Moral Luck

Please read my previous post, 'Niceness, Nastiness and Moral Luck', before reading this one.

Done? Great! Then off we go...

Here's a well-known illustration of the concept of moral luck.

Two men, Bill and Fred, drive home from work one evening. Partway through his journey, Bill loses concentration and runs a red light. Sadly there's an old woman crossing the road at just that moment. Bill smashes into her and she dies.

As Fred drives home, he too loses concentration and runs a red light. Luckily for him no-one is crossing at the time. So there's no harm done.

Bill is later prosecuted for driving without due care and attention. The old lady's relatives hate him, and he is shunned by some of his former friends. Fred, on the other hand, is able to joke about his lapse of concentration. No-one judges him harshly since no-one was hurt.

Why is Bill castigated but not Fred? Simply because Bill was unlucky. It just so happened that he ran the red-light when someone was crossing. Fred, on the other hand, was lucky enough to run the red light when the road was clear.

There, you have the essence of moral luck.

If were to stop and think about it, most of us would agree that praise and blame ought to be applied to the content and/or intent of someone's actions, and not to any accidental outcomes. Yet, in practice, the outcomes of someone's actions strongly influence the way we judge them - even when those outcomes are largely a matter of luck.

Here's something to puzzle over:

There appear to be two things that go together to determine my character and conduct. First there's my natural temperament; and second there's my upbringing. In other words, I am a product of both nature and nurture.

But here's the kicker. I didn't choose my natural temperament. I was born with it. Similarly, I didn't choose the manner of my upbringing. It was decided for me by my parents.

Now, since I chose neither my nature nor my nuture, isn't my character and behaviour all ultimately down to luck? And isn't the same thing true for everyone else on the planet?

But, for all that, nice people are still so much nicer than nasty ones!