Taking luck seriously

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 99, Issue 11, 2002, Pages 553-576

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EID: 65849098499     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3655750     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. Principia Ethica (New York: Cambridge, 1903)
2. I argue for this in An Essay on Moral Responsibility (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), chapter 3
3. and in "A Plea for Accuses," American Philosophical Quarterly XXXIV, 2 (April 1997): 229-43
4. I argue for this in An Essay on Moral Responsibility, chapter 4, section 4.8
5. "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings of the British Academy XLVIII (1962): 187-211
6. Cf. R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge Harvard, 1994)
7. David Copp, "Defending the Principle of Alternate Possibilities Moral Responsibility Blameworthiness and Moral Responsibility," Noûs, XXXI, 4 (December 1997): 441-56
8. and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (New York: Cambridge, 1998)
9. Cf. Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving (Princeton: University Press 1970)
10. Jonathan Glover, Responsibility (New York: Humanities, 1970)
11. Herbert Morris, On Guilt and Innocence (Berkeley: California UP, 1976) and my An Essay on Moral Responsibility
12. Some writers contend that authenticity is a necessary condition of moral responsibility and that it is distinct from both the epistemic component and the control component. See, for example, Ishtiyaque Haji, Moral Appraisability: Puzzles, Proposals, and Perplexities (New York: Oxford, 1998), chapters 6-7
13. "Involuntary Sins," Philosophical Review, XCIV, 1 (January 1985): 3-31
14. Moral Responsibility and Persons (Philadelphia: Temple, 1992)
15. What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard, 1998)
16. For example, Gary Watson, "Two Faces of Responsibility," that he calls attributability, which is at least very close to the conception of responsibility that is at issue here. This is also the term that Scanlon uses to refer to the type of responsibility under discussion. Philosophical Topics, XXIV, 2 (Fall 1996): 227-48, pp. 233-34. Watson is here discussing that type of moral responsibility that he calls " attributability," which is at least very close to the conception of responsibility that is at issue here. This is also the term that Scanlon uses to refer to the type of responsibility under discussion
17. "Ethics without Free Will," Social Theory and Practice, XVI, 3 (Fall 1990): 369-83
18. and Michael Otsuka, "Incompatibilism and the Avoidability of Blame," Ethics, CVIII, 4 (July 1998): 685-701, pp. 694-95
19. "Evil Characters," American Philosophical Quarterly, XXXVI, 2 (April 1999): 137-48
20. "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," this JOURNAL, LXVI, 23 (December 4, 1969): 829-39
21. For example: David Blumenfeld, "The Principle of Alternate Possibilities," this JOURNAL, LXVIII, 11 (June 1971): 339-45
22. Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (New York: Oxford, 1983), pp 161ff
23. Margery Bedford Naylor, "Frankfurt on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities," Philosophical Studies, XLVI, 2 (September 1984): 249-58
24. David Widerker, "Libertarianism and Frankfurt's Attack on the Possibilities Principle of Alternate Possibilities," Philosophical Review, CIV, 2 (April 1995): 247-61
25. Carl Ginet, "In Defense of the Principle of Alternative Find Frankfurt's Arguments Convincing Possibilities: Why I Don't Find Frankfurt's Arguments Convincing," Philosophical Perspectives, X (1996): 403-17
26. Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford, 1996)
27. Copp; Keith Wyma, "Moral Responsibility and Leeway for Action," American Philosophical Quarterly, XXXIV, 1 (January 1997): 57-70
28. Otsuka; and Scott A. Davison, "Moral Luck and the Flicker of Freedom," American Philosophical Quarterly, XXXVI, 3 (July 1999): 241-51
29. For example: Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994)
30. Haji; Alfred Mele and David Robb, "Rescuing Frankfurt-Style Cases," Philosophical Review, CVII, 1 (January 1998): 97-112
31. and David Hunt, "Moral Responsibility and Avoidable Action," Philosophical Studies, XCVII, 2 (January 2000): 195-227
32. Clearly, I am here using 'luck' as follows: something that occurs as a something that occurs by chance, that is, something that is such that there is or was some probability of its not occurring. matter of luck is something that occurs beyond one's control. I am not using it, as some do (for example, Nicholas Rescher, "Luck," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, LXIV, 3 (November 1990): 5-19), as follows: something that occurs as a matter of luck is something that occurs by chance, that is, something that is such that there is or was some probability of its not occurring
