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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 3
Lesson 1: Ethics- Ethics: The Problem of Evil
- Ethics: Problem of Evil, Part 1
- Ethics: Problem of Evil, Part 2
- Ethics: Problem of Evil, Part 3
- Ethics: God and Morality, Part 1
- Ethics: God and Morality, Part 2
- Ethics: Moral Status
- Ethics: Killing Animals for Food
- Ethics: Hedonism and The Experience Machine
- Ethics: Consequentialism
- Ethics: Utilitarianism, Part 1
- Ethics: Utilitarianism, Part 2
- Ethics: Utilitarianism, Part 3
- Ethics: The Problem of Moral Luck
- Ethics: The Nonidentity Problem
- Ethics: The Nonidentity Problem, Part 2
- Ethics: Symmetry Argument Against the Badness of Death
- Ethics: Promising Against the Evidence #1
- Ethics: Promising Against the Evidence #2
- Ethics: Know Thyself #1 (The Examined Life)
- Ethics: Consent #1 (What is Consent?)
- Ethics: Consent #2 (Consent and Rights)
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Ethics: The Problem of Moral Luck
Victor Kumar (Michigan) introduces the problem of moral luck and surveys potential solutions. We see how the problem arises out of a clash between intuitive reactions to cases and an abstract principle of moral responsibility.
Speaker: Dr. Victor Kumar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Speaker: Dr. Victor Kumar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Want to join the conversation?
- There is one missing detail in the seatbelt story, which is the driver of the truck. Isn't he also to blame for the accident? And regarding the seat belt itself, we make it illegal/punishable precisely because of what it could do, not what it always does. So perhaps it is OK, to blame the negligent driver the same in both cases, but in the worse one there are also others responsible. The fact that the child is harmed seems to me to bring emotions into the experiment, which skew our logic. We can't both achieve rationality and agreement with emotional intuition.(7 votes)
- I also think, the driver of the truck must share the blame and responsibility.(1 vote)
- If you apply Karma to this situation, even hypothetically, doesn't moral luck vanish because all seeming "coincidences" are results of past actions?(2 votes)
- That's not how karma works. Karma from this life is carried into the next one. Your current karma levels have no effect on your current circumstance, and your karma from your last life is what landed you the cushy gig of being born a human being; ergo karma does not make you win the lottery etc.(1 vote)
- Why is control condition ever questioned? How do we draw a line between blaming a person for coincidence of negligence and a car incident and, for instance, blaming them for an unrelated incident?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(intro music) Hi! My name is Victor Kumar, and
I'm a post-doctoral fellow in the philosophy department at
the University of Michigan. In this video, I'm going to
talk to you about moral luck. Imagine that you've been entrusted
with the care of a friend's child. You're preparing to drive the child back
to her parents' house, but you're distracted for a moment, and you neglect
to secure her safely in her car seat. Unfortunately, on the way home,
you're hit by another driver and the child is gravely injured. How should you feel? Well, intense guilt and
remorse would be natural. How should the child's parents, your
friends, react towards you? Very likely, with anger and severe blame. Now imagine that I'm in almost
exactly the same situation as you. I've also been entrusted with
the care of a friend's child, and I too neglect to secure
her safely in her car seat. Fortunately, however, I manage
to drive home safely. It's only once I pull into the driveway
that I realize my terrible mistake. How should I feel in this situation? Well, no doubt, I should feel
some guilt and remorse. But it seems unreasonable to feel quite
so much as you feel in your situation. If the child's parents were to
find out about my mistake, they would be angry, and they would blame
me for my negligence. But it wouldn't make sense for them
to react as severely towards me as your friends react towards you. Cases like this illustrate
the problem of moral luck. The problem is that it seems irrational to have different reactions to these two cases. Both you and I were negligent, and we were
negligent in precisely the same way. The fact that your negligence
led to tragedy, and mine didn't, was just a matter of luck. And luck, it seems, can't affect our
levels of moral responsibility. The problem of moral luck arises
out of a clash between intuitive reactions to cases and a general
principle of moral responsibility, often called the "control condition." The control condition says that you
