Moral Luck and Moral Responsibility | Philosophy Explained

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[00:00:08]Here’s the scene: A and B are next door neighbors.

[00:00:12]They both go to the same party, and they both get equally drunk.

[00:00:15]Then, A and B each get in their identical vehicles and drive home, A leaving just minutes before B.

[00:00:21]As A drunkenly wends their way back home, the roads are deserted, and they make it back without incident.

[00:00:26]But as B drives down the same road just a few minutes later – a child darts into the road.

[00:00:30]B’s reaction time is impaired by the alcohol, and they are unable to stop or swerve in time to avoid striking and killing the child.

[00:00:37]So who deserves more blame?

[00:00:39]Thinkers including 20th century British philosopher Bernard Williams and contemporary American philosopher Thomas Nagel have used examples like this to illustrate some really thorny issues regarding moral responsibility.

[00:00:50]We talked about some of these issues when we met W.K. Clifford in our discussion of epistemic responsibility.

[00:00:55]But now that we’ve got some ethics under our belts, we can examine these questions more closely.

[00:00:59]Now, it probably seems to you like B is clearly more blameworthy, because B killed a child and A did not.

[00:01:06]But let’s look closer.

[00:01:07]A and B made the equally blameworthy choice to drive while intoxicated.

[00:01:10]B encountered an external factor – a child in the road.

[00:01:14]Had a child crossed A’s path, A would also have been unable to avoid hitting the child.

[00:01:19]Both intended to drive while drinking, and neither intended to hit anyone.

[00:01:23]So what does that mean?

[00:01:24]It looks like A just got morally lucky.

[00:01:28][Theme Music] What does it mean to be morally responsible?

[00:01:42]In philosophy, moral responsibility refers to acts or states of affairs for which you can be praised or blamed.

[00:01:47]But, how do you figure out if you really deserve praise or blame for something that happens?

[00:01:52]Well, there’s a principle in moral philosophy known as “ought implies can.” This means that if you ought, or should do something morally, then you first must be able to do it.

[00:02:01]In other words, you’re only morally required to do things that are possible for you.

[00:02:05]And this makes some good sense, right?

[00:02:06]“Ought implies can” is one of the few philosophical principles that basically everybody agrees with – it just makes logical sense.

[00:02:13]And most people agree that, since ought implies can, you can’t be held morally responsible for situations that are out of your control.

[00:02:19]If someone cuts the brake lines of my car without my knowledge, and that leads to me being in an accident, most people would say that I am not morally responsible for any injuries or damage that occur.

[00:02:28]Yes, I was still part of the chain of events that lead to the damage, because if I hadn’t decided to drive to that place at that time, the accident wouldn’t have happened.

[00:02:35]But I can’t be blamed for it.

[00:02:37]Now you see the distinction between causal responsibility – where you’re one link in a chain of events – and moral responsibility, which means you deserve positive or negative judgment for what happened.

[00:02:47]But the concept of moral responsibility is reserved for moral agents – that is, those who have the ability to think in terms of right and wrong, and to make decisions accordingly.

[00:02:56]If a coconut falls on my head, it is causally responsible for the lump that it gives me.

[00:03:00]But, because it is an unthinking thing, it’s not blameworthy, in the way that you would be if you deliberately chucked a coconut at me.

[00:03:07]You are a moral agent; coconut trees are not.

[00:03:10]Now, this looks pretty straightforward.

[00:03:12]But what if I’m aiming a coconut at a pyramid of bottles that I’ve set up for pitching practice, and you suddenly run in front of me, and the coconut hits you instead?

[00:03:19]Or what if you’re standing near my target, and I just have really bad aim?

[00:03:23]Thinking back to our drunk drivers, if we’re only morally responsible for what’s in our control, then it looks like A and B are equally morally blameworthy.

[00:03:31]Because, B couldn’t help that a child ran into the road, just like I couldn’t help it if you ran in front of my coconut.

[00:03:37]So let’s now take another angle on moral responsibility, over in the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy.

[00:03:42]We often think that what makes something wrong is that it causes harm.

[00:03:45]But consider this creepy scenario.

[00:03:47]Imagine you’re changing in a store’s dressing room, and outside, there’s some creep who takes pictures of you, and you never know it.

[00:03:53]This creep then shares the pictures with his creepy friends.

[00:03:56]They don’t know who you are, and you experience no ill effects, no uncomfortableness of any kind, because you never know the pictures were taken.

[00:04:03]So here’s a couple questions: Were you harmed?

[00:04:06]And did the creeps do wrong?

[00:04:08]It’s hard to see how you were harmed by the pictures, because harm seems to be the type of thing that has to be experienced in order for it to exist.

[00:04:15]But most people would agree that the creeps did do wrong, that a violation of privacy is still a violation, even if you don’t know that it happened.

[00:04:23]The possibility that harm and wrongdoing are actually two different things might not have occurred to you before, but when you think about it, it seems pretty right.

