ABSTRACT
Philosophers are interested in luck for a variety of reasons. One has to do with its purported significance with respect to moral evaluation and moral responsibility. Numerous philosophers have been fascinated and disturbed by the “paradox” of moral luck. We are, firstly, committed to the view that persons are only responsible for, or only blameworthy for, what they have control over. This condition is often referred to as “the control condition.” It also seems to be a fairly obvious fact that we frequently don’t have control over everything that happens as a result, for example, of our actions. Yet, those whose actions turn out worse than others who do exactly the same thing get blamed more harshly. Given the first two claims this does not seem warranted. The classic case is that of the reckless truck driver who has the bad luck to run over a child in the street. This truck driver is blamed far more severely than one who was equally reckless, but had the good luck not to run over anyone. Given that they both were acting equally recklessly the difference between the two is the result of luck, or chance. And thus the increased blame for the one who actually causes harm seems paradoxical—shouldn’t they both be equally blameworthy if equally reckless? 1 This consideration is a major factor in pushing normative ethical theorists in the direction of purely internalist accounts of moral evaluation. On such accounts the moral quality of one’s actions is completely determined by factors internal to agency, such as one’s motives or intentions. Effects are irrelevant. Thus, what happens in the world as a result of one’s actions is actually not a factor in moral evaluation of the action. On this view, both truck drivers are equally blameworthy in the sense that their actions are both equally wrong, equally reckless. On this approach the most common account of the phenomenon or paradox of moral luck is an epistemic account. What makes the truck driver case seem so paradoxical is that— given our limited epistemic resources—we can’t genuinely tell if the two are equally blameworthy because we do not have access to their inner states.
