Moral Luck Paradoxes Thomas Nagel 1937 present Professor

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 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 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. ”