## 1. Generating the Problem of Moral Luck and Kinds of Luck



The idea that morality is immune from luck finds inspiration in
Kant:



> 
> A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes,
> because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because
> of its volition, that is, it is good in itself... Even if, by a
> special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a step
> motherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry
> out its purpose--if with its greatest efforts it should yet
> achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a
> mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our
> control)--then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as
> something that has its full worth in itself. Usefulness or
> fruitlessness can neither add anything to this worth nor take anything
> away from it (Kant 1784 [1998], 4:394).
> 



Thomas Nagel approvingly cites this passage in the opening of his 1979
article, "Moral Luck." Nagel's article began as a
reply to Williams' paper of the same name, and the two articles
together articulated in a new and powerful way a challenge for anyone
wishing to defend the Kantian idea that an important aspect of
morality is immune from luck, or independent of what is outside of our
control.



To see exactly how the challenge arises, let us begin with the Control
Principle:



> 
> (CP) We are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are
> assessed for depends on factors under our control.
> 



It is intuitively compelling, as is the following corollary of it:



> 
> (CP-Corollary) Two people ought not to be morally assessed differently
> if the only other differences between them are due to factors beyond
> their control.
> 



Not only are the Control Principle and its corollary plausible in
themselves, they also seem to find support in our reactions to
particular cases. For example, if we find out that a woman who has
just stepped on your toes was simply pushed, then our temptation to
blame her is likely to evaporate. It seems that the reason for this is
our unwillingness to hold someone responsible for what is not in her
control. Similarly, if two drivers have taken all precautions, and are
abiding by all the rules of the road, and in one case, a dog runs in
front of the car and is killed, and not in the other, then, given that
the dog's running out was not something over which either driver
had control, it seems that we are reluctant to blame one driver more
than the other. Although we might expect different reactions from the
two drivers, it does not seem that one is deserving of a worse moral
assessment than the other.



At the same time, it seems that there are countless cases in which the
objects of our moral assessments do depend on factors beyond
agents' control. Even though "moral luck" seems to
be an oxymoron, everyday judgments suggest that there is a phenomenon
of moral luck after all. As Nagel defines it, "Where a
significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his
control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of
moral judgment, it can be called moral luck" (Nagel 1979, 59).
To bring out the conflict with the Control Principle even more
starkly, we will understand moral luck as follows:



> 
> (ML) moral luck occurs when an agent can be *correctly* treated
> as an object of moral judgment, despite the fact that a significant
> aspect of what he is assessed for depends on factors beyond his
> control.
> 



It is important to note that not all recent discussions of moral luck
have accepted this characterization of moral luck. Some recent work
has instead taken moral luck to be a species of a larger genus of
luck, of which there are other species, as well, such as epistemic
luck, or offered a conceptual analysis of a very general everyday
concept of luck. Such an approach does not build in the idea that luck
is opposed to control. (See Pritchard 2006, and Coffman (2015), who
argues in favor of a particular unified analysis of luck for agency
and epistemology, but also recognizes that there are other notions of
luck in play in some debates.) Considering moral luck alongside other
phenomena that go under the label "luck" might be fruitful
in some ways, but in order to engage in the debate as found in Kant
and Nagel and many others, moral luck must be understood as in
contrast to control.



We certainly seem to be committed to the existence of moral luck. For
example, we seem to blame those who have murdered more than we blame
those who have merely attempted murder, even if the reason for the
lack of success in the second case is that the intended victim
unexpectedly tripped and fell to the floor just as the bullet arrived
at head-height. Since whether the intended victim tripped or not is
not something in control of either would-be murderer, we appear to
violate the Control Principle and its corollary.



It might be tempting to respond at this point that what people are
really responsible for are their intentions or their
"willings," and that we are thus wrong to offer different
moral assessments in this pair of cases. Adam Smith (1790/1976), for
example, advocates this position, writing that



> 
> To the intention or affection of the heart, therefore, to the
> propriety and impropriety, to the beneficence or hurtfulness of the
> design, all praise or blame, all approbation or disapprobation, of any
> kind, which can justly be bestowed upon any action, must ultimately
> belong. (II.iii.intro.3.)
> 



This is a tempting response, and others have followed Smith in
defending something like it (e.g., Khoury 2019). But it faces
difficulties of its own. First, as we will see, the would-be murderers
offer only one of many cases in which our intuitive moral judgment
appears to depend on "results" beyond one's
intentions, as Smith himself noted (II.iii.intro.5). And even more
importantly, luck can affect even our "willings" and other
internal states (Feinberg 1970, 34-38). As Nagel develops the
point, there are other types of luck that affect not only our actions
but also every intention we form and every exertion of our wills.
Further, once these kinds of luck are recognized, we will see that not
one of the factors on which agents' actions depend is immune to
luck.



