Principle over case judgments that imply extant moral luck. He leaves the problem as a paradox.

In the moral luck literature, the scope of Nagel-type skeptical arguments is limited to resultant, circumstantial, and cons...