Moral Luck

Moral distress is the sense that one must do, or cooperate in, what is wrong. It is paradigmatically faced by nurses, but it is almost a universal occupational hazard.

[Susan Hurley] I argue that the aim to neutralize the influence of luck on distribution cannot provide a basis for egalitarianism: it can neither specify nor justify an egalitarian distribution. Luck and responsibility can play a role in determining what justice requires to be redistributed, but from this we cannot derive how to distribute: we cannot derive a pattern of distribution from the 'currency' of distributive justice. I argue that the contrary view faces a dilemma, according to whether it understands (...) luck in interpersonal or counterfactual terms. /// [Richard J. Arneson] Does it make sense to hold that, if it is bad that some people are worse off than others, it is worse if those who are worse off come to be so through sheer bad luck that it is beyond their power to control? In her contribution to this symposium, Susan Hurley cautions against a closely related fallacy: from the fact that people have come to an unequal condition through unchosen bad luck, it does not follow that, if we aim to undo the influence of unchosen luck, we ought to institute equality of condition. Forswearing the fallacy that Hurley analyses is compatible with answering the question affirmatively, and more generally with holding that principles of distributive justice should be sensitive to the distinction between chosen and unchosen bad luck. This essay explores how this might be done. (shrink)

The similarities between the philosophical debates surrounding assessment sensitivity and moral luck run so deep that one can easily adapt almost any argument from one debate, change some terms, adapt the examples, and end up with an argument relevant to the other. This article takes Brian Rosebury's strategy for resisting moral luck in “Moral Responsibility and ‘Moral Luck' ” (1995) and turns it into a strategy for resisting assessment sensitivity. The article shows that one of Bernard Williams's examples motivating moral (...) luck is very similar to one of the examples John MacFarlane uses to motivate the assessment sensitivity of epistemic modals, and in particular the assessment sensitivity of the auxiliary verb “might.” This means that, if Rosebury is right and we do not actually need moral luck to explain Williams's example, we may not need assessment sensitivity to account for the semantic behaviour of the epistemic modal verb “might” either. (shrink)

This book considers two different approaches to moral luck--the Aristotelian vulnerability to factors outside the agent's control and the Kantian ambition to make morality immune to luck--and concludes that both approaches have more in common than previously thought. At the same time, it also considers recent developments in the field of virtue ethics and neo-kantianism.

Moral luck poses a problem for out conception of responsibility because it highlights a tension between morality and lack of control. Michael Slote’s common-sense virtue ethics claims to avoid this problem. However there are a number of objections to this claim. Firstly, it is not clear that Slote fully appreciates the problem posed by moral luck. Secondly, Slote’s move from the moral to the ethical is problematic. Thirdly it is not clear why we should want to abandon judgements of moral (...) blame in favour of judgements of ethical deplorability. Finally this paper defends an alternative solution to the problem of moral luck, which focuses on judgements of probability, but which has been rejected by Slote. (shrink)

Beginning with the seminal work by Williams and Nagel, moral philosophers have used auto accident hypotheticals to illustrate the phenomenon of moral luck. Moral luck occurs in the hypotheticals because (and to the extent that) two equally careless drivers are assessed differently because only one of them caused an accident. This article considers whether these philosophical discussions might contribute to the public policy debate over compensation for auto accidents. Using liability and insurance practices in the United States as an illustrative (...) example, the article explains that auto liability insurance substantially mitigates moral luck and argues that, as a result, the moral luck literature is unlikely to make a significant contribution to this public policy debate. That debate would benefit more from philosophical analysis of victims' luck, which is not as substantially mitigated by liability insurance. (shrink)

Recent work on the nature of luck widely endorses the thesis that an event is good or bad luck for an individual only if it is significant for that individual. In this paper, I explore this thesis, showing that it raises questions about interests, well-being, and the philosophical uses of luck. In Sect. 1, I examine several accounts of significance, due to Pritchard (2005), Coffman (2007), and Rescher (1995). Then in Sect. 2 I consider what some theorists want to ‘do’ (...) with luck, taking important examples from epistemology (explaining Gettier-style examples) and political philosophy (offering a rationale for the just distribution of resources in society), while suggesting implications for significance. Drawing together lessons from Sects. 1 and 2, I develop a new account of significance in Sect. 3 before concluding with reflections on the debate in Sect. 4. (shrink)