Nagel identifies four kinds of luck in all: resultant, circumstantial,
constitutive, and causal.



> 
> 
> **Resultant Luck**. Resultant luck is luck in the way
> things turn out. Examples include the pair of would-be murderers just
> mentioned as well as the pair of innocent drivers described above. In
> both cases, each member of the pair has exactly the same intentions,
> has made the same plans, and so on, but things turn out very
> differently and so both are subject to resultant luck. If in either
> case, we can correctly offer different moral assessments for each
> member of the pair, then we have a case of resultant *moral*
> luck. Williams offers a case of "decision under
> uncertainty": a somewhat fictionalized Gauguin, who chooses a
> life of painting in Tahiti over a life with his family, not knowing
> whether he will be a great painter. In one scenario, he goes on to
> become a great painter, and in another, he fails. According to
> Williams, we will judge Gauguin differently depending on the outcome.
> Cases of negligence provide another important kind of resultant luck.
> Imagine that two otherwise conscientious people have forgotten to have
> their brakes checked recently and experience brake failure, but only
> one of whom finds a child in the path of his car. If in any of these
> cases we correctly offer differential moral assessments, then again we
> have cases of resultant moral luck.
> 
> 
> 
> **Circumstantial luck**. Circumstantial luck is luck in
> the circumstances in which one finds oneself. For example, consider
> Nazi collaborators in 1930s Germany who are condemned for committing
> morally atrocious acts, even though their very presence in Nazi
> Germany was due to factors beyond their control (Nagel 1979). Had
> those very people been transferred by the companies for which they
> worked to Argentina in 1929, perhaps they would have led exemplary
> lives. If we correctly morally assess the Nazi collaborators
> differently from their imaginary counterparts in Argentina, then we
> have a case of circumstantial moral luck.
> 
> 
> 
> **Constitutive luck**. Constitutive luck is luck in who
> one is, or in the traits and dispositions that one has. Since our
> genes, care-givers, peers, and other environmental influences all
> contribute to making us who we are (and since we have no control over
> these) it seems that who we are is at least largely a matter of luck.
> Since how we act is partly a function of who we are, the existence of
> constitutive luck entails that what actions we perform depends on
> luck, too. For example, if we correctly blame someone for being
> cowardly or self-righteous or selfish, when his being so depends on
> factors beyond his control, then we have a case of constitutive moral
> luck. Further, if a person acts on one of these very character traits
> over which he lacks control by, say, running away instead of helping
> to save his child, and we correctly blame him for so acting, then we
> also have a case of constitutive moral luck. Thus, since both actions
> and agents are objects of moral assessment, constitutive moral luck
> undermines the Control Principle when it comes to the assessment of
> both actions and agents.
> 
> 
> 
> **Causal luck**. Finally, there is causal luck, or luck
> in "how one is determined by antecedent circumstances"
> (Nagel 1979, 60). Nagel points out that the appearance of causal moral
> luck is essentially the classic problem of free will. The problem of
> free will to which Nagel refers arises because it seems that our
> actions--and even the "stripped-down acts of the
> will"--are consequences of what is not in our control. If
> this is so, then neither our actions nor our willing are free. And
> since freedom is often thought to be necessary for moral
> responsibility, we cannot be morally responsible even for our
> willings. Sometimes the problem is thought to arise only if
> determinism is true, but this is not the case. Even if it turns out
> that determinism is false, but events are still caused by prior events
> according to probabilistic laws, the way that one is caused to act by
> antecedent circumstances would seem to be equally outside of
> one's control (e.g., Pereboom 2002, 41-54, Watson 1982,
> 9). Finally, it is worth noting that some have viewed the inclusion of
> the category of causal luck as redundant, since what it covers is
> completely captured by the combination of constitutive and
> circumstantial luck (Latus 2001).
> 
> 
> 



Upon reflection, it seems that we morally assess people differently
for what they do (or who they are) when their actions and personal
qualities depend on luck of all kinds. And it is not only in unusual
cases like that of would-be murderers that people are subject to the
various types of luck. For example, whether any of our intentions are
realized in action or not depends on some factors outside of our
control. Thus, if resultant luck undermines our assessments of moral
responsibility, as the Control Principle suggests, then many of our
everyday judgments ought to be abandoned. Still, applying the Control
Principle to resultant luck continues to leave open the possibility
that we are correctly assessed for things like our intentions, just
not for the results of our intentions. But consideration of the other
sorts of luck leads to more and more global skepticism about moral
assessment. For example, circumstantial luck affects even our
intentions, so it seems that we cannot be assessed in virtue of our
intentions. Once again, though, we might still be able to retain the
idea that we are morally assessable for something, even if only for
what we *would have intended* in various situations. But
reflection on constitutive luck and causal luck can make it seem as
though we cannot be properly assessed for anything we do. For if who
we are and therefore what we would have done are themselves subject to
luck, then according to the Control Principle, we cannot be properly
assessed even for those things. What is left as an object of
assessment? As Nagel puts it, "[t]he area of genuine agency, and
therefore of legitimate moral judgment, seems to shrink under this
scrutiny to an extensionless point" (1979, 66.) He goes on,



