Moral Luck
Paradoxes
Thomas Nagel (1937-present)
• Professor of Philosophy and Law
Emeritus at NYU
• Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences
• Wrote “What Is It Like to Be a
Bat?”
Kant’s Good Will
“The good will is not good because of
what it effects or accomplishes or because
of its adequacy to achieve some proposed
end; it is good only because of its willing,
i.e., it is good of itself.
And, regarded for itself, it is to be
esteemed incomparably higher than
anything which could be brought about by
it in favor of any inclination or even of the
sum total of all inclinations…”
Kant’s Good Will
“The good will is not good because of
what it effects or accomplishes or because
of its adequacy to achieve some proposed
end; it is good only because of its willing,
i.e., it is good of itself.
And, regarded for itself, it is to be
esteemed incomparably higher than
anything which could be brought about by
it in favor of any inclination or even of the
sum total of all inclinations…”
Kant’s Good Will
“Even if it should happen that, by a
particularly unfortunate fate or by the
niggardly provision of a step motherly
nature, this will should be wholly lacking
in power to accomplish its purpose, and if
even the greatest effort should not avail it
to achieve anything of its end, and if there
remained only the good will (not as a
mere wish but as the summoning of all
the means in our power)…”
Kant’s Good Will
“…it would sparkle like a jewel in its own
right, as something that had its full worth
in itself.
Usefulness or fruitlessness can neither
diminish nor augment this worth.”
The Control Principle
A person is not morally assessable (good or bad) for actions that are
beyond his or her control– involuntary bodily movements, for example,
or certain types of ignorance of the circumstances.
Example 1: Involuntary Bodily Movements
If someone strikes you
involuntarily, they haven’t done
anything wrong.
Example 2: Ignorant Poisoning
If you give your father a bowl of
soup that you believe to be
healthy and good– but unknown
to you someone else has
poisoned– you are not responsible
for your father’s death.
Kantian Motivation: Ought Implies Can
Everybody is required to do what
is good. But you cannot be
required to do things that are
impossible.
Therefore, it must be possible to
be good.
Therefore, being good must not
be something beyond our control.
The Problematic Cases
Problematic Cases
Problems for the control principle have this form: we have two people
A and B, whose actions are the same except for aspects beyond their
control, and we judge A and B differently (morally speaking).
Four Kinds of Luck
1. Constitutive Luck: The kind of person you are, your temperament,
inclination, capacities, etc.
2. Circumstantial Luck: The problems and situations you face
3. Resultant Luck: The contingencies which make your actions and
projects successful or unsuccessful
4. Causal Luck: The historical circumstances that affect you
1. Constitutive Luck: The Envious Man
Envy is displeasure at the greater
success of others.
Plausibly, whether someone is
envious by disposition is not
something that is under their
control.
We nonetheless blame people for
envy.
Circumstantial Luck: Germans under the Nazis
Many Germans who aided the
Nazis would have led good, moral
lives if the Nazis never took
power.
Many people who were never
tested in this same way, would
have done just as horrible things,
if they had been tested.
Resultant Luck: The Drunk Driver
Consider two drunk drivers.
One gets behind the wheel and
drives home drunk. At one point,
he swerves onto the sidewalk, but
luckily no one is there.
We morally blame the driver for
driving drunk.
Resultant Luck: The Drunk Driver
The other driver is equally drunk,
drives down the same road.
But the second driver, when he
swerves onto the sidewalk, runs
over a child.
We blame this driver much more
seriously.
Resultant Luck: Attempted Murder
Attacker A intends to kill B. He
fires his gun, hitting and killing B.
He is tried for murder and sent to
prison for a long time.
Resultant Luck: Attempted Murder
Attacker X intends to kill Y. He fires
his gun at Y but a bird happens to
fly by and the bird takes the
bullet. Y survives, and X is tried for
attempted murder. He is sent to
prison for less time.
Causal Luck: Threats to Free Will
All of how we are and the situation we find ourselves in is the result of
how the world was long before we existed (and thus out of our
control).
This is true if the laws are deterministic– then there was only one way
for us to be consistent with how the world was at the beginning. But it
is also true if the laws are indeterministic. Just because how I am had
only, say, a 70% probability (or a 3% one), doesn’t mean I had any more
control over it.
Causal Luck: Threats to Free Will
All of how we are and the situation we find ourselves in is the result of
how the world was long before we existed (and thus out of our
control).
This is true if the laws are deterministic– then there was only one way
for us to be consistent with how the world was at the beginning. But it
is also true if the laws are indeterministic. Just because how I am had
only, say, a 70% probability (or a 3% one), doesn’t mean I had any more
control over it.