[00:04:29]The falling coconut could harm me without anyone having done wrong.

[00:04:33]And likewise, wrongdoing doesn’t have to lead to anyone being harmed.

[00:04:37]Thanks, Thought Bubble!

[00:04:38]So the distinction between doing wrong and causing harm – just like the case of our drunk drivers A and B – is probably making you realize that the issue of moral praise and blame is trickier than you thought.

[00:04:49]Thomas Nagel thinks a key to figuring this out is to look deeper into the different aspects of our actions – ones that are both in and out of our control.

[00:04:57]These external factors can affect the moral quality of our actions, he says, and he describes their effects in terms of different kinds of luck.

[00:05:06]Constitutive luck, for example, is luck that has to do with our own constitution – our disposition, or personality.

[00:05:12]We all have different temperaments.

[00:05:14]Some of us are more prone to anger, and others are easy going.

[00:05:17]Some seem to be naturally generous, while others have to remind themselves to share.

[00:05:21]Now, we can definitely work against these dispositions that we have – and good parents and teachers will help us do this as we grow up.

[00:05:26]But Nagel says, that doesn’t change the fact that some of us have to work really hard not to be greedy, cranky, or anti-social, while others are just naturally gifted with a tendency toward harmony and generosity.

[00:05:37]Then there’s circumstantial luck.

[00:05:39]This relates to the situation you find yourself in, and plays a huge role in whether you manage to do good or bad things.

[00:05:46]It’s easy to blame the officer in the concentration camp, and to praise the 9/11 firefighter.

[00:05:51]But what would have happened if that firefighter had been a member of the German military in 1933?

[00:05:55]Or if that SS officer had been a firefighter living in New York City in 2001?

[00:05:59]Our circumstances play a really strong role in our actions.

[00:06:02]An ordinary person given the chance to be a hero might step up, but that same person might also take an opportunity to become a monster, if it’s offered in the right way.

[00:06:10]Nagel says there’s also luck due to antecedent circumstances.

[00:06:14]In other words, your character is shaped by things that have happened to you.

[00:06:18]Some people get a lot of breaks in life, while others face hard knocks that lead them to viciousness.

[00:06:22]People can come out of the best possible environment and still be total jerks, and amazing people can rise out of terrible circumstances.

[00:06:28]But where you come from isn’t in your control, and it has an undeniable role in who you’re going to become.

[00:06:34]And finally, Nagel says, there’s luck regarding consequent circumstances – that’s the way your actions actually turn out.

[00:06:41]Sometimes the best intentions fall flat, and awful plans can produce something that’s unexpectedly awesome.

[00:06:47]We don’t cheer for the person who fails to save someone’s life – even if they tried just as hard as the person who succeeded.

[00:06:53]This is why most of us find it pretty hard to blame A as much as we blame B – because the fact remains, B’s actions left a child dead, and A’s didn’t.

[00:07:03]So, Nagel argues that all of these factors affect the morality of our actions.

[00:07:07]But if they’re out of our control, does moral praise and blame even make sense?

[00:07:11]In this light, it looks like, usually, we shouldn’t assign any praise or blame.

[00:07:15]And even when we should, we should assign less than we do.

[00:07:19]After all, if ought implies can, then we should only be blamed for the aspects of our actions that are in our control - and external factors shouldn’t be considered.

[00:07:27]So by this logic, Nagel says the two drunk drivers should be blamed equally.

[00:07:31]Now maybe that just seems wrong to you.

[00:07:33]Maybe you believe that praise and blame are only partially about assigning responsibility for people’s actions.

[00:07:38]Perhaps you think we should still praise and blame people, because it’s important for society at large.

[00:07:43]In this view, it’s ok, even right, to assign praise and blame for things that are outside of a person’s control.

[00:07:49]For example, we want to shun drunk drivers because of the harm that they do, so we’d like to blame every one of them.

[00:07:55]But if someone makes it home safely, we don’t necessarily know they drove drunk, so they can’t be blamed.

[00:08:00]But we can make examples of the ones we do catch – and assign them loads of blame – even though the ones who didn’t get caught are really just as blameworthy.

[00:08:07]And it works the same way with praise.

[00:08:09]It’s in our interest to make heroes out of people who risk their lives to save others – whether they succeed or not – because we want to encourage that kind of behavior in society.

[00:08:17]So we praise the behavior when we see it, even though it’s the disposition, the intention to do good, that actually deserves praise.

[00:08:24]So in this view, praise and blame isn’t really about moral responsibility at all.

[00:08:27]It’s just about encouraging and discouraging different behaviors.

[00:08:31]Which could explain why you might think B should go to jail, while A, well, A just got morally lucky.

[00:08:37]Today we learned about moral luck.

[00:08:40]We considered the difference between moral and causal responsibility, and the reasons we assign praise and blame.

[00:08:46]Next time, we’re going to talk about justice.

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