> 
> I believe that in a sense the problem has no solution, because
> something in the idea of agency is incompatible with actions being
> events, or people being things. But as the external determinants of
> what someone has done are gradually exposed, in their effect on
> consequences, character, and choice itself, it becomes gradually clear
> that actions are events and people things. Eventually nothing remains
> which can be ascribed to the responsible self, and we are left with
> nothing but a portion of the larger sequence of events, which can be
> deplored or celebrated, but not blamed or praised (1979, 68).
> 



If this is right, then we could not simply revise our everyday moral
judgments in accordance with a more diligent application of the
Control Principle; at best, if we adhere to the Control Principle, we
should refrain from making any moral judgments. Not everyone shares
this skepticism, and there is naturally a wide variety of responses to
the challenge of how to reconcile our adherence to the Control
Principle with our everyday judgments that commit us to the existence
of moral luck. At stake are not only our seemingly ubiquitous
practices of moral praise and blame, but also the resolution of other
central debates in ethics, philosophy of law, and political
philosophy.


## 2. Implications for Other Debates



Before turning to proposed solutions to the problem, it will be
helpful to see just what rests on resolving the problem of moral
luck.


### 2.1 The Justification of Laws and Punishment



Whether or not we accept, reject, or qualify the Control Principle has
implications for the law, and for punishment in particular. The
question of how resultant luck should affect punishment has been
debated at least since Plato (The Laws IX, 876-877). According
to the Control Principle, if results are not in our control, then our
attributions of moral responsibility and blameworthiness should not be
affected by them. And if, in addition, justified punishment tracks
moral blameworthiness, then the degree of punishment allotted for
crimes should not be based even in part on results. H.L.A. Hart puts
this conclusion in the form of a rhetorical question: "Why
should the accidental fact that an intended harmful outcome has not
occurred be a ground for punishing less a criminal who may be equally
dangerous and equally wicked?" (1968, 129). It turns out,
however, that the idea that results should not be taken into account
in determining punishment is in direct tension with a variety of
criminal laws, including, for example, the differential punishment
accorded attempted murder and murder in the United States. It is also
in direct tension with parts of the tort law in the United States such
as the differential treatment accorded the merely negligent person and
the negligent person whose negligence leads to harm. Interestingly,
however, the Model Penal Code takes a different approach for at least
some offenses, prescribing the same punishment for attempts and
completed crimes. (Model Penal Code, SS2.05, cmt. at 293-95;
Official Draft and Revised Comments 1985). And this approach is
favored by a number of legal theorists. 



Now the line of reasoning sketched above that rejects any tracking of
results in punishment depends not only on the Control Principle (or a
modified version of it), but also on a thesis that limits justified
punishment to the proper objects of moral blameworthiness. Both of
these premises can, and have been, questioned. But the debate in legal
theory about whether results should make a difference to punishment
very often centers on the premise about control, and thus, the status
of the Control Principle has important implications for the legal
debates concerning differential punishment for attempts and completed
crimes. (On this debate, see, for example, Alexander, Ferzan, &
Morse 2009, Davis 1986, Feinberg 1995, Herman 1995, Kadish 1994, Lewis
1989, Moore 1997 and 2009, Ripstein 1999, and Yaffe 2010. On luck and
tort law, see Waldron 1995, and for a wide-ranging discussion of moral
luck and the law, Enoch 2010.)



It is also important to note that the implications of the status of
the Control Principle for the law are not limited to results. For
example, if we accept the Control Principle in unqualified form, and
accept the premise constraining justified punishment to that for which
people are morally blameworthy, then it might turn out that no one is
morally blameworthy and so no punishment is ever justified.


