8 moralLuck

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Mount Holyoke College *

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101

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Philosophy

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Oct 30, 2023

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Moral Luck In this course, I will introduce moral luck as an objection to Kant. It also has grave consequences for Utilitarianism though. Moral Luck is a feature of our moral judgments. It is something we can observe ourselves doing. It is quite a subtle concept, not easy to see at first.
What Moral Luck is It is a feature of the way we actually do judge morally. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that we do in fact make moral judgments as it says. Moral Luck is the fact that we actually do hold agents morally good or bad because of factors over which they had no control.
Something Kant believes The morality, or immorality, of an action is independent of its consequences . It depends only on the motive for which it was done. A good intention can have bad consequences, but those shouldn't reflect on the moral worth of the intention. And an evil action can have good consequences. Californians discovered Yosemite valley when they were hunting Indians (to murder them). They were still engaged in an evil action.
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Corollary Two people cannot have the same intention while doing some action, and one of them (the people acting) be morally more or less worthy than the other for the action. Kant has to believe this.
Another way of putting it. People cannot be morally responsible for things over which they have no control . If an agent has no control over the consequences of an action, then the agent cannot be more praiseworthy or blameworthy because those consequences turned out one way rather than another . Also, agents are not praiseworthy or blameworthy for aspects of their character over which they have no control.
Ought implies can If you ought to do something, then that thing must be within your control. So you can't be blamed for things over which you have no control, nor do you deserve praise for them. This is a fundamental principle of Kantian ethics.
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You cannot control accidental features of your actions but you are praised or blamed for them
The story of Gauguin Paul Gauguin was a brilliant Danish Post- Impressionist artist.
Tahitian women on the beach.
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Where do we come from?
Vision after the sermon.
But... Gauguin's work was nearly all pained in Tahiti, where he moved in middle-age. Gauguin had abandoned his wife, and five children, to go to Tahiti, via France, to be a painter.
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The problem The problem is, Gauguin couldn't have foreseen, when he was in Denmark with his family, that he would turn out to be a great painter. Now if he hadn't turned out to be a great painter, we would view his life-choices in an entirely different light. Nagel thinks (and I don't think there's any doubting it) that the accidental fact of his having a talent affects our moral evaluation of him – we just don't think of him as badly as if he'd been a talentless jerk.
What if there had been nuclear weapons in Iraq? After 9/11, George W. Bush began the Iraq war. If it had turned out that there had been nuclear weapons in Iraq then we'd evaluate his decision to go to war in an utterly different way. (And by the way, there was quite good evidence for other weapons of mass destruction.) I think we'd probably think of Bush as a great, and visionary, president now.
Bush took a bet. When Bush decided to go to war, he could foresee that if he found weapons, especially nuclear ones, in Iraq, he'd be thought of as great, and that if they weren't there, he'd be thought of as a foolish warmonger. He knew (if he thought about it) that we would evaluate him morally depending on how things turned out, things over which he had no control at all.
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Examples of outcomes Someone who drove drunk and accidentally killed somebody is judged (and punished) differently from someone who merely drove drunk and made it home safely. A babysitter who chats on the phone harmlessly is merely careless. But if the child drinks bleach while she does so she's criminally negligent.
Examples of external circumstances John Yoo wrote the torture memos for the Bush administration, resulting in what many people (including me) regard as torture. Now, if he'd done the same thing in Nazi Germany, he would almost certainly have been hanged at Nuremberg as a war criminal. Similarly, if he hadn't been picked for the post, he'd have lived a blameless life as a Berkeley law- professor.
John Yoo How are we to think, morally, of John Yoo? Is he as bad as a Nazi war-criminal, because if he'd done what he did for Hitler, instead of Bush, we'd think of him that way? Or are we to think of him as as good as a harmless professor of law, since if Bush hadn't picked him, he'd have been like that? Neither circumstance was under his control.
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...and there are many like him. The people conscripted into the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in Cambodia were mostly random people. There are many other examples. It is simply a sad truth that most of the most evil people in the world came from normal backgrounds, and would have lived harmless, blameless, lives if they hadn't been put in the wrong circumstances – in a way they could not avoid.
What Kant would say. Our general judgments in these cases are explicitly forbidden by Kant. Kant thinks that, as soon as we see that we'd have given different moral judgments depending on uncontrollable outcomes, we'd immediately realize we were wrong to make the judgments. We'd be judging people as good, or bad, morally praiseworthy or blameworthy, based on things they cannot control.
