Moral Luck and Liability Lotteries

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Social Science Research Network, 2003

Philosophy Compass, 2010

Monist, 2021

In some vicarious cases of compensation, an agent seems obligated to compensate for a harm they did not inflict. This raises the problem that obligations for compensation may arise out of circumstantial luck. That is, an agent may owe compensation for a harm that was outside their control. Addressing this issue, I identify five conditions for compensation from the literature: causal engagement, proxy, ill-gotten gains, constitution, and affiliation. I argue that only two of them specify genuine and irreducible grounds for compensation, and that factors determining the agent’s obligations may be beyond their control. However, I suggest that this is unproblematic. There is thus no problem of circumstantial moral luck for compensation.

Analysis, 2018

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2019

Can good or bad luck affect a person’s praiseworthiness or blameworthiness? To agree that luck can have this effect is to say that moral luck exists. Debates about moral luck usually pit those who affirm its existence against those who deny it on the grounds that we are morally responsible only for what is in our control. In this paper, I consider what the attributionist approach to responsibility has to say about moral luck. Attributionism holds that we are morally responsible for things over which we lack control—our desires, our beliefs, and what we notice or fail to notice, among other things—insofar as these things express evaluative judgments that are attributable to us. Because attributionism holds us responsible for traits over which we lack control, the view clearly allows a person’s good or bad luck in how she is constituted to affect her moral responsibility. By contrast, since the lucky or unlucky outcomes of actions do not affect the judgments that are attributable to agents, attributionism rejects outcome moral luck. Finally, there can be luck in the moral tests and opportunities that one faces: Is the person who would have failed a test, had he faced it, as blameworthy as someone who actually faced, and failed, the test? I argue that attributionism can explain why we are sometimes inclined to answer a question like this in the affirmative, and why in other cases we wish to deny that this is so.

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2020

What you ought to do is sensitive to circumstances that are not under your control, or to luck. So plain luck is often morally significant. Still, some of us think that there's no moral luck - that praiseworthiness and blameworthiness are not sensitive to luck. What explains this asymmetry between the luck-sensitivity of ought-judgments and the luck-insensitivity of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness judgments? In this paper I suggest an explanation, relying heavily on the analogy between rational luck and moral luck. I argue that some rational assessments - like how well one plays the hand one's dealt - are luck-insensitive; that we have reason to believe some moral evaluations are closely analogous to such luck-insensitive rational assessments, and furthermore that blameworthiness and praiseworthiness judgments are probably precisely those luck-insensitive moral evaluations. I also draw an implication regarding agent-regret.

2015

In this article I provide and defend a solution to the problem of moral luck. The problem of moral luck is that there is a set of three theses about luck and moral blameworthiness each of which is at least prima facie plausible, but that, it seems, cannot all be true. The theses are that (1) one cannot be blamed for what happens beyond one’s control, (2) that which is due to luck is beyond one’s control, and (3) we rightly blame each other for events that are due to luck. I suggest that the response which distinguishes between degree and scope of blameworthiness is promising. The main objection that one might level against this approach is that it seems to lead to the absurd conclusion that we, in the actual world, are as blameworthy as the person we could have been and who performs all sorts of heinous acts in a far away possible world. For, we in the actual world and our counterpart in a far away possible world are both such that we would perform certain heinous acts in particular circumstances. I argue that this objection can be met, namely by paying attention to the nature of luck. By using the insights into the nature of luck that have been gained by epistemologists, we can solve the problem of luck as it has been formulated by ethicists. For, epistemologists have argued that some event is due to luck only if it fails to occur in a substantial number of nearby possible worlds. I defend this account of luck and argue that the problem of moral luck can be solved if we pay attention to the nature of luck. I, therefore, call my solution to the problem of moral luck a modal solution.