### 2.2 Egalitarianism



Whether or not the Control Principle is true either in its general or
in some restricted form also has implications for the debate over
what, if anything, justifies egalitarianism. Let us understand
egalitarianism as the view that a distribution of relevant goods that
is more equal over a relevant population is more just than one that is
less equal. Inspired by the work of John Rawls, some egalitarians have
invoked the idea that our constitution and circumstances are out of
our control in the justification of their view. For example, Rawls
writes that



> 
> The existing distribution of income and wealth, say, is the cumulative
> effect of prior distributions of natural assets--that is, natural
> talents and abilities--as these have been developed or left
> unrealized, and their use favored or disfavored over time by social
> circumstances and such chance contingencies as accident and good
> fortune. Intuitively, the most obvious injustice of the system of
> natural liberty is that it permits distributive shares to be
> improperly influenced by these factors so arbitrary from a moral point
> of view. (Rawls 1971, p. 72.)
> 



Egalitarians who treat luck in this way are sometimes called
"luck egalitarians." (For examples of various versions of
luck egalitarianism, see Arneson 1997, 2001, Cohen 1989, Dworkin 1981
and 2000, Roemer 1996; for criticisms see Nozick 1974, Anderson 1999,
Hurley 2001, and Scheffler 2003.) It is often difficult to see exactly
how the appeal to constitutive luck is meant to function in various
arguments for egalitarianism. There are two very general ways the
reasoning might go: a "positive" and a
"negative" way (Nozick 1974). According to one positive
line of reasoning, it is first observed that one's natural
talents, circumstances of birth, and so on are things that are beyond
one's control, and at the same time, if a natural "free
market" system operates, these circumstances give rise to many
advantages and disadvantages relative to others. By the Control
Principle, one is not responsible for these advantages and
disadvantages. Further, it is wrong for people to have advantages and
disadvantages for which they are not responsible. Therefore, justice
requires a more egalitarian redistribution of goods to rectify this
wrong. Although this line of reasoning has received much criticism, it
is arguable that a weaker, and so less vulnerable
"negative" line of reasoning is really behind much of luck
egalitarianism (see, for example, Arneson 2001).



The "negative" luck argument for egalitarianism is really
a rebuttal to the objection that people should not be deprived in the
name of egalitarianism of what they have earned. The argument goes
like this: Take as a starting point a presumption in favor of equality
of condition. Next observe, as before, that one's natural
talents, circumstances of birth, and so on are things beyond
one's control, and, again, that these factors often give rise to
advantages and disadvantages relative to others. Therefore, by the
Control Principle, one is not responsible for many advantages and
disadvantages. If one is not responsible for these, then one is not
deserving of them. And if one is not deserving of them, then it is not
wrong to redistribute goods in a more egalitarian way that eliminates
many advantages and disadvantages.



The explicit appeal to the Control Principle in both of these lines of
reasoning shows ways in which the plausibility of Luck Egalitarianism
depends on the resolution of the problem of moral luck. It is also
notable that some luck egalitarians attempt to draw a line between
certain sorts of luck; for example, it is sometimes argued that if one
suffers a great financial setback due to one's choice to engage
in high-stakes gambling, then there might be circumstances in which it
would be wrong to seek to treat one in the same way as another whose
equal suffering was brought on by, say, a devastating earthquake. It
might be that underlying this move is acceptance of a restricted
version of the Control Principle; for example, one that allows that
one can be responsible for one's choices and their expected
consequences, but not for the results of one's choices that are
in large part beyond one's control. Here, too, it is clear that
how one resolves the problem of moral luck--whether one rejects
the possibility of moral luck altogether, accepts it in all forms, or
accepts certain kinds and not others--has implications for the
ultimate success of Luck Egalitarianism. Thus, much is at stake in the
resolution of the problem of moral luck. Before turning to suggested
solutions, a brief bit of ground-clearing will be necessary.


## 3. Kinds of Moral Assessment



The Control Principle states that we are morally assessable only to
the extent that what we are morally assessed for is under our control.
But it is important to recognize that there are many different kinds
of moral assessment. For example, there are judgments about a
person's character, for example, as "good" or
"bad" (sometimes called "aretaic" judgments).
There are also judgments of states of affairs that concern
people's actions as "good" or "bad"
(sometimes called "axiological" judgments. Then there are
judgments of actions as "right" or "wrong"
(sometimes called "deontic" judgments). There are also
judgments of responsibility, blame, and praise. As we will see, this
category can be further divided in various ways.



Distinguishing between the various notions of moral assessment allows
for the possibility that the Control Principle should be read as
applying to some, but not to other forms of moral assessment. For
example, some argue that there is a perfectly acceptable form of moral
luck which does not conflict with the true spirit of the Control
Principle, namely, luck in what you are responsible *for*
(e.g., Richards 1986, Zimmerman 2002). For example, it will be readily
admitted by many that the successful murderer can be responsible for a
death, whereas the one who unsuccessfully attempts murder is not
responsible *for a death*. At the same time, both could be
equally responsible, or blameworthy, in *degree* (Zimmerman
2002, 560) or both could be equal in their moral worth (Richards 1986,
171, Greco 1995, 91). If the most important kind of moral assessment
is, say, one's moral worth, then the Control Principle can be
suitably restricted to apply to assessments of moral worth. As will
become clear, a number of responses to the problem of moral luck
appeal to the general strategy of distinguishing among different forms
of moral assessment. Most focus on two families of moral assessment:
(i) the family that includes responsibility, blame, and praise for
actions and/or for one's own traits or dispositions, and (ii)
the family that includes the notion of the moral worth of an agent and
the moral quality of her character. (But see Zimmerman 2006 for a
recent discussion of luck and deontic judgments.)