Much recent work on moral responsibility and on distributive justice has addressed the concept of luck. Very little attention has been given to the relation of luck to rationality. How does luck bear on our choices? Can beliefs about luck lead to unwise decisions? These questions have particular relevance for understanding gambling behaviour, and for public policy on gambling. In this paper I argue that no one is reliably lucky, and that projecting luck can undermine rational decision-making. I give various (...) examples to show the conceptual connection between luck and unpredictability. I present an a posteriori conception of projectibility, and argue that because lucky events are rationally unexpected, regularity statements about luck fail to satisfy the conditions of projectibility. I reject the claim that ‘lucky’ is a dispositional term, and thus projectible, on the ground that a dispositional interpretation leads to contradiction. I then defend my claim that luck is not projectible against three objections. I conclude with some thoughts about rational responses to luck, using gambling as an illustration. (shrink)

Human relationships have always held a unique position in moral philosophy, particularly in eudaemonist ethics, where they are considered by most to be essential to “the good life”. However, this fact has made conceptualising the good life in purely individualistic terms difficult, due to the important role that the ‘other’ plays in any kind of relationship. In this paper I argue that the fragile relationship between self and other that exists in all human relationships – but especially in more meaningful (...) ones – can be best understood by considering it to be a kind of luck. In developing this account I look closely at the nature of human relationships, using Aristotle’s account of friendship as a model. From this I argue that friendship consists of two virtues working in reciprocity in two persons. Finally, I explain how this reciprocity can be understood as luck, and how recognising that a particular type of luck, dependence luck, is inherent to relationships can in fact help to foster the virtues that allow a person to participate in those relationships. (shrink)

This paper poses an original puzzle about the relationship between causation and moral responsibility called The Moral Difference Puzzle. Using the puzzle, the paper argues for three related ideas: (1) the existence of a new sort of moral luck; (2) an intractable conflict between the causal concepts used in moral assessment; and (3) inability of leading theories of causation to capture the sorts of causal differences that matter for moral evaluation of agents’ causal contributions to outcomes.

To a greater extent than other theorists, Claudia Card in her analysis of moral luck considers the impact of attempts to transform moral meanings on the development of the agent's character and her responsibilities, over time and in relation to other agents. This essay argues that this wider frame of reference captures more of what is at stake in the efforts of those who resist oppression by attempting to implement radically revised meanings.

I give a voice to the sort of qualms we might have about photojournalism. But this is not to say that in each instance the scales will tip to the side of these qualms. To speak with Larry Burrows, sometimes penetrating the hearts of those at home vindicates our capitalizing on other men’s grief. Photojournalism’s role as a catalyst for social change does indeed give it a certain license. But in learning about what kind of values there are on the (...) other side of the scale, we come to understand that there are certain restraints to this license. Understanding those restraints makes for a more respectful and a more powerful photojournalism. (shrink)

This contribution reconstructs and assesses Gideon Yaffe’s claims in his book Attempts about what constitutes an attempt, what can count as evidence that an attempt has been made, whether abandonment is a genuine defense, and whether attempts should be punished less severely than completed crimes. I contrast Yaffe’s account of being motivated by an intention and the completion of an attempt in terms of the truth of the completion counterfactual with an alternative picture of attempts as temporally extended decision trees (...) that are complete insofar as the agent has progressed toward the final act in the tree. I suggest that this alternative scalar conception of attempt may provide a more plausible account of the defense of abandonment. I also raise questions about whether Yaffe has provided an adequate justification of his mix of luck skepticism about censure and luck realism about punishment. (shrink)

We have a strong intuition that a person’s moral standing should not be affected by luck, but the fact is that we do blame a morally unfortunate person more than her fortunate counterpart. This is the problem of moral luck. I argue that the problem arises because account is not taken of the fact that the extension of the term ‘blame’ is contextually determined. Loosely speaking, the more likely an act is to have an undesirable consequence, the more its agent (...) is to blame. But how likely a consequence is depends on which possibilities of harm we take to be relevant. (shrink)