33. Williams, "Moral Luck," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume L (1976): 115-35
34. Nagel, "Moral Luck," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume L (1976): 137-51
35. These terms were introduced in my "Luck and Moral Responsibility," Ethics, XCVII, 2 (January 1987): 374-86
36. Cf. footnote 8 above
37. Among philosophers, Feinberg (op. cit.)
38. and Nagel (op. cit.), are prominent exceptions
39. This is not to say that it cannot happen that one is in control of such a fact. On the contrary, it can. footnote 33 below fact. On the contrary, it can. See footnote 33 below
40. Contrast Copp (pp. 449-50), where being responsible for something and being responsible on the basis of something are identified. being responsible on the basis of something are identified
41. I borrow these terms from Nagel
42. It is sometimes maintained that taking luck seriously, in the manner that I have advocated, culminates in the view that no one is ever responsible. (See, for example, Michael Moore, Placing Blame (New York: Oxford, 1997), pp. 242-43.) As I have just shown, this is not so. The general principle upon which I have relied in my argument may be put as follows: if (a) someone's being F (where 'F' designates some complex property comprising both epistemic and metaphysical components) is sufficient for that person's being morally responsible to some degree x, then, if (b) it is true of S at some time that he or she would be F if p were true, and (c) p's being true is not in S's control at that time, then (d) S is morally responsible to degree x. You may think this principle too liberal. Suppose that Dave would have freely performed some heroic act if he had not been drunk at the time and that, by that time, his being drunk was not in his control. Should we really judge him to be as laudable as he would have been had he been sober and acted heroically? I am inclined to think that we should. Suppose that his being drunk was not his fault (the whisky was forced down his throat, as with Cary Grant in North by Northwest); then, just as Georg does not escape culpability due to luck, so too Dave should not be thought to "escape" laudability due to luck. Suppose that his being drunk was Dave's fault; then that is certainly part of his moral record, but I do not see why this should preclude his counterfactual heroism's also being part of his moral record. Still, I need not insist on this. If you like, you may qualify clause (d) of the principle I have just given as follows: unless S is morally responsible for the fact that (c) p's being true is not in S's control at that time. This would cover all the cases I have presented, since they all implicitly presuppose that Georg is not morally responsible for the fact that he was not in control of the relevant feature that prevented Henrik's death. You may think that this issue could be circumvented by reformulating clause (c) of the original principle as follows: p's being true is not in S's control at any time. Although I believe this revised principle to be true, it is too restrictive for my purposes. For instance, it would not cover the case in which Georg sneezes. Although Georg was not in control of his sneezing at the time he sneezed, there was a time at which he was in control of it. He could have shot and killed himself the day before; that would certainly have inhibited the sneeze
43. This is somewhat overstated. See footnote 9 above
44. Cf. R. E. Hobart, "Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable without It," Mind, XLIII, 169 (January 1934): 1-27. There are, of course, still others who argue that freedom is impossible, on the grounds that it is compatible with neither determinism nor indeterminism
45. Cf. Galen Strawson, Freedom and Belief (New York: Oxford, 1986)
46. Richard Double, The Non-Reality of Free Will (New York: Oxford, 1991)
47. Again, the term is Nagel's (op. cit.)
48. In "The Indeterminacy Paradox: Character Evaluations and Human aretaic judgments Psychology" (unpublished), Peter B. M. Vranas argues for a similar view concerning aretaic judgments
49. The Nature of Necessity (New York: Oxford, 1974)
50. Adams, "Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil," American Philosophical Quarterly, XIV, 2 (April 1977): 109-17
51. Peter van Inwagen, "Against Middle Knowledge," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXI (1997): 225-36
52. and Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, Exploring the Divine Attributes (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), chapter 6
53. Cf. Adams, "Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil," p. 111
54. van Inwagen, p. 231
55. See footnote 37 above, however
56. Cf. Daniel Statman, "Introduction," in Statman, ed., Moral Luck reprintings of many papers, including those of Williams, Nagel, Rescher (revised), and my Luck and Moral Responsibility. (Albany: SUNY, 1993), pp. 1-34, here p. 12; this volume contains reprintings of many papers, including those of Williams, Nagel, Rescher (revised), and my "Luck and Moral Responsibility."
57. See also Rescher, p. 14 in the original
58. Cf. Greco, pp. 94-95