Agent-Regret and the Social Practice of Moral Luck

Res Philosophica 94 (1):95-117 (2017)
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Abstract

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside our control (the ‘Standard View’), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one’s control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in a larger social practice that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View.

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Jordan MacKenzie
Virginia Tech

Citations of this work

Moral Luck and The Unfairness of Morality.Robert J. Hartman - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (12):3179-3197.
Can we Bridge AI’s responsibility gap at Will?Maximilian Kiener - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (4):575-593.
Is Agent-Regret Rational?David Sussman - 2018 - Ethics 128 (4):788-808.
Empirical Vindication of Moral Luck.Victor Kumar - 2018 - Noûs 53 (4):987-1007.
Accepting Moral Luck.Robert J. Hartman - 2019 - In Ian M. Church & Robert J. Hartman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck. New York: Routledge.

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