A meaningful life, we shall argue, is a life upon which a certain sort of valuable pattern has been imposed by the person in question?a pattern which involves in serious ways the person having an effect upon the world. Meaningfulness is thus a special kind of value which a human life can bear. Two interrelated difficulties face ths proposal. One concerns responsiblity: how are we to account for the fact that a life that satisfies the above criteria can have more (...) meaning than a life with the same positive outcomes but which lacks responsiblity on the part of the agent? The other turns on these outcomes themselves: how can the meaningfulness engendered by actions you perform now be affected by what those actions go on to produce in the future, perhaps even after your death? We provide a response to both of these difficulties. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that luck is a risk-involving phenomenon. I start by explaining why this hypothesis is prima facie plausible in view of the parallelisms between luck and risk. I then distinguish three ways to spell it out: in probabilistic terms, in modal terms, and in terms of lack of control. Before evaluating the resulting accounts, I explain how the idea that luck involves risk is compatible with the fact that risk concerns unwanted (...) events whereas luck can concern both wanted and unwanted events. I turn to evaluating the modal and probabilistic views and argue, firstly, that they fail to account for the connection between risk and bad luck; secondly, that they also fail to account for the connection between risk and good luck. Finally, I defend the lack of control view. In particular, I argue that it can handle the objections to the probabilistic and modal accounts and that it can explain how degrees of luck and risk covary. (shrink)

Winning a lottery, being hit by a stray bullet, or surviving a plane crash, all are instances of a mundane phenomenon: luck. Mundane as it is, the concept of luck nonetheless plays a pivotal role in central areas of philosophy, either because it is the key element of widespread philosophical theses or because it … Continue reading Luck →.

