Moral Luck

Two agents may be differently morally assessed on the basis of a difference in their actions, even if that difference is due to factors beyond their control.

The chosen position is an ethical statement asserting the fact that we can ascribe different moral worth to actions whose agents had the same intent but due to some factor, one of them was not able to fulfil the action for a reason that was not under their direct control while the other was able to go through with the intent. This ethical position is stating that moral luck is a justifiable reason as to ethically judge the two agents in a different manner. This position goes in direct contradiction to the corollary of the Control Principle which affirms that two individuals should not be judged differently for factors out of their control which derives itself from the Control Principle which essentially states that we can only be judged for what we can control (Nelkin).

            The first critical response towards this position is to adopt the philosophical doctrine of Determinism which states that if all events are causally predetermined by the laws of nature then there can be no room for individual control over one’s actions (Hoefer) which therefore means that to talk about moral responsibility is akin to ascribing moral responsibility to the actions of a hurricane, a volcano, or any other natural phenomena of the universe. Thus, to talk about ‘moral worth’ or ‘moral luck’ becomes irrelevant as to make a moral judgement it is predicated on either a partial or complete agency over one’s actions. Referring to the events in the natural world, one might metaphorically assert that they were lucky because the hurricane did not destroy their house, but it is a metaphoric statement as there was no luck involved in the event, only a predetermined succession of events that compelled the tornado to behave in a predetermined manner.

            The second critical response is that even though the two individuals had the same intent but one failed for a reason out of their control, the chosen position is erroneous in ascribing the reason as to why we punish the successful perpetrator more harshly due to something as virtuous as moral judgement, but rather revenge. This critical response is very Nietzschean in character since it takes a similar point of view of the idea of justice as not having originated in an ethical concern but in the equalization of power (Nietzsche (1966), 49).

This critical response would also explain the reason as to why in some cases an attempted action and a successful action are punished equivalently or in other cases the latter more harshly than the former, at least in the USA courts of justice (Nelkin). In some crimes the attempt and the actual crime are judged equally not because the actual crime is morally different but because the effects inflicted by the crime can be repaid, for example robbery. In the case of robbery, the reason it could be hypothetically punished equally is because in the case of a successful robbery the material possessions could be repaid to the victim. On the other hand, a crime such as murder has no possible repayment, it is a permanent consequence of the actions inflicted by the individual, therefore even though the attempt and the murder both have the same moral worth, society decides to enact some form of revenge, not out of moral concern, but as a way to repay the victims of the crime. In the case of the attempted murder, society does not have a valid reason to enact revenge on the perpetrator since the permanent consequences have not been inflicted.

These two critical responses operate in different manners but attack presuppositions implied in the chosen position, in the first case, adopting a Deterministic view of human agency removes all possible moral judgements, one cannot make distinct moral judgement because of factors out of your control since the presupposition of Determinism is that every action is out of your control and therefore to refer to moral assessment is a redundant concept. The second critical response attacks the presupposition that the reason we judge a successful and an unsuccessful individual for a crime, even though the reason was for external causes, is not because of a moral difference in the effects of their actions but for what we would consider as for unvirtuous reasons.

            The first answer is a classical and highly developed philosophical doctrine which derives from a belief in the physicalist doctrine, the success of this response is only due to the fact that the chosen position presupposes moral agency. The free will debate has been going on since the dawn of philosophy so appealing to this argument is an easy and intellectually lazy form of refuting the chosen position. The success derives from the fact that I point out the possible error that there may not be human agency and therefore this statement is worthless to consider. On the other hand the second critical response, while repugnant to most modern individuals as we like to believe all of our actions are governed from unselfish moral virtue, it makes a lot of sense, and it explains why in some cases we punish the successful perpetrator more harshly as in the case of murder while in other cases such as robbery we do not. This critical response, from an evidently Nietzschean inspiration, does not take morality in its traditional sense but rather in power dynamics.

 

Bibliography

Hoefer, Carl. (2016). Causal Determinism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#Bib

Nelkin, Dana K. (2019). Moral Luck, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/

Nietzsche, F., & Schacht, R. (1996). Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (2nd ed., Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) (R. Hollingdale, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511812057