What the problem isn't ! This is not the following problem: Whether or not an action was successful or not depends on its consequences. Kant agrees to that – everyone does. We all do things that we hope will come out one way or the other, and do them with a good will. You take your child to a concert (perhaps). If the child is killed on the way in a car-accident, you'll wish you hadn't decided to go. But you're not morally blameworthy for deciding to go. You aren't an evil person.
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Non-moral risk and non-moral luck If you drive a child to a concert, you are taking a risk. There could be an accident, and perhaps it is inevitable that you will blame yourself. But nobody else will blame you. You couldn't have foreseen what would happen. Kant agrees with us here. You have no control over the outcome, so you're not blameworthy.
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Moral Luck But if any slight negligence on your part caused the accident, then you are morally evil. (For example, if you were texting while driving.) If the negligence doesn't cause the accident, you're just careless. And you might play no role in which outcome your negligence played. This is part of our ordinary moral practice. It is very difficult to see how to avoid using it. Kant cannot accept that practice as correct.
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Appeasement Nevil Chamberlain desperately wanted to avoid a world-war in 1938. He negotiated with Hitler (in Munich) to stop him invading Poland. As part of the negotiation, Chamberlain gave away a part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia too, and then invaded Poland anyway. We think of Chamberlain as a spineless and contemptible man. But if his ploy had succeeded, he might have been thought of as a peacemaker.
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You cannot control you character but you are praised or blamed for it
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Can you control your character? One can also be morally lucky because of the kind of person one is . Imagine, for a moment, that you wanted to create a good character, a praiseworthy person, for a play or a novel. What sort of words would describe your character? Well, words like kind, generous, courageous, warm-hearted, reliable, faithful, forgiving.
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Can you control your self? Now obviously you have some control over some aspects of your own character. But there's a lot of it that is just out of your hands. Events in your life have an effect. Perhaps the kind of education you were given, or the practices in the country you grew up in, or maybe even genetics, has resulted in you being the kind of person you are now. And you might not have much control over what it is you want to control about yourself!
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Morally evil people. When we think about morally evil people, we find that we often judge them for the kind of character they have. They're cruel, perhaps, or vindictive, or selfish, or lack self-control. How much control, do you think, do they have over these qualities? Probably very little. It's a feature of their background and circumstances, and maybe genetics. And when you subtract out the uncontrolled parts of their character, there isn't really anything left to do the controlling.
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Kant's answer Kant's answer is that this is all mistaken. Anyone can be morally good, and it has nothing to do with the kind of character one has.
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Sally and Gretchen Sally and Gretchen both live in poor areas. Sally is spontaneously generous, loves children, and is made happy by seeing other people who are happy. Gretchen is selfish, dislikes children, and resents seeing others being happy.
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Two playgrounds The children in the neighborhoods have no playground. Sally is upset to notice this and builds a playground out of a desire to see the children happy. They become happy, and this makes Sally happy. Gretchen hates the idea of happy children, but she recognizes that she has a duty to the community. Bitterly, she builds a playground, resenting the expenditure. The happy children drive her crazy.
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Sally
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Gretchen
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The question Is Sally morally better than Gretchen? Is Gretchen morally better than Sally? Who does Kant think is better morally?
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Kant's view Kant's view is that everyone must have equal opportunity to be a praiseworthy or blameworthy person. (Otherwise, the praise or blame couldn't be deserved – morality must be equally accessible to all.) This means that character and results must be irrelevant to moral evaluation if they are not under the control of the agent being evaluated.
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How Kant would reply to the examples. I think he has to say that, to the degree we feel that Chamberlain was spineless because of the kind of person Hitler turned out to be, we ought not to feel that way. When you reflect on it, Chamberlain was doing the best he could! Kant thinks that Good and bad characters both could act morally, and we ought not to hold people responsible for their character if they can't do anything about it.
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The reply by Nagel It's all very well to say that it was just a matter of bad luck that one drunk driver accidentally killed someone and another made it home safely, but the fact is that we just do think of the two people differently. Kant argues by pointing out features of our common-sense moral views, and providing a theory of these features. But moral luck is a feature of our common- sense moral views, and Kant cannot cope with it.
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The influence of moral luck on philosophy Moral luck is an influential concept in philosophy. The usual reaction – the reaction of most philosophers – is to accept that it does and ought to guide moral evaluation. It's supposed to be just fine, and not a problem, that we blame and praise people for things that they cannot help.
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