This is a paper I wrote for Ethics this semester, slightly edited.
Most of the time we morally judge people by their intentions because we recognize that the outcomes of our actions are hard to predict and often completely out of our control. But in some situations, we judge people according to circumstances outside their control and events they didn’t intend. This is what Thomas Nagel calls moral luck. Due to pure luck, we are either judged morally good or bad. In this paper, I will focus on one of the three kinds of moral luck that Nagel outlines: resultant moral luck. This concept is best demonstrated with an example. Imagine that a driver is driving along, and they become momentarily distracted and look away from the road. This causes them to run a red light. Now the situation diverges into two outcomes. The first possibility is that nothing happens. They realize what they have done and resolve to be more attentive in the future, but nothing bad happens so everyone goes on with life as usual. The second possibility is that the driver strikes and kills a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The pedestrian either being there or not being there is a circumstance entirely outside of the driver’s control, but it determines how we judge the driver — both legally and morally. A small bout of carelessness becomes a moral offense. In my opinion, moral luck should not be factored into our moral judgments of people. However, in real life this is a lot messier than thought experiments, so I understand the need to put more emphasis on outcomes in legal proceedings.
To better understand the parameters of moral luck it helps to tweak the careless driver thought experiment and compare it to slightly different situations. For example, it matters whether or not the original action or intention was something we would consider good or not. Not paying attention while driving is bad, but not necessarily morally bad. We all do it on occasion, and it’s not an immoral act in and of itself, but most people would agree that if consequences arise from your inattentiveness you should take responsibility. If we change the situation so that the pedestrian death wasn’t caused by the driver looking away, but the brake in the car failing, then the moral judgment shifts. The driver isn’t seen as a bad person. Add another small change — the driver knew the brakes needed to be fixed for weeks and didn’t get them fixed — and the driver is once again condemnable. This shows that we do care about intentions and a concept of “fault.” We can accept complete accidents, but only if there’s no opportunity to blame someone. A small wrongdoing can become a moral failing. Not getting your brakes fixed isn’t an immoral act in itself; but when this causes someone to die, most people would hold you responsible.
Empathy plays a big role in all of this as well. If you put yourself in the role of the careless driver, you probably think you deserve to be excused. It was an honest mistake and you didn’t mean to hurt anyone. But we can’t know the intentions of others fully and our empathy isn’t all-inclusive. If we have never accidentally hit someone with our car, it may be hard to understand how this is possible. We might think that we are more cautious and competent than those who have. We can’t see inside other people’s heads so we can make them out to be blameworthy. We don’t like a world where random incidences result in death, so we will latch onto any small human mistake as the cause. In reality, it comes down to moral luck so much of the time. Ideally, we would extend the benefit of the doubt to others and understand that people make mistakes and shouldn’t be condemned for them. We should treat others how we would want to be treated. This is a lot easier said than done.
To illustrate just how messy moral luck can get, now we’ll consider a real life example. Last month, Tulsa police officer Robert Bates fatally shot someone when he grabbed his gun instead of his taser. This is one of many incidents of police brutality and part of a very contentious current issue. In interviews, Bates stated that his intention was to pull his taser instead of his gun. Many consider this a legitimate use of force by a police officer, therefore making his intention good (or at least, not bad). Others think that using a taser might have been too much force for the situation, so they would see his intention as being bad. This differing judgment alone separates people into two camps; that Bates should be excused for his moral unluckiness, or that he should face consequences.
Another factor that blurs things is that many don’t believe his story. They think that he meant to kill the man and is lying about his intention to use the taser instead. This would change a mistake into murder, making him morally and legally condemnable. But it is impossible for anyone but Bates himself to know what he really intended and to know whether or not he is lying. People have dug into his past and questioned whether or not he is racist to try to prove his true intentions, but it’s more or less an impossible task.
Even if we assume that using the taser was a legitimate use of force and that Bates is being honest about his intentions, there’s another layer people are questioning: competency. This is not about morality directly, but often plays a part in situations of moral luck. To err is human, but sometimes mistakes have disastrous consequences. We hold some people to a higher standard because their mistakes would have worse consequences. We expect people to be good at their jobs and minimize mistakes; especially people like police officers, the military, politicians… those who could inflict a lot of harm by making a mistake. In regards to Bates, a lot of people have questioned how a trained officer could mistake his gun for his taser since the two are kept at different parts of the body. Bates has addressed this concern in interviews. He has said that before it happened to him he too thought that it was questionable when he heard of other officers doing the same thing. Now he claims that he understands how the mistake can be made in a high pressure situation. Some people won’t go as far to say that Bates is morally accountable but they will say that he wasn’t trained well enough and should not have been given access to lethal force.
This issue is complicated by people’s personal views on race and police brutality; someone’s deeply-held beliefs are likely to influence whether or not they believe Bates. Empathy is held unevenly. We are generally more likely to feel empathetic for those we relate to. Therefore, a police officer or family of police officers may have more empathy for Bates and understand how a mistake like this can be made. Despite varying opinions and beliefs, this current issue is still fundamentally a matter of moral luck. There are people who think that the only thing that matters is that someone has died. There are other people who think that the only thing that matters is that Bates didn’t intend to kill anyone. A lot of people are in the middle and think that both his intentions and the outcome should be taken into account. Bates has been charged with manslaughter. The entire concept of manslaughter shows that we care less about intentions and more about outcomes than we may believe. However, penalties for manslaughter are less severe than for intended murder. Our legal system reflects a lot of the tensions between outcome and intention.
It is easy to consider thought experiments and say that moral luck shouldn’t be considered in our judgments — that only people’s intentions should matter. I think that this is still true in theory. It would be great if we could see others’ (and our own) intentions transparently and then judge them according to only that. But the real world is so much more complicated. Since intentions are often opaque to us, we have to rely on outcomes for our legal proceedings. When someone has died and there is any doubt about fault, there should be a trial. People should be held accountable for mistakes, but much less harshly than for purposeful wrongdoing. Moral luck doesn’t easily lend itself to a solution, but considering it shows how complicated moral judgments really are. The concept can be applied to real life situations to shed some light on how people come around to different conclusions about the same event.
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