## 4. Responding to the Problem: Three Approaches



There are three general approaches to responding to the problem of
moral luck: (i) to deny that there is moral luck despite appearances,
(ii) to accept the existence of moral luck while rejecting or
restricting the Control Principle, or (iii) to argue that it is simply
incoherent to accept or deny the existence of some type(s) of moral
luck, so that with respect to at least the relevant types of moral
luck, the problem of moral luck does not arise.



Some who respond to the problem of moral luck take a single approach
to all kinds of luck. But many take a mixed approach; that is, they
embrace one approach for one kind of luck and another approach for
another kind of luck, or address only a certain type(s) of luck, while
remaining silent about the other types. Is taking a mixed approach
legitimate? After all, it seems that if the Control Principle is true,
then there is no moral luck, and if it is false, then there can be any
type of moral luck. But, alas, matters are not necessarily so simple.
It is possible at least in theory to offer a principled reason for
qualifying the Control Principle so that it applies only to certain
sorts of factors and not others. At the same time, as we will see,
providing just such a principled way of distinguishing certain kinds
of luck from others turns out to be a formidable task.


### 4.1 Denial



Most of those who deny that one or more types of moral luck exist are
those who seek to preserve the centrality of morality in our lives.
But it is also possible to adopt a position of denying the possibility
of moral luck while at the same time showing that the Control
Principle, while true, prevents morality from playing the central role
we might have hoped for it. Something like this position seems to be
the one Williams adopts in his (1993) "Postscript" to
"Moral Luck," for example.


#### 4.1.1 Denying Moral Luck and Preserving the Centrality of Morality



Let us begin with the first and larger group of those who embrace the
approach of denying the existence of moral luck. One of their main
tasks is to explain away the appearance of moral luck. A second main
task is to paint a plausible and coherent picture of morality that
avoids luck.



An important tool for those who wish to explain away the existence of
moral luck is what Latus (2000) calls the "epistemic
argument" (see Richards, Rescher, Rosebury, and Thomson). To see
how it goes, let us begin by focusing on resultant luck. Why do we
feel differently about the successful and unsuccessful murderers?
Because, according to the epistemic argument, we rarely know exactly
what a person's intentions are or the strength of her commitment
to a course of action. One (admittedly fallible) indicator is whether
she succeeds or not. In particular, if someone succeeds, that is some
evidence that the person was seriously committed to carrying out a
fully formed plan. The same evidence is not usually available when the
plan is not carried out. Thus, rather than indicating our commitment
to cases of resultant moral luck, our differential treatment of
successful and unsuccessful murderers indicates our different
epistemic situations with respect to each. If we were in the
unrealistic situation of knowing that both agents had exactly the same
intentions, the same strength of commitment to their plans, and so on,
then we would no longer be inclined to treat them differently. Thomson
represents a number of those who employ this strategy when she asks,
"Well *do* we regard Bert [a negligent driver who causes
a death] with an indignation that would be out of place in respect to
Carol [an equally negligent driver who does not]? Even after we have
been told about how bad luck figured in his history and good luck in
hers?" And Thomson answers: "I do not find it in myself to
do so" (1993, 205). Not everyone shares this intuition, however,
as we will see in the next section.



The epistemic argument can be extended to circumstantial luck.
Consider again the Nazi sympathizer, and a counterpart who moved in
1929 to Argentina on business. The counterpart has exactly the same
dispositions as the Nazi sympathizer, but lives a quiet and harmless
life in Argentina. According to this line of reasoning, while it is
true that the counterpart is not responsible *for* the same
deeds as the Nazi sympathizer, he should be judged precisely for what
he would have done. Richards argues that we do judge people for what
they would have done, but that what they do is often our strongest
evidence for what they *would have done*. As a result, given
our limited knowledge, we might not be entitled to treat the
counterpart in the same way as the Nazi sympathizer, even though they
are equally morally deserving of such treatment (Richards 1986, 174
ff.). Thus, circumstantial luck, like resultant luck, affects the
basis available to us when we judge agents, but does not affect what
those agents deserve.



It is hard to see how the argument can be extended further to cover
constitutive or causal luck. But even if the epistemic argument is
limited in this way, it can still be part of a good overall strategy
of responding to the problem of moral luck insofar as it is possible
to take a mix-and-match approach to different kinds of luck.