The problem of moral luck is rooted in the following pair of conflicting intuitions. On the one hand is the idea that the basis of moral assessments should be limited to factors under agents’ control. This intuition can be formulated as the Control Principle: (CP) We are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are assessed for depends on factors under our control. On the other hand is the fact that there seem to be a plethora of cases (...) in which moral assessments depend (seemingly correctly) on factors beyond agents’ control. This intuition can be formulated as the principle of moral luck: (ML) moral luck occurs when an agent can be correctly treated as an object of moral judgment, despite the fact that a significant aspect of what he is assessed for depends on factors beyond his control. It is important to clarify the kind of control at issue in the Control Principle. The following example will help. Wesley decides, while riding his well functioning bicycle, to turn right. Wesley decides to turn his bicycle to the right and he does so. Additionally, Wesley was also able, at that time, to decide to turn left instead of right and he would have succeeded had he tried to turn left. Wesley has standard control insofar as he turns to the right but he also has the power at that time to turn to the left instead. Wesley would have curtailed control if he turned right but lacked the power at that time to turn left instead. I take it that the kind of control at issue in the Control Principle is at least curtailed control. Whether standard control is the kind required, which would commit us to requiring that there were alternative possibilities open to the agent at the time of the action or event, is not something I will try to answer: trying to do so would take us too far afield. Further distinctions can be made with respect to curtailed control. In addition to requiring that an agent have, at least, curtailed control, we might also require that the agent actually exercise this control over the event in question; or we may require that he simply have the capacity to exercise this control. Further, if we require that agents actually exercise control in order to be responsible, we may require that the control exercised be active control. We can distinguish between direct and indirect control where the former requires an exercise of active control and the latter requires a capacity to exercise control or perhaps a connection to a previous exercise of active control. An agent has direct control, for example, with respect to his decisions and indirect control with respect to the consequences of his decisions. Whether an account of responsibility accepts or denies the Control Principle will turn on whether the Control Principle is read as requiring that agents exercise active control over the event in question or is read as requiring that agents simply have a capacity to exercise control, though not necessarily active control. If we read the Control Principle as requiring that agents exercise active control, then the Control Principle is likely to be accepted (and moral luck denied ) by those accounts of responsibility that require that agents exercise active control. Accounts that require that agents have a capacity to exercise control, but do not require that they exercise this capacity, will likely deny the Control Principle and accept moral luck. I am supposing here that proponents of these accounts will likely give the Control Principle the “exercise of control” reading. An alternative for the latter accounts is to accept the Control Principle but claim that it does not actually require that agents exercise control. In this case, proponents would give the Control Principle the “mere capacity to exercise control” reading. The account of responsibility for which I argue requires that agents exercise active control in order to be morally responsible. The account I initially argue for, which is similar to Michael Zimmerman’s account, takes an “exercise of control” reading of the Control Principle and aims to deny moral luck altogether. As it turns out, luck may not be eliminable from moral responsibility. I ultimately conclude that a variation of my initial account, which is able to accept an “exercise of control” reading of the Control Principle while accepting some luck (i.e., the kind of luck that is not responsibility undermining), is the correct account of moral responsibility. I carve up the responsibility terrain in the following way. I distinguish assessability, one type of moral responsibility, from accountability, a second type of moral responsibility. Assessability makes appropriate certain judgments about agents in virtue of their character traits, actions, omissions, attitudes, intentions, or decisions. I split moral assessability into two competing accounts of what assessability is - attributability and appraisability. We can be morally assessed, in the attributability sense, on the basis of things over which we do not exercise control, though we must still have the capacity to exercise control or the capacity to make judgments and then hold or maintain attitudes based on these judgments. Appraisability, however, requires that we exercise control. We are directly appraisable only for things over which we exercise direct active control, which is limited to our decisions, and indirectly appraisable for the consequences of our decisions. Limiting appraisability in this way is a strategy for avoiding the moral luck that influences attributability. The second type of moral responsibility I discuss is accountability, which concerns whether certain treatment of agents is appropriate. Accountability is closely related to assessability: What makes certain treatment appropriate is the same fact that makes certain judgments appropriate. Accountability has a control condition, without which certain treatment is not appropriate. I argue that accountability, like appraisability, requires that agents exercise control. If this is the case, then for this reason, appraisability, but not attributability, is the kind of assessability that can ground accountability. What makes appropriate the judgment that an agent is appraisable also justifies certain treatment of her, though the fact that this judgment is appropriate may not be sufficient to warrant treatment because we may have other (nonmoral or non-desert-based) reasons to forego treatment. Ultimately, I argue for appraisability over attributability. Originally, I thought that immunity from luck was one of the advantages appraisability has over attributability. As it turns out, appraisability must accept luck at some places but not others, which is problematic. If an account must accept some luck, it looks like it must accept all kinds of luck because there is no principled place to draw a line between kinds of luck. If this is right, and we follow an entirely luck-free account of moral responsibility to its logical end, we end up with responsibility being impossible and no one being responsible for anything. The result of this finding is that no plausible account of moral responsibility can be entirely free of luck and immunity from luck is not one of the distinguishing features of appraisability. There are, however, other significant differences between appraisability and attributability. Appraisability requires an exercise of active control and is tightly connected to accountability (the other type of responsibility). Attributability does not require an exercise of control (active or otherwise), which leaves the account open to problems of manipulation. By not requiring an exercise of control, attributability is not connected to accountability so the moral judgments we make do not enable us to justify treatment, which is some of the work we want and need moral judgments to do. I contend that these differences make appraisability the correct account of moral responsibility. My original account of appraisability must undergo significant revision, though, in order to avoid problems, including the strategy used to minimize the influence of luck. (shrink)

Questions about the role of luck in attributions of moral responsibility have troubled theorists for some time. In this paper I will explicate a position that acknowledges luck as a contributing factor to most, if not all, outcomes and consequences while denying luck the exculpatory role that some theorists contend it plays. I begin by going through the characterization of two perspectives on luck offered by Susan Wolf. From there I outline two necessary conditions for the legitimate attribution of praise (...) or blame. The first condition is that of Control. The second condition is the agent's creation of "undue risk". I revisit Wolfs two perspectives and break down the relationship between the necessary conditions and each perspective. I contend that a legitimate theory of moral responsibility must allow for factors outside of an agent's control when attempting to attribute praise or blame. Luck can be seen as one of these factors and it should not be seen as playing an exculpatory role. (shrink)

This paper does not question the thesis that the phenomena associated with the phrase 'moral luck' point to an important philosophical problem. The aim is, rather, to sketch an interpretation of these phenomena. It is argued that the notion of symbolic restoration is the key we need to understand why the out-come of our actions has a moral significance that is not reducible to the moral significance of the mental states from wich these actions arise.

