On moral luck
It is a Friday evening and you are driving on a deserted road at night. You are at the wheel while several of your friends are sitting beside you as well as behind you. Because all of you are in a good mood and the road is straight with high visibility, you decide to test the capabilities of your new car. You step on the gas, accelerating it to 300 km/h, despite the maximum allowed speed being only 100 km/h on this stretch of the road. After seeing that it performs to your satisfaction, you slow it down and drive home safely.
In an alternative universe, you also decide on speeding, however, unbeknownst to you, a group of schoolchildren who had been playing behind some bushes, suddenly decide to cross the road. They are far enough away from you, that if you had kept to the speed limit, you would have been easily able to stop in time, however, because you are going three times as fast, you plow into them, killing five.
Even though, your actions are exactly the same in both situations and the only differences are the behaviors of other actors who you have no control over or knowledge about, they will be looked at completely differently. While, in the first universe, people will see your actions as only barely morally wrong, this assessment would be very different in the second universe. You would be seen as responsible for the deaths of the children and suffer enormous personal guilt as well as shaming and legal repercussions.
This is the concept of moral luck as described by the philosopher Thomas Nagel in a chapter of his book Mortal Questions.
Where a significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgement, it can be called moral luck. Such luck can be good or bad. And the problem posed by this phenomenon, which led Kant to deny its possibility, is that the broad range of external influences here identified seems on close examination to undermine moral assessment as surely as does the narrower range of familiar excusing conditions. If the condition of control is consistently applied, it threatens to erode most of the moral assessments we find it natural to make. The things for which people are morally judged are determined in more ways than we at first realize by what is beyond their control. And when the seemingly natural requirement of fault or responsibility is applied in light of these facts, it leaves few pre-reflective moral judgements intact. Ultimately, nothing or almost nothing about what a person does seems to be under his control.
Nagel identifies four different types of moral luck. The first is constitutive luck, who you naturally are, what characteristics you have. The second one is called luck in one’s circumstances, which involves luck in the kind of problems one faces or situations one is thrown into. The third one is how antecedent circumstances have shaped one, and the fourth is how much luck one has in their endeavors.
Nagel goes on to closely examine the issue and points out a core difficulty that arises when we think through the concept of moral luck.
If one cannot be responsible for consequences of one’s acts due to factors beyond one’s control, or for antecedents of one’s acts that are properties of temperament not subject to one’s will, or for the circumstances that pose one’s moral choices, then how can one be responsible even for the stripped-down acts of the will itself, if they are the product of antecedent circumstances outside of the will’s control?
Any concept of moral responsibility seems to be incompatible with physical determinism. How can I blame a person for a malevolent act that was committed as a result of having a vicious personality, if this person has not chosen this personality and has no option of being predisposed in any other way?
Take someone who was diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder. Here is an excerpt of the description in the DSM-5 [1] :
Individuals with antisocial personality disorder frequently lack empathy and tend to be callous, cynical, and contemptuous of the feelings, rights and sufferings of others
[…]
Lack of empathy, inflated self-appraisal, and superficial charm are features that have been commonly included in traditional conceptions of psychopathy that may be particularly distinguishing of the disorder and more predictive of recidivism in prison or forensic settings, where criminal, delinquent, or aggressive acts are likely to nonspecific. These individuals may also be irresponsible and exploitative in their sexual relationships.
[…]
Adoption studies indicate that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the risk of developing antisocial personality disorder. Both adopted and biological children of parents with antisocial personality disorder have an increased risk of developing antisocial personality disorder, somatic symptom disorder, and substance use disorders.
An even clearer case might be Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), a condition that can arise when a fetus is exposed to alcohol in the womb. Symptoms include physical issues, such as growth deficiency and craniofacial abnormalities, as well as a decrease in cognitive function.
In a landmark study in 1996, Streissguth et al. investigated people with FAS and found that 14% of children (aged 6 to 11), 61% of adolescents (aged 12 to 20) and 58% of adults (aged 21 to 51) had been in trouble with the law [2]. There were also high rates of criminal incarceration and inappropriate sexual behavior.
How can we solve this moral problem? Nagel does not offer a solution and neither can I. If we accept that human behavior is purely guided by physical laws, no one has any agency and it does not make sense to blame someone for committing a murder any more than blaming the sun for rising in the morning. Acting like moral agency exists could still be vital for social cohesion, but has become “empty”.
Still, thinking about this made some things clear to me.
Firstly, there does not seem to be a point in retributive justice, where enacting vengeance is the main goal. This also leads to the conclusion that we should not punish the perpetrator of a heinous crime (such as murder) if it is certain that she poses no risk of re-offending or her release might result in other harmful consequences (such as inspiring others to commit crimes).
Also, it does not seem to make sense to scold someone for a moral misdeed unless this will produce benevolent consequences (such as deterring future wrongdoing).