A second strategy for explaining away the appearance of moral luck is
most naturally applied to resultant luck. Those who adopt this
strategy argue that it is understandable or even appropriate to feel
differently about the driver who kills a child than about the one who
does not. What is not appropriate is to offer different *moral*
assessments of their behavior (e.g., Rosebury, Richards, Wolf,
Thomson).



Williams elucidates a notion of "agent-regret," a
sentiment whose "constitutive thought" is a
subject's first-person thought that it would have been much
better had she done otherwise. Agent regret also requires a certain
sort of expression that is different from that of what we might call
"bystander regret." For example, it might include the
willingness to compensate a person who was harmed by one's
actions. In the case of a lorry driver who, through no fault of his
own, runs over a child, Williams writes, "we feel sorry for the
driver, but that sentiment co-exists with, indeed presupposes, that
there is something special about his relation to this happening,
something which cannot merely be eliminated by the consideration that
it was not his fault" (1976 [1993b, 43]).



It is possible to take this thought still further and argue that it is
*reasonable* to expect and perhaps even demand that one who
kills the child respond in a different way from the other. For
example, Wolf argues that there is a "nameless virtue"
which consists in "taking responsibility for one's actions
and their consequences" (2001, 13). It is the virtue of taking
responsibility in some sense for the consequences of one's
actions, even if one is not responsible for them. In some ways it is
akin to the virtue of generosity in that it "involves a
willingness to give more...that justice requires" (14). To
take another example, Richards suggests that we often have negative
feelings about those who cause harm, even when we realize that they
are not deserved, and that these can be feelings we ought to have. For
example, it ought to be distressing for a parent to encounter a girl
who accidentally dropped your baby, even if you know that no one could
have held on (1986, 178-79). The feelings that both agents and
observers naturally do or even ought to have can easily be confused
with judgments that commit us to the existence of moral luck. Yet once
we distinguish these legitimate feelings from moral judgments, we can
and should eliminate the judgments that entail a commitment to moral
luck. Again, this strategy is most naturally applied to resultant
luck.



Recently, critics of this strategy have objected to it on a variety of
grounds. For example, it has been argued against Wolf's view, in
particular, that once we acknowledge the  *appropriateness*  of
greater self-blame in cases of greater harm, no good reason for
denying moral luck remains, and indeed we have good reason for
accepting it. (See Moore 2009, 31 ff.) It has also been argued that
Wolf's description of our phenomenology is at best incomplete:
it is not merely that we wish people to blame themselves more when
they cause greater harm, but that we judge them to be more
blameworthy. Our judgments of greater responsibility also require
explaining away. (See Domsky 2004.)



A variant of this strategy employs the idea that one can justify
differential *treatment* of, say, the negligent driver who hits
a child and one who does not, even if both are equally morally
blameworthy. For example, Henning Jensen (1984) argues that while both
are equally culpable, there are consequentialist reasons for not
subjecting the first negligent driver to the same degree of blame
*behavior*. Since we all take some risks, and some are less
likely to lead to harm than others, to blame everyone for simply
taking such risks would require such a high standard of care as to
risk destroying our ability to function as moral agents. On the other
hand, requiring punishment for or compensation from those who do cause
harm is required to provide a "restorative value" for
those agents and preserve their integrity.



A third strategy is to point out that we mistakenly infer moral luck
from legal luck. While there might be good reasons for the law to
treat people differently even if what they do depends on factors
beyond their control, we (understandably) make the mistaken inference
that the law directly reflects correct moral assessment in such cases.
For example, there are a number of reasons why the law might
justifiably punish successful crimes more severely than merely
attempted ones, including the balancing of deterrence and privacy
(Rosebury 521-24). If reasons like this provide the
justification for the differential treatment of such cases in the law,
then it would indeed be wrong to infer that the successful and
unsuccessful murderers are deserving of different moral assessments.
However, the fact that we *do* make such a mistaken inference
explains why we often commit ourselves to the existence of moral luck,
when reflection can show that doing so is a mistake.



In addition to explaining how there can be an *appearance* of
moral luck, despite the fact that there is not any, some of those who
wish to deny the existence of moral luck take on the task of offering
a coherent and plausible picture of morality that avoids luck.



