Moral luck and practical ethics

Morality is a practical institution - a tool that we have invented to make our lives better.

This fact is important to understanding some features of morality. "Moral luck" is one of those features.

A paradigm example of moral luck concerns a would be assassin. He prepares his weapon, aims at his victim, and pulls the trigger. In one case, some fluke of nature gets in the way of a killing shot. Something gets in the way, the target turns unexpectedly, or the bullet misses a vital organ by just the thickness of a hair. However it happens, the target does not die. In the other case, of course, the target dies.

Now, we have a case of attempted murder in the one case and attempted murder in the other.

The murder is considered the worse offense.

Another popular case that shows up in the literature concerns two drunk drivers. Again, the cases are identical in terms of actions. Both leave a party after having too much to drink. Both end up driving off the road. Yet, in one case, the driver hit a pedestrian standing beside the road and, in the other, the driver hits a tree instead. One driver is imprisoned for homicide. The other is cited for driving under the influence and gets a few points added to his driving record.

Why do we deliver different levels of punishment to the two people? There is nothing in their character that accounts for the difference. In fact, we stipulate in these cases that the two people have the same moral character. In fact, we could stipulate that this is the same person living in two alternative universes: one in which the target is killed and another where he is not killed, one in which he hits a tree and another in which he hits and kills a pedestrian.

The consequences of the action are outside of the agent's control, and yet those consequences are used to determine his level of culpability.

One might think that this type of case poses a problem for desirism. After all, the agent is being blamed for elements of his actions that have nothing to do with his desires.

Desirism says that an act is wrong if it is an act that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would not perform. In both of these cases - and in all similar cases - desirism accurately categorizes the action as a wrong action. Assassinating people and drunk driving are not demonstrations of good moral character - under normal circumstances, and we are given no reason to believe that either agent is acting in anything other than normal circumstances.

However, the response in terms of punishment or condemnation is not proportional to degree of wrongness.

This is where practical considerations come into play.

Desirism does hold that reward and punishment (including praise and condemnation) are tools used to mold the desires of others. In the case of punishment/condemnation, it is reasonable that the praise/condemnation is in some degree proportional to how important it is to have the agent abandon his current sentiments and adopt more useful sentiments. The greater the benefit, and the greater degree of power that praise and condemnation has over that sentiment, the greater the reason to praise or condemn.

We could attempt to compute the average harm done by an act of the type in question and make sure that all people are punished only for that average harm (or the average of that harm that is under the agent's control). However, that would take a huge amount of work. In fact, it is probably something that humans cannot calculate with sufficient accuracy. How dangerous is it, exactly, to drive drunk? Can we even hope to calculate this value?

The pragmatic trick, then, is to condemn each person according to actual harms done. This implies that over the course of countless praisings and blamings that the condemnation and punishment will average out to a level that is proportional to the average harm - the average dangerousness of the actions that are being condemned. It just so happens that some wrongdoers will be condemned more than others.

However, life is filled with elements of luck that we make no attempt to correct. Luck in terms of getting the perfect job, finding a valuable object, winning a lottery, purchasing the right stock at the right time, are matters of luck. Yet, no attempt is made to ensure that these rewards go to people on the basis of what they deserve in terms of their moral character. The same applies to praise and other awards. Two soldiers rise up out of the trenches to attack an enemy machine gun. One gets shot right away and falls dead. The other survives long enough to throw a grenade into the machine-gun nest and is treated as a hero - winning a Congressional Medal of Honor and other accolades and honors. Again, their moral characters are the same, but their levels of praise/condemnation differ.

This has to do with practicality. Instead of going through the effort of determining the average harm done by each type of wrongful act. Society as a whole will deliver an average level of condemnation proportional to the risk. It is a level of condemnation that will even automatically include unknown influences. Factors that make the action more or less risky will automatically be calculated into future condemnations - which will grow or shrink in severity accordingly.

It is just a lot more practical than a system that attempts to cast blame strictly on the agent's character.

And . . . yes . . . this means that our futures are left somewhat up to fate. But that's life. That's the way things are. We have accepted it in other parts of life, and there is no reason not to accept it here.