Suppose Ryan spent the night partying and getting drunk and decides to drive himself home, on the way home Ryan hits a child, causing the child to die.
Now imagine Jim also spent the night partying and getting drunk, and also decides to drive himself home, but Jim manages to get home safely without causing any casualties or hitting anyone.
Should both Ryan and Jim be held equally responsible for their actions and/or be punished the same?
Suppose instead Ryan and Jim were not driving drunk, but were on their phones and got distracted for a few seconds, but Ryan hit and killed a child whereas Jim did not. The question can be asked again.
Should both Ryan and Jim be held equally responsible for their actions, and/or be punished the same? And would different situations warrant different answers? Why or why not?
Moral luck is when moral assessment or judgement of an action is partly/fully based on factors that are not in an agents control. There are a few types of moral luck but the important feature in all of them is that they have something to do with control. Moral luck is problematic if we only hold people responsible for things that are within their control. For example, if someone steps on your shoes we might want to blame them, but if we notice that they were pushed and had no control over where to step, then we would lose reason to blame them. If control truly is important then moral luck must be false, how can our moral assessment of an action depend on the uncontrollable?
Nevertheless, it does seem that sometimes we judge people differently based on uncontrollable factors. In the UK for example, you will get different punishments for drinking and driving depending on whether you killed someone or not. (https://www.gov.uk/drink-driving-penalties)
The specific type of moral luck the questions and scenarios focus on is ‘resultant moral luck’, where the uncontrollable feature of a moral situation is a consequence of an action. If resultant moral luck is true, then the uncontrollable consequence of an action can be a reason to hold someone worthy of responsibility.
A. Both people should be held equally responsible regardless of uncontrollable consequences.
B. Both people should not be held equally responsible. The consequences matter.
C. Other/Don’t know.
Comments (54)
Don't really see the argument for A in of when 2 people do something that may or may not result in harm except maybe if the harm was avoided due to action by the injured person. As an example, doesnt make sense to me to say Ryan and Jim should both be held able for killing someone. But if Ryan and Jim both attempted to run someone over and the only difference is that Ryan's person managed to jump out of the way in time, then I could see the argument that they should be treated the same.
Reply to: Mia
So we could go and talk about this point on “what if” scenarios or counterfactual but if you’re more interested in talking about something else then we can do that instead and leave this for now.
But before anything else I want to get clear on something. I don’t think this is working, I’m sure that I’m being at least somewhat clear, but perhaps I’m not. So, I want to first ask questions in the hopes that we at least get to some common ground. You keep saying I’ve said this and that about the issue. But if you added how I am precisely saying things, such inconsistency’s won’t come about. Im not saying you are purposely misrepresenting me, but I don’t feel as though your attacks are latching on to what I’m actually saying. That’s not to say that all your attacks don’t land, I do for example think the point you made about questioning my use of “what if” scenarios do land (whether I agree is a different matter of course), but talking about “what if” scenarios might require us to talk about another topic first and then get back to this issue and I don’t know if you want to do that. I’m not gonna keep trying to clarify what I said in the past cuz I can’t the whole conversation word for word and also the only way I can get clearer is by putting the argument in some form of syllogism and I cba to do that.
So the first question I think I should ask is if you think the control principle and its corollary is true.
(Control Principle) We are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are assessed for depends on factors under our control.
(Control Principle-Corollary) Two people ought not to be morally assessed differently if the only other differences between them are due to factors beyond their control.
The definitions are taken from this article if interested. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/
Reply to: Man
At this point youre going way back to the beginning of the convo. We've already addressed the control principle you argued and already talked about what control is and how it relates to drunk driving ect. I'd recommend you scroll back and address what's been said if you havent already or have more to add.
Since you are questioning where I am getting your arguments from, here are some screenshots, showing how this whole control thing and "someone who hit another should be punished equally as if they haven't" came from and changed throughout the convo. I tried to put them in order. The more recent comments you've said is if the driver had control they should be responsible. So I'm just going to agree to disagree on the point of quantifying how much "control" they have over their actions or how limited they made their own driving ability to determine responsibility, because on second thought they're small details that dont matter much to me.
Reply to: Mia
I mean I don’t really want to go back and dig up everything ive said, but from what you showed I don’t see the issue. Like the first screenshot you sent I thought I was being pretty clear on the distinction between result and action or action and consequences. There is a reason why this type of moral luck I’m referring to is called “resultant moral luck”. Without fully understanding the distinction it might sound like I’m contradicting my self, but in that same screen shot I made the distinction clear.
I recommend reading the article I sent because they give a good explanation of resultant luck, and in the article it might be easier to understand the distinction I’m trying to get at.
Also I am going way back because I think it’s first important to have a solid base of understanding with all the concepts used thus far. So I don’t believe we have adequately addressed the issue. If you think there is a better way to proceed then I’m happy to discuss that too.