Some of those engaged in the free will debate have denied the
existence of causal, and perhaps also of constitutive, moral luck by
offering a distinctive metaphysical account of human agency. (See, for
example, Chisholm, Taylor, Clarke, and O'Connor. See also
Pereboom who argues that such an account is coherent, but not true.)
The view is known as "Agent-Causal Libertarianism," and
the basic idea is that agents themselves cause actions or at least the
formation of intentions, without their being caused to do so. Thus,
the agent herself, exercising her causal powers, is an undetermined
cause of her intentions. On some agent causal views, only the agent,
as opposed to events caused by other events is the cause of the
intention (e.g., O'Connor), while on another view, the agent
acts in tandem with events that probabilistically cause the action
(Clarke 1993). Particularly on the first sort of view, we seem to
avoid the conclusion that our actions must depend on causal factors
that are beyond our control. At the same time, it is not clear exactly
how the move to agent causation is supposed to restore the kind of
control we seek. For we might ask why we should consider the agent
cause in control of her actions, while we can imagine that other
substance causes (e.g., tables or billiard balls) would not be in
control of what they cause. It might be stipulated that the exercise
of the particular causal power to cause intentions simply is an
exercise of control, but we need further details to see that the
challenge has not been stipulated away. (See Clarke 2005 and Mele 2006
for recent discussions of agent causation and luck.) It is also
important to note that Agent-Causal views are consistent with actions
and even intentions depending in part on factors beyond one's
control, such as the reasons people have available at the time of
decision or action.



In a very different way, as we have seen, it is possible to take on a
part of the task of describing a coherent picture of luck-free
morality by identifying an object of moral assessment in the case of
circumstantial luck. For example, Richards suggests that people should
be assessed for what they would have done in different circumstances.
More fundamentally, people should be assessed for their characters, of
which their actions in different circumstances are manifestations.



Zimmerman begins where Richards leaves off, proposing to pursue
"the implications of the denial of the relevance of luck to
moral responsibility" to their "logical conclusion"
(2002, 559). With the possible exception of some kinds of constitutive
luck, Zimmerman rejects the possibility of moral luck of all four
kinds while proposing a coherent picture of moral assessment. He
rejects the possibility of resultant luck by first acknowledging that
a man who (by luck) succeeds in his plan to cause harm is responsible
for more things than one who (by luck) fails to carry out an identical
plan. But, according to Zimmerman, we must distinguish between
*scope* and *degree* of responsibility. Both men are
responsible to the same degree, and it is this kind of moral
assessment to which the Control Principle ought to apply. When it
comes to circumstantial luck, things are more difficult. For when it
comes to cases like those of resultant luck in which we want to hold
people responsible, we can find *something* to hold them
responsible for, namely, their plans or intentions or attempts.
However, when it comes to cases of circumstantial luck, such as the
Nazi collaborator and his counterpart, there are no counterpart plans
or intentions or attempts that have simply failed to come to fruition.
Zimmerman suggests that there is nothing that we hold the counterpart
responsible for; in this case, the *scope* of the agent's
responsibility is 0. But we can and should still hold him responsible
to the same *degree* as the Nazi sympathizer. He is responsible
*tout court* even if he is not responsible *for*
anything (2002, 565). He is responsible in the sense that his moral
record is affected for better or worse in virtue of something about
him. For there is something in virtue of which he is responsible,
namely, his being such that he would have freely performed the very
same wrong actions had he been in the same circumstances as the Nazi
sympathizer.



This reasoning can be extended still further to cover the case of
constitutive and even one kind of causal luck. Suppose that Georg does
not kill Henrik, and George does kill Henry. Further suppose that
"the reason for Georg's not killing Henrik was that he was
too timid, or that he had a thick skin and Henrik's insults did
not upset him in the way that Henry's insults upset George, or
that he was deaf and simply did not hear the insults that Henrik
hurled his way. If it is nonetheless true that Georg would have freely
shot and killed Henrik but for some such feature of the case over
which he had no control, then, I contend, he is just as responsible,
in virtue of this fact, as George is" (2002, 565). Zimmerman
acknowledges that there are features of one's constitution that
are essential to who one is, although he denies that timidity,
thick-skinnedness, and so on count among them. However, if such
features are essential, then it will not be true to say that had Georg
lacked them, he would have freely killed Henrik. Since Georg is
responsible, on Zimmerman's view, precisely in virtue of such
counterfactuals being true, he would be absolved of responsibility if
such features were essential to him. For this reason, Zimmerman
concedes that "the role that luck plays in the determination of
moral responsibility may not be entirely eliminable..."
(2002, 575).



Finally, Zimmerman goes on to claim that his reasoning applies even to
cases in which a person's actions are causally determined. If it
is true that, say, Georg would have killed Henrik if his deterministic
causal history, over which he has no control, had been different, then
Georg is as responsible as he would have been had he killed Henrik in
a world that was not determined. The upshot of the application of
Zimmerman's reasoning is that we are all responsible,
blameworthy, and even praiseworthy in ways we have never imagined. If
Zimmerman is right, there are countless counterfactuals that apply to
each and every one of us, in virtue of which we are responsible to one
degree or another. The view thus takes the Control Principle extremely
seriously, and applies it in the broadest possible way. The price we
pay for "taking luck seriously" is that our everyday moral
judgments are, if not always mistaken, at the very least radically
incomplete.



