Moral luck: why we blame the unlucky drunk driver more
Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel on the puzzle that we judge people for outcomes partly beyond their control — and how it threatens the whole idea of moral responsibility.
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The control principle argues that moral responsibility should only apply to factors within an individual's direct control.
Resultant luck causes society to blame a reckless driver more if they happen to hit a pedestrian.
Circumstantial luck means a person's moral record often depends on the specific historical era they inhabit.
Constitutive luck suggests that inherited traits like empathy or a short fuse are largely matters of chance.
Legal systems often punish successful crimes more harshly than attempted ones despite identical intent.
Scientific views of causal luck can make human agency appear to vanish under physics and biology.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Control Principle and the Kantian Ideal2 min
- 03Resultant and Circumstantial Luck3 min
- 04Constitutive and Causal Luck3 min
- 05The Paradox of Moral Assessment3 min
- 06Outro1 min
- Moral luck - Wikipedia
- MORAL LUCK
- Moral Luck | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Moral Luck: Crash Course Philosophy #39 - YouTube
- Moral Luck - 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
- Moral Luck
- https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil201/luck.pdf
- Episode 78, Moral Luck (Part I - Bernard Williams) - Panpsycast
- Very Bad Wizards: Episode 127: Moral Luck
- Moral Luck (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Summer 2023 Edition)
- Moral Luck (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2024 Edition)
- Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility - PMC
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- Circumstantial and constitutive moral luck in Kant's moral philosophy
- Kant's Moral Philosophy
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- Moral Responsibility (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- 1. Introduction
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