ABSTRACT
Having just explored some problems for consequentialism as a moral theory, the author would next like to consider some difficulties of common-sense morality that have not previously been mentioned. To the extent that common-sense morality accepts and encourages these differences of feeling and moral judgment, it allows actual unforeseeable consequences a role in determining moral judgment, thus making room for a certain kind of ‘moral luck’. Of course, consequentialism also involves single judgments which, taken together, entail the possibility of moral luck. In some of the most fascinating of these other cases the very existence of a certain kind of thing at a time depends on what occurs after, even considerably after, that time. Imagine someone driving a car along a country road and pointing out noteworthy sights to his passengers. Recent advances in medical technology have necessitated a rethinking of the criteria of death.
