Moral luck
luck in morality
The problem that our moral judgments of people depend heavily on factors they did not control, which sits badly with the principle that we are assessed only on what is up to us.
In practice
Two managers make the same risky call. One gets a promotion and one gets an investigation, and the difference was the outcome rather than the decision.
The common mistake
Treating it as a claim that judgment is unfair. The point is sharper: the principle that we judge only what is controlled, and the practice of judging outcomes, are both things we actually hold.
Moral luck names a conflict between two things almost everyone believes. We hold that people should be judged only for what is within their control. And we judge them, constantly and without hesitation, for things that are not.
The case that makes it vivid
Two drivers are equally negligent. One arrives home. The other, through no further fault, kills a child who steps into the road.
The second driver is treated far more harshly by the law, by everyone around them, and by themselves. Nothing separates the two but what happened next, and what happened next was not up to either.
The varieties
Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel introduced the problem in a joint discussion in 1976, and Nagel sorted it into kinds.
- Resultant luck — how things turn out, as with the two drivers.
- Circumstantial luck — what situations you are placed in. Whether you would have collaborated under an occupying regime depends partly on whether you lived somewhere that was occupied.
- Constitutive luck — the character you have, which is the product of genes and upbringing you did not choose.
- Causal luck — how you are determined by antecedent circumstances, which is the free will problem arriving from another direction.
Why it resists solution
Two responses are available and neither is comfortable.
Deny that luck affects moral standing. Then the two drivers are equally culpable, and the law and our reactions are simply wrong — including the surviving driver's own conviction that they did something terrible.
Accept that it does. Then moral assessment is not confined to what a person controls, and the principle that made the problem look like a problem has to go.
Williams's view was that the demand for a morality immune to luck is itself the error, and that a life is assessed as it actually went. See locus of control.
Concept web
Open the full webQuestions
What is moral luck?
The problem that we judge people for outcomes and circumstances they did not control, which conflicts with the principle that moral assessment should cover only what is up to them.
What are the types of moral luck?
Nagel distinguished resultant luck in how things turn out, circumstantial luck in what situations you face, constitutive luck in the character you have, and causal luck in being determined by prior events.
Can the problem be solved?
Not comfortably. Denying that luck affects standing makes the law and our own reactions mistaken; accepting it abandons the principle that generated the problem. Williams held the demand for luck-free morality was itself the error.