If the traditional problem of demandingness is that a theory demands too much of all agents, for example by asking them to maximize utility in every decision, then we should ask whether there is a related problem of “differential demandingness”, when a theory places vastly different demands on different agents. I argue that even according to common-sense morality, the demands faced by particular agents depend on a variety of contingent factors. These include the general circumstances, the compliance of others, the (...) available resources, the agent’s relevant relationships, the agent’s psychological constitution, and the agent’s knowledge. Some agents, for instance, find themselves in a “sacrifice hazard”: a situation where morality calls for a huge unforeseen sacrifice. I argue that if moral demands are differential, it is harder than one might think to assess a theory’s general level of demandingness in the abstract. (shrink)

Knowledge is necessary for certain moral obligations. In learning something new, one sometimes triggers a moral obligation. This paper argues that the existence of these knowledge-based obligations poses a problem for the view that we are not only free to choose the course of our own lives, including our careers and personal projects, but also free to change our minds and quit at any time to pursue something else. For if our choice of life path has generated knowledge-based moral obligations (...) that we must fulfill, then it is apparently not true that we can quit at any time. To resolve this tension, this paper proposes a relatively demanding set of conditions under which it is permissible to swap one career or life project for another. The resulting compromise reconciles the moral force of knowledge-based obligations with the basic freedom to choose less-than-optimal careers and projects. It also highlights the distinctive role played by knowledge and expertise in generating the intractable problem of morality’s demandingness. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum's work has been characterized by a sustained critique of Stoic ethics, insofar as that ethics denies the validity and importance of our valuing things that elude our control. This essay explores the idea that the very possibility of morality, understood as social or interpersonal ethics, presupposes that we do value such things. If my argument is right, Stoic ethics is unable to recognize the validity of morality (so understood) but can at most acknowledge duties to oneself. A further (...) implication is that moral luck, so far from undermining morality as some have held, is presupposed by the very possibility of morality. (shrink)

T.M. Scanlon has recently proposed what I term a ‘double attitude’ account of blame, wherein blame is the revision of one’s attitudes in light of another person’s conduct, conduct that we believe reveals that the individual lacks the normative attitudes we judge essential to our relationship with her. Scanlon proposes that this account justifies differences in blame that in turn reflect differences in outcome luck. Here I argue that although the double attitude account can justify blame’s being sensitive to outcome (...) luck, it cannot justify allocating blame differently when agents with the same attitudes differ only with respect to the luck-based outcomes of their actions. However, Scanlon’s own contractualist theory of morality can be invoked to show that the double attitude account is compatible with blame-based sanctions (e.g., compensation mandated when negligence or reckless result in harm) being sensitive to outcome luck. The resultant view of blame and luck remains desert-based while making sense of the common intuition that differences in outcome luck can matter to how lucky and unlucky individuals are justifiably treated. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue for a plausible account for moral luck in the Ruist tradition. In part one I will offer a preliminary framework for moral luck to establish an intersection between Ruist virtue ethics and its counterparts outside of Ruism. I will situate the term moral luck in a Ruist context. Although the term moral luck does not appear in The Mengzi the concept was known to Master Meng and is useful for comparison with its foreign counterparts. (...) In part two, guided by Thomas Nagle’s four categories for moral luck, I show where Ruist moral luck can be found in The Mengzi. I conclude by highlighting the contributions that Ruism offers to the broader moral luck discussion. (shrink)

If we want to see justice done with regard to responsibility, then we must either (i) allow that people are never morally responsible, (iia) show that luck is not ubiquitous or at least that (iib) ubiquitous luck is not moral, or (iii) show that ascriptions of responsibility can retain justice despite the omnipresence of luck. This paper defends (iii); ascriptions of responsibility can be just even though luck is ubiquitous.

