Q&A: Does Moral Judgment Depend on Luck?
Does Moral Judgment Depend on Luck?
Question
Seemingly, of course not, because moral judgment is about what a person has control over. If someone saves a baby who eventually grows up to become a great murderer, we would not say that the defendant who saved him committed a crime. And along these lines, it is generally agreed that you judge a person based on what he has free choice over.
But suppose the following situation: two friends go out to a bar in the evening and drink too much alcohol. They both leave the bar and each takes his own car, except that one gets home safely, while the other has the bad luck that on the way he causes a car accident in which another person dies.
Would we, morally speaking, judge the second one as morally wicked, while not judging the first that way? Is the judgment different between them only because the second one was unlucky?
Answer
There is a field in ethics called moral luck that deals exactly with this (as part of the discussion of consequentialism). See columns 372, 253, and 229 about it. But this is philosophers’ nonsense. Clearly, moral judgment has nothing whatsoever to do with luck, nor with consequences. What changes based on luck is responsibility, not guilt. The two drunk drivers you described are equally wicked. The difference between the cases is only with regard to the responsibility imposed on them. They are supposed to bear the consequences of their actions, and consequences are a matter that depends on luck.