“Luck” is a matter of “happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time” — or in the right place at the right time.
As we discussed earlier, this concept of “luck” is compatible with the universe being Deterministic. The fact that some outcome was “good luck” or “bad luck” or “just a matter of luck” for you merely means that it was outside your control. And whether the universe is Deterministic or not, surely some things are outside uour control. Though usually we’ll only talk about something’s being “lucky” when it was significant and surprising, or there’s a mismatch between it and your effort or preparation.
Control Principle: An agent can only be moral accountable for some fact if, and to the extent that, that fact was in their control.
If this Principle is right, then to the extent that luck enters into your actions and what results they produce, we should think you’re not accountable for those results, or at least for those aspects of them that depend on luck. (This would apply to both positive and negative results, but most of the discussion focuses on negative results.) If two agents differ only in respects that were out of their control, neither can be more praise- or blameworthy than the other.
As we discussed in class, there are many cases in our life where we do hold people accountable in ways where luck does seem to make a difference.
Some of these are cases where different agents (these could be two real agents in real situations, but often we’ll talk about hypothetical variations on how things go for a single agent) in some sense “act the same way,” but because of factors outside their control, what result that ends up producing may be different. For example, two agents set out to murder their respective victims. They both pull their triggers or plant their poisons, but in one case the world is uncooperative and so the murder doesn’t succeed. In the other case, the murder does go through. So one of the agents will merely be an attempted murderer, whereas the other is a outright killer. In many legal contexts, these agents would face different kinds of sentencing. Also if they later repent their crime, it seems like the successful murderer would have more to be sorry for. Yet it seems like just a matter of luck whether the agent ended up an attempted murderer or a successful one. So our legal practices here, and the way we feel about the agents and they might feel about themselves, seems like it doesn’t honor the Control Principle. (Even if the agent embraces their crime, they might still feel differently about it — more pride, for example — if it was successful rather than merely attempted.)
Perhaps you can talk yourself into siding with the Control Principle in this conflict. That is, perhaps you’ll decide that really it’s a mistake for us to treat and feel about the two potential murderers any differently from each other. (Maybe we should treat them both as harshly as we actually treat the successful murderer; or maybe both with more tolerance, as we actually treat the merely attempted murderer.)
But there are more cases of this kind of conflict, where it becomes more uncomfortable to keep siding with the Control Principle. Nick and Nora each drive their cars home from work. At a certain moment, their attention wanders. They’re fiddling with the radio while driving a stretch of road they’re very familiar with. Fortunately for Nora, nothing bad happens. Unfortunately for Nick, somebody stepped into the crosswalk just at the wrong moment and he hits them. If his attention hadn’t wandered, suppose he would have been able to react a fraction quicker and avoid disaster. Depending on the details and the legal context, Nick might not be legally liable for the accident. But he will feel guilty, and others in his community will have more negative attitudes towards him. The victim’s parents and their friends would most likely be reluctant to live next door to him, develop or continue a friendship with him, and so on. But does he deserve even this social and emotional fallout? Any more than Nora would? After all, it seems just a matter of luck that Nick drove into an accident and Nora didn’t.
These kinds of cases are called resultant or outcome-based examples of moral luck. We should say they’re alleged cases of moral luck. They count as genuine cases of moral luck if there really is a morally significant difference between the agents, and that difference is grounded in differences between the cases that were outside their control. Many philosophers think that at least some of these cases are genuine, and hence show that the Control Principle can’t be right in the form we’ve stated it. (Perhaps some more limited version of the Control Principle might be right instead.)
Other philosophers keep siding with the Control Principle, though, and say that in all of these cases really there is no morally significant difference between the agents. Sure, they agree, we do in fact treat agents of these sorts differently. But that is not morally justfied. (Unless there are reasons justifying it that don’t have to do with the agents’ accountability, but instead with the consequences of different social policies, with how good our evidence is for thinking the agents really were equally careful and conscientous and had the same motives, and so on.)
Among philosophers who do keep siding with the Control Principle about these cases of alleged moral luck, many will abandon the Control Principle when it comes to other kinds of cases, that we’ll discuss next.