Thomas Nagel argues that it is impossible for any person to deserve blame since moral luck is ubiquitous. I reject Nagel's argument. Agents may deserve blame, even if resultant, circumstantial, and constitutive luck are widespread and moral. ;After a brief discussion of Williams's assertion that moral value is not supreme, I defend Nagel from critics who argue that there is no such thing as moral luck. This criticism fails for two reasons. First, extant versions of the criticism cannot succeed because (...) they do not discuss constitutive luck. Even if there were no resultant or circumstantial moral luck, constitutive moral luck may remain. Second, they do not establish that there is no resultant and circumstantial luck. The nature and content of our moral obligations is influenced by our circumstances and by the results of our actions. Since the existence of moral luck is undeniable, the friend of blameworthiness should look for an alternative to Nagel's view that does not require the non-existence of moral luck. I attempt to develop such an alternative. I argue that people are blameworthy for the choices they make given the circumstances they face and the character they have at the time that they make the choice. Agents may deserve blame, not because there is no moral luck but, in spite of the existence of moral luck. Insofar as they have options, agents are blameworthy for making sub-optimal choices , even if circumstantial and constitutive luck constrain which options are available. Further, I argue that although luck is unavoidable and choice constraining, it is does not eliminate the existence of options. Since luck does not eliminate options and people are blameworthy for the choices they make given the options they have, the existence of moral luck does not preclude blameworthiness. I conclude by arguing specifically that moral integrity is possible for, and especially important to, agents whose lives are infected by luck. We remain obligated to strive for as much moral integrity as possible even if our luck makes this effort difficult and relatively fruitless. (shrink)

Despite bernard williams's and thomas nagel's attempts to show that moral luck poses deep problems about the reality of morality or the tenability of our actual moral concepts, It is argued that moral luck has this sort of alarming result only if we are (roughly) kantians about moral agency. Minus certain implausible assumptions, Moral luck is neither contradictory, Paradoxical, Or even surprising.

When explaining human actions, people usually focus on a small subset of potential causes. What leads us to prefer certain explanations for valenced actions over others? The present studies indicate that our moral attitudes often predict our explanatory preferences far better than our beliefs about how causally sensitive actions are to features of the actor's environment. Study 1 found that high-prejudice participants were much more likely to endorse non-agential explanations of an erotic same-sex encounter, such as that one of the (...) men endured a stressful event earlier that day. Study 2 manipulated participants' beliefs about how the agent's behavior depended on features of his environment, finding that such beliefs played no clear role in modeling participants' explanatory preferences. This result emerged both with low- and high-prejudice, US and Indian participants, suggesting that these findings probably reflect a species-typical feature of human psychology. Study 3 found that moral attitudes also predicted explanations for a woman's decision to abort her pregnancy (3a) and a person's decision to convert to Islam (3b). Study 4 found that luck in an action's etiology tends to undermine perceptions of blame more readily than perceptions of praise. Finally, Study 5 found that when explaining support for a rival ideology, both Liberals and Conservatives downplay agential causes while emphasizing environmental ones. Taken together, these studies indicate that our explanatory preferences often reflect a powerful tendency to represent agents as possessing virtuous true selves. Consequently, situation-focused explanations often appear salient because people resist attributing negatively valenced actions to the true self. There is a person/situation distinction, but it is normative. (shrink)

I argue that a well-known argument concerning moral luck supports something like the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), despite the attacks on PAP by Harry Frankfurt and John Martin Fischer.