Nagel on Moral Luck
“[W]e are not responsible for our
own existence, or our nature, or
the choices we have to make, or
the circumstances that give our
acts the consequences they have.”
Nagel on Moral Luck
“The area of genuine agency, and therefore of legitimate moral
judgment, seems to shrink under this scrutiny to an extensionless
point.”
When we assess someone’s actions morally, we must subtract those
aspects that are not under their control. But “the ultimate
consequence of such subtraction is that nothing remains.”
Nagel on Moral Luck
“The area of genuine agency, and therefore of legitimate moral
judgment, seems to shrink under this scrutiny to an extensionless
point.”
When we assess someone’s actions morally, we must subtract those
aspects that are not under their control. But “the ultimate
consequence of such subtraction is that nothing remains.”
Rational Luck
Bernard Williams (1929-2003)
• British moral philosopher
• Member of the British Academy
• Knighted in 1999
The Principle of Present Justification
“[It] is thought to be essential to rationality and to the notion of
justification itself… that one should be in a position to apply the
justifying considerations at the time of the choice and in advance of
knowing whether one was right.”
The Gaugin Case
• French post-Impressionist
• Decided to leave his wife and five
children to pursue a life of painting.
• This decision (we’ll assume) was
morally disastrous for his family: they
suffered a great deal of otherwise
avoidable suffering.
• While Gauguin was actually successful
as an artist, this was a gamble: he did
not know at the time he would be.
The Gaugin Case
Williams believes this case violates the
principle of present justification.
Gauguin is justified in his actions only
after the fact, because he is successful.
If he had failed as an artist, he would
have nothing to say for himself.
Why Utilitarianism Doesn’t Help
“If Gauguin sustains some injury on the way to Tahiti which prevents
his ever painting again, that certainly means that his decision
(supposing it now to be irreversible) was for nothing... But that train of
events does not provoke the thought in question, that after all he was
wrong and unjustified.”
“Gauguin's justification is in some ways a matter of luck, it is not
equally a matter of all kinds of luck.”
Why Utilitarianism Doesn’t Help
“If Gauguin sustains some injury on the way to Tahiti which prevents
his ever painting again, that certainly means that his decision
(supposing it now to be irreversible) was for nothing... But that train of
events does not provoke the thought in question, that after all he was
wrong and unjustified.”
“Gauguin's justification is in some ways a matter of luck, it is not
equally a matter of all kinds of luck.”
Anna Karenina
• Russian novel (“the greatest novel ever
written”)
• Anna, the main character, leaves her
husband Karenin for Vronsky. This harms in
particular her son.
• Anna’s relationship with Vronsky fails, and
Williams suggests this is a constitutive (he
says “intrinsic”) failure: it is how Anna and
Vronsky are by nature that causes them to
fail.
Anna Karenina
Again, Williams thinks Karenina’s case
violates the principle of present justification.
Anna’s actions were unjustifiable only
because of the outcome. If she had
succeeded in her new life, she would be
able to justify herself.
Solution 1: Deny Moral Luck
Denying Moral Luck
There are two general strategies for denying the cases of apparent
moral luck.
First, you can argue that in certain cases we shouldn’t treat the
individuals any differently.
Second, you can argue that in certain cases we should treat them
differently, but for non-moral reasons.
Example: Resultant Luck
Maybe the penalty for drunk
driving should be equal to the
penalty for drunk driving +
manslaughter.
Both the driver who kills and the
one who doesn’t have done
equally bad things.
Worry
But it’s possible for a drunk driver
to do more than kill one person.
For example, he could hit a bus
full of schoolchildren.
Should the penalty for drunk
driving alone = the penalty for
killing dozens of kids?
Example Circumstantial Luck
Maybe the people who
cooperated with the Nazis and the
people who would have if put to
the test are equally bad.
BUT: we should treat them
differently, because we have
different evidence: we know that
the cooperators would cooperate,
we don’t know about the others.
Solution 2: Deny the Control
Principle
For Nagel, abandoning the control
principle doesn’t seem like the
right move. The principle doesn’t
give us the wrong answers: when
we consider the cases, we are
persuaded that they are not
morally assessable.
The Analogy with Skepticism
Nagel thinks that considering cases of moral luck is a lot like
considering cases that lead us to skepticism.
We’re convinced that we don’t know we’re not brains-in-vats, even
while we recognize that this greatly undermines our ordinary practices
of knowledge attribution.
“The view that moral luck is
paradoxical is not a mistake,
ethical or logical, but a perception
of one of the ways in which the
intuitively acceptable conditions
of moral judgment threaten to
undermine it all.”