In my blog last week, I treated moral luck as a one-dimensional
concept. In fact, Nagel distinguishes four types of moral luck. I must say that
his discussion of the types is not always clear and sometimes Nagel’s wording
is confusing, so I doubt if there are just these four types. Anyway, let me
present the types and say what I think of them. First I’ll quote how Nagel
introduces the distinction:
“There are roughly four ways in which the natural
objects of moral assessment are disturbingly subject to luck. One is the phenomenon
of constitutive luck – the kind of person you are, where this is not just a
question of what you deliberatively do, but of your inclinations, capacities,
and temperament. Another category is luck in one’s circumstances – the kind of
problems and situation one faces. The other two have to do with the causes and
effects of action: luck in how one is determined by antecedent circumstances, and
luck in the way one’s actions and projects turn out.” (p. 28) I have taken the
labels for the types of luck from the Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_luck).
1) Consequential
moral luck: “luck, good and bad, in the way things turn out” (p. 28). A
case in point is the pedestrian who suddenly crosses a street and is hit by a
car, which I discussed last week. However, Nagel discusses here also cases that
he calls “cases of decision under uncertainty” (p.29). For example: “Chamberlain
signs the Munich agreement, the Decembrists persuade the troops under their
command to revolt against the czar, the American colonies declare their
independence from Britain ...” (ibid.).
According to Nagel the agents who take the decisions in these cases cannot
foresee the outcomes. Hitler could have stopped his aggressive policy after
having taken Sudetenland; Britain could have started to negotiate with the
Americans, etc.: At the moment the agents make their choices, the consequence are
not yet clear. However, I think that there is a difference with the traffic
accident: The traffic accident just happens to you, but by signing an agreement
or by revolting you can be sure that the other party will react, although you
don’t know yet what your opponent will do. There is a kind of relationship
between the choices by Chamberlain or the rebels and the following actions,
while such a relationship is absent in the case of the traffic accident. I doubt
whether the actions by Chamberlain and the rebels fall under the heading of
moral luck.
The next two types of moral luck are clear, I think:
2) Constitutive
moral luck: The character, temperament, personality traits etc. one has
developed insofar as they are determined by one’s genetic constitution and
education. A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, unkind, or nice, helpful etc.
and, so Nagel, “to some extent such [qualities] may be the product of earlier
choices; to some extent it may be amenable to change by current actions. But it
is largely a matter of constitutive bad fortune. Yet people are morally condemned
for such qualities, and esteemed for others equally beyond control of the will:
they are assessed for what they are like.”
(p. 33)
3) Circumstantial
moral luck: Luck in one’s circumstances because they are impossible to
control or foresee at the moment one takes the relevant decision. For instance:
“It may be true of someone that in a dangerous situation he would behave in a
cowardly or heroic fashion [but such a situation may never arise and will have
no consequences for his moral record]” (pp. 33-34). See the case of the Nazi
officer in the concentration camp and the German migrant to Argentina in my
last blog.
4) Causal moral
luck: “A person can be morally responsible for what he does; be what he
does results from a great deal that he does not do; therefore he is not morally
responsible for what he is and is not responsible for. (This is not a
contradiction, but it is a paradox).” (p. 34). Nagel is very brief about this
type and the only thing he says yet about it is that he sees a link between
these problems about responsibility and control and the problem of the free
will. However, it makes me think of the so-called Frankfurt-type cases, which I
have discussed before: Jones is in a voting booth deliberating whether to vote
for the Democratic or for the Republican presidential candidate. Unbeknownst to
Jones, a neurosurgeon, Black, has implanted a chip in Jones’s brain that allows
Black to monitor Jones’s neural states and alter them if need be. Black is a diehard
Democrat, and should he detect neural activity indicating that a Republican choice
is forthcoming, Black will activate his chip to ensure that Jones instead votes
Democratic. However, Jones chooses on his own to vote for the Democratic
presidential candidate, so Black never intervenes (from my blog dated Feb. 23,
2012). The question then is whether Jones is or isn’t responsible for his
action. I’ll not discuss it here (see my blog last week and the blog just
quoted), for more important is now: Is causal moral luck really an independent
type? It’s doubtful, for a closer look at it will probably show that it doesn’t
cover cases that do not fall also under one of the other types. For instance,
the case of Jones has traits of consequential moral luck (he couldn’t help being
manipulated by Black) and constitutive luck (it’s a property of him always to
vote Democrat, voluntarily or manipulated). However, it should need further
investigation. Be it as it may, often things happen to us and we
cannot help. And in case we can, it doesn’t automatically follow that we are
morally responsible for the consequences.
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