are responsible only for what's under your control. For example, suppose I'm angry with you because I think you've treated me unfairly. But once I realize you had
no choice, that someone else made the decision, it seems
like I should excuse you. The control condition captures this. The control condition implies that two
people can't differ in their level of moral responsibility only because
of facts beyond their control. However, we frequently, consistently, and
quite plausibly hold people responsible on the basis of factors
beyond their control. If we accept the control condition, then
it seems we're being inconsistent. So, the problem of moral luck reflects a
deep tension among our moral commitments. One type of moral luck is
called "resultant moral luck." Two people perform the same action, but
seem to be responsible to different degrees solely because of subsequent events
that are outside of their control. Resultant luck arises in cases of
negligence, like the case of the car accident and the injured child. But it also arises in cases
of intentional wrongdoing. Imagine that John and Harry
both attack people. But just because of the different ways their victims happen to
fall onto the ground, John is guilty of manslaughter and
Harry is guilty only of assault. Another type of moral luck is called
"circumstantial moral luck." Two identical people perform
different actions and seem to be morally responsible
to different degrees, even though the reason they
acted differently was that they just so happened to find themselves
in different circumstances. Marie, let's imagine, commits
a crime of passion. Jane doesn't, but only because
she luckily wasn't provoked. Marie is, therefore, blameworthy in a way
that Jane isn't, but only due to luck. A third type of moral luck is called
"constitutive moral luck." Our character traits and motivations
are largely due to genetic and environmental conditions
utterly beyond our control. Amy is kind, Brian is cruel, Naomi is
courageous, Paul is cowardly. These traits lead each of them to act
differently when faced with moral choices, and so we praise and blame them ultimately on the basis of things that
are not up to them. Now that we've gotten clear about
the problem of moral luck, it's time to ask whether there's any
solution to the problem. On the one hand, we might be
skeptics about moral luck. We might stick with our commitment
to the control condition and insist that we should never praise
or blame others purely on the basis of facts beyond their control. Skepticism is a difficult
position to live up to. To see this, think back to the
case of the careless drivers. It seems like an overreaction for me
to blame myself as if tragedy occurred. Every caregiver acts in ways that might have had tragic results for
children in their care but for luck. On the other hand, you
shouldn't let yourself off. Imagine telling your friends that you're
sorry that their child was hurt, but that they shouldn't feel more than a
twinge of blame towards you. This seems monstrous. Some skeptics think that
there isn't really a conflict between the control condition
and our intuitions about cases. They adopt what's called the
"epistemic view." According to the epistemic view,
the outcomes of our actions are a key source of evidence about
what goes on in our heads. So, the reason we blame a murderer more
than someone who committed only attempted murder is that it is more likely
that he had homicidal intentions. One problem for the epistemic
view, however, is that it doesn't seem to
square with our intuitions. Recall again our cases of negligence. You and I were both equally careless
with the children we were supposed to look after, but you seem
genuinely more blameworthy than me. Another main solution to the problem
of moral luck is to reject the control condition, and accept responsibility
for things outside of our control. But then, what general moral
theory or moral principle, if not the control condition, explains why we should allow luck to
influence ascriptions of responsibility? One possibility is that the point
of praise and blame is not just to give people what they deserve, but
also to influence their future behavior, and it may be more effective to blame
and punish people based on the lucky or unlucky outcomes of their actions,
rather than their intentions. However, can we live with such crude
manipulation in our interpersonal lives? Or does this throw morality into doubt? We either have to make big
changes to our moral lives, or we have to give up
the control condition. But both possibilities raise very
difficult philosophical questions. Anyone who is gripped by
the problem of moral luck must wrestle with these questions. Subtitles by the Amara.org community