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;Typically we maintain two incompatible standards towards right action and good character, and the tension between these polarities creates the paradox of moral luck. In practice we regard actions as right or wrong, and character as good or bad, partly according to what happens as a result of the agent's decision. Yet we also think that people should not be held responsible for matters beyond their control. ;This split underpins Kant's assertion (...) that only the good will is securely good, that its goodness is impervious to outcome ill-luck. Some commentators, such as Martha Nussbaum and to some extent Bernard Williams, think that this simply writes off the paradox. Williams asserts that the paradox is insoluble, and that its inescapability threatens the notion of agent responsibility. In contrast Thomas Nagel argues that agents' most cherished projects may be indeed be subject to luck, but that does not mean that their deepest motivations are moral. This, I suggest, is one of several means whereby we might limit the effect of the paradox without denying that the tension exists. But I also argue that it is wrong to accuse Kant of ignoring the paradox. ;Ethical consequentialists, on the other hand, appear to have no problem with moral luck, because the paradox depends on a dichotomy between the outside world and the locus of moral worth in the individual agent. But this turns out not to be true. The problem of moral luck is not some strange Kantian fixation, but a general dilemma: a variant on what Nagel terms "the problem of excess objectivity" which cuts across all of ethics and metaphysics. ;Retaining a broadly Kantian notion of agent-responsibility, but limiting what agents are responsible for, requires us to delineate the realm of ethics more narrowly than has been done by those who believe that the rational and/or prudential are coterminous with the ethical. This strategy for minimising the paradox's impact is explored in two areas from medical ethics, the allocation of scarce medical resources and informed consent, and two from public policy, secrecy and nuclear deterrence. Throughout, the analysis seeks to test Nagel's maxim that the best we can hope for is to act in such a manner that we would not have to revise our opinion of how we should have acted once the consequences of our actions become apparent. (shrink)

Solving the problem of moral luck—the problem of dealing with conflicting intuitions about whether moral blameworthiness varies with luck in cases of negligence—is like repairing a dented fender in front of two kinds of critic. The one keeps telling you that there is no dent, and the other sees the dent but keeps warning you that repairing it will do more harm than good. It is time to straighten things out. As I argue elsewhere, the solution to the problem of (...) moral luck is finally revealed. Our task now is twofold: to hold a magnifying glass up to the initial problem, so that all might finally see it; and to dismiss unfounded fears about solving that problem, so that all might finally stop grinning and bearing it. (shrink)

In recent years, Alasdair MacIntyre and others have observed an increasing interest on the part of contemporary ethicists regarding the question of whetherinnocent agents ever find themselves in moral dilemmas. This present-day support for the existence of moral dilemmas for innocent agents has spawned a re-reading of canonical ethical texts in the history of philosophy. The point of departure for the present paper is one particularly contentious battleground of this ongoing historical retrieval, namely, the ethical writings of Thomas Aquinas. I (...) contend that Aquinas is not an ally of those who defend the existence of moral dilemmas for innocent agents. However, Aquinas does present what is in my view a valuable contribution to the discussion of moral dilemmas as such. I show that a close textual reading of one of Aquinas’s examples leads to some rather interesting consequences for his moral theory, and that, surprisingly, this example could be of interest to contemporary ethicists who argue for the existence of moral luck. (shrink)

A moral dilemma is a situation in which a person cannot avoid acting wrongly. In the first part of the dissertation, I examine the two most important arguments for the possibility of moral dilemmas: the incommensurability argument and the argument from guilt. I argue that neither of these arguments is successful. ;In the second part of the dissertation, I show that moral dilemmas are a species of moral luck, or moral responsibility for factors beyond one's control. I argue that those (...) who believe in the possibility of moral dilemmas must also accept the possibility of some kinds of moral luck. This result holds even for moral dilemmas secundum quid, or dilemmas that arise only as a result of prior wrongdoing. ;In the final part of the dissertation, I consider several arguments for the possibility of circumstantial moral luck. I argue that these arguments all fail; however, I acknowledge that there may be other, more compelling arguments for the possibility of moral luck. I conclude by suggesting that the most important objection to moral dilemmas and moral luck is rooted in a concern for justice. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of the phenomenon that has come to be known as ‘moral luck’ have either dismissed it as illusory or touted it as the evidence for doubting the probative value of our commitment to certain widely avowed views concerning interpersonal assessments of responsibility. In this discussion, we present a third, distinctive interpretation of the moral luck phenomenon. Drawing upon empirically robust results from psychological studies of judgment bias, we argue that the phenomenon of moral luck is demonstrably not illusory. (...) What we suggest, however, is that the phenomenon ought not to be taken to countenance doubts about the standards generally taken to be regulative of assessments of interpersonal responsibility. Rather, its significance lies in foregrounding certain generally unacknowledged obstacles we face in the process of conclusively applying general valid moral standards in making specific judgments of responsibility and desert.1. (shrink)