Philosophy
Moral luck: why we blame the unlucky drunk driver more
12 min
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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Show notes
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.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Control Principle and the Kantian Ideal2 min
- 3Resultant and Circumstantial Luck3 min
- 4Constitutive and Causal Luck3 min
- 5The Paradox of Moral Assessment3 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- 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
- https://philpapers.org/archive/HARKDN.pdf
- Moral luck and the unfairness of morality | Philosophical Studies | Springer Nature Link
- https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1100/Nagel1.pdf
- Circumstantial and constitutive moral luck in Kant's moral philosophy
- Kant's Moral Philosophy
- Moral Luck (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2013 Edition)
- Moral Responsibility (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- 1. Introduction
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