Putting the Luck Back Into Moral Luck.

Abstract

In philosophy, the more constraints we bring to the consideration of a problem the better. This is particularly the case in normative domains, in which the invocation of intuitions may be inevitable. Since our intuitions are never entirely consistent even in a single individual, and different individuals may have somewhat different intuitions (as recent work on experimental philosophy has been at pains to demonstrate), every account of a philosophically interesting explanandum is revisionary to some extent. Every account has costs, in terms of conflict with intuitions, and the narrower the set of considerations we bring to choosing between them, the harder it will be to engage in principled choice between rivals. Broader sets of considerations are often essential to showing that one (somewhat counterintuitive) account is better than another. Debates over moral luck concern concepts that are largely (though not exclusively) normative. We ought therefore to expect that the narrower the range of considerations that we bring to bear on this debate, the harder it will be to give genuinely principled reasons for preferring one account over others. This fact gives us a strong reason for preferring an account that is sensitive to the full range of considerations that can be brought to bear. Yet the majority of philosophers who have thought about moral luck ignore—or argue for ignoring—the “luck” component of “moral luck.” They substitute for “luck” a lack of control condition, sometimes even while acknowledging that “luck” cannot be captured by such a condition.1 In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to substitute “lack of control” for “luck.” If we make that substitution, we will both fail to understand the phenomenon of moral luck, narrowly construed, and we will cut ourselves off from the many ways in which considerations