In previous cases, the agents in some sense “acted the same way.” In the next cases, they’ll act differently. But the reason they act differently will also have to do with facts outside their control. The first cases we’ll discuss are ones where the agents find themselves in different situations, and so face different obstacles and have different opportunities. For instance, Adam and Adrian both would like to kill someone, and each may scope out a site where they can hide with their sniper rifle. But in Adam’s case, their intended victim ends up choosing another route, and other opportunities to take a shot never arise. In Adrian’s case, the victim goes where they were expected to, and she’s able to carry the assassination through. Even if we wanted to regard the successful murderer and a merely attempted murderer as morally equal, do we also want to count Adam as equal, who merely planned a murder and yes, would have murdered if he could, but didn’t actually pull any trigger, or do anything actually jeapordizing his intended victim. What about an agent Alice, whose hands are even less soiled. She also would be glad to murder, if she could find a suitable way to do it, but never sees any such way. So she never gets even to the stage of planning and preparation.
These kinds of cases are called situational or circumstantial examples of (alleged) moral luck. One case that’s regularly discussed are ordinary citizens in Nazi Germany who didn’t actively resist what was happening, and so we regard with some moral criticism, even though lots of other luckier people who didn’t find themselves in those circumstances would have acted the same way.
A third kind of case is where the factors outside the agent’s control are in the past, and shaped the agent’s current character, dispositions, motivations, and so on. Perhaps you would have actively resisted if you found yourself in Nazi Germany, or in contemporary dystopian analogues. But if so, that’s because of certain ways your personality has developed. And why did it develop that way? You may think your character is up to you. But even if you deserve some credit for now having the character you do (some will dispute this, but let’s allow it), so too do your genes, your upbringing, and other factors that weren’t in your control. Arguably if those factors outside your control had been different, you would have ended up with a somewhat different set of values and personality now, and might make different choices in the same challenging situations. So should your character and the choices that result from it be to your moral credit? Isn’t this too a matter of moral luck?
These kinds of cases are called constitutuve examples of (alleged) moral luck.
Some philosophers will keep siding with the Control Principle and reject all of these examples. That is, they’ll say that even if we do let these lucky factors make a difference to how we morally evaluate and respond to agents, we’re not justified in doing so. But once one sees how far-reaching the place of luck is in what we do and how we evaluate each other and ourselves, this becomes a very hard and counter-intuitive position.
Other philosophers think the Control Principle has to be rejected, or replaced with something more limited, and that at least some of these cases are ones where agents are different in a morally significant way — that they are differently accountable, differently deserving of praise or blame or other moral reactions and attitudes — despite some of the differences between them being outside their control.
We watched this video by Victor Kumar (6 min) introducing these debates about moral luck. (Here’s a transcript of the video.) If you find the issues engaging, here is an optional longer discussion with Dana Nelkin (40 min, transcript), and here is an encyclopedia article by the same author.)
Some think that if Determinism is true, all our actions would be more cases of moral luck. A Compatibilist could accept this analogy, and say the more familiar, localized cases of moral luck discussed above should already persuade us to give up the idea that moral accountability is about control. So if Determinism shows you’re not in control of anything that happens in your life, it needn’t show you’re not accountable.
However, many Compatibilists will resist this way of characterizing their view. Firstly, they might think there’s some truth in the neighborhood of the Control Principle, and that for matters that are entirely outside their control, an agent cannot be morally accountable. Moral luck only teaches us that accountability coexists with some kinds and anounts of dependence on matters of luck. Not that you can be blameworthy for facts you made no contribution to at all. (Like the weather. Surely that’s not your fault and you can’t be blameworthy for its being the way it is. The most you might be blameworthy for is not looking up weather forecasts beforehand.) Secondly, Compatibilists will deny that Determinism shows you’re never in control of your choices and actions. We’ll discuss this more when we take up Compatibilism, in the next classes.
As we’ve discussed a few times already, merely introducing undetermined events into the world doesn’t yet straightforwardly introduce free will. It seems like it just introduces more luck and chance. The Control Principle expresses our intuitive reluctance to let those things be what makes one person blameworthy and nother not. We’ll come back to this issue when we take up Libertarian views.
This set of issues is called The Problem of Luck for Libertarians. It’s part of what’s sometimes called “The Dilemma of Determinism,” which is the idea that if Determinism is true, we lack free will (because of standard Incompatibilist arguments like The Consequence Argument). And if Determinism is false, we also lack free will (because of these issues, the Problem of Luck we get if the universe is Indeterministic). Thus — Skeptics about free will argue — we’re screwed both ways. (See Lemos pp. 9-12 for a presentation of this thinking.)