A number of objections can be raised to Zimmerman's view,
including (i) that at least large classes of the counterfactuals in
virtue of which he thinks people are responsible lack truth value
(e.g., Adams 1977, Nelkin 2004, Zimmerman 2002, 572, and Zimmerman
2015), and (ii) that he is simply mistaken that one can be responsible
without being responsible for anything. A third sort of objection
takes the form of a challenge to offer a precise schema of the
relevant counterfactuals that can plausibly account for the feature of
agents in virtue of which they are responsible to the same degree as
others who are blameworthy for wrongful acts..



Hanna (2014) poses this third sort of objection by first trying to
identify a general form of such a counterfactual. For example, he
proposes as a first pass: 



> 
> (G) If an agent would freely perform some action O if she were
> in circumstances C, then her degree of responsibility is the same as
> it would have been if she had freely O-ed in C.
> 



But such a counterfactual schema cannot be correct. For consider the
following case: Jimmy promised his spouse to stop eating at the local
McDonald's. But were he to drive by it while it is open, he
would [freely] succumb to temptation and break his promise. He avoids
driving by the McDonald's so as not to break his promise. Surely
Jimmy is not as blameworthy as he would have been if he had driven by
the McDonald's and broken his promise. Thus, this counterfactual
schema fails to ground the anti-luck verdict that one is equally
blameworthy as someone who performed a bad act in virtue of the fact
that one would have done so in the circumstances. 



As Hanna recognizes, the defender of circumstantial luck can improve
the counterfactual schema in various ways so as to try to avoid such
counterexamples. But each improvement seems to simply bring a clever
new apparent counterexample. Perhaps counterfactuals simply cannot do
the job being asked of them.



Deniers of circumstantial and constitutive luck have various options
in reply, however. They can continue to seek another schema for the
relevant counterfactuals, or identify a more fundamental feature of
agents which give rise to counterfactuals that merely serve as
evidence of such a feature without carrying all of the explanatory
weight themselves. Or they can point out that a person's overall
degree of blameworthiness depends not only on a single counterfactual,
and point out that there might be other relevant counterfactuals that
are also true of the agent, some of which might mitigate or even make
the agent laudable. When one keeps all of these counterfactuals in
view at the same time, it becomes much more intuitive that agents for
whom an identical set of counterfactuals is true are indeed equally
blameworthy (or praiseworthy). (See Zimmerman 2015.) At this point, we
again seem to reach a potential clash over intuitions. For example,
Hanna offers the case of Jenny who "lives in a stable, idyllic,
isolated utopian society. Consequently, she hasn't developed to
a sufficient degree all the traits that would dispose her to resist
tyranny. Unfortunately, for these reasons...Jenny would
collaborate if she were in Nazi-Germany-like conditions."
Hanna's intuition is that Jenny is not as culpable as an actual
Nazi collaborator, whereas it seems that Zimmerman, having all the
counterfactuals in view for each of the two agents, has the opposite
reaction. It seems that a full adjudication of the debate will require
a comparison of entire frameworks, including appeal to an even larger
range of intuitions about cases, general moral principles, and
explanatory power, among other things. 



Even if one or more of the objections to Zimmerman's argument
are ultimately on target, his approach is very helpful in showing what
an attempt to follow out the denial of moral luck to its logical
conclusion looks like. 



Unlike Zimmerman, most of those who adopt the denial strategy do so
only for certain sorts of moral luck. By treating all sorts of luck in
the same way (with the exception of constitutive luck with respect to
one's essential properties), Zimmerman challenges those who
adopt this strategy to defend the drawing of the line between
resultant and other sorts of luck. As we will see, this very same
challenge is also issued by those who take a diametrically opposed
position and accept all forms of moral luck.


#### 4.1.2 Denying Moral Luck and Setting Aside Morality in Favor of Ethics



Before turning to the approach of accepting the existence of moral
luck, it remains to consider the view ascribed earlier to
Williams' "Postscript" (1993). Extracting
Williams' position on "Moral Luck" is a notoriously
difficult task, made easier only by Williams' own acknowledgment
in the "Postscript" that his original article "may
have encouraged" some misunderstandings (251). Many commentators
have read Williams as advocating the position that moral luck exists
and is deeply threatening to morality. There is certainly a line of
reasoning in Williams' original article that suggests this (see
37-42, 51-53). But in the Postscript, Williams makes a
distinction between morality and ethics that allows him to deny the
existence of moral luck, thus preserving a certain integrity for
morality.



Williams understands morality to embody the Kantian conception of it
described above, accepting that the essence of the Control Principle
is "built into" morality so understood (1993, 252). At the
same time, examples like the Gauguin case described earlier show that
one can be *rationally justified* in one's decision in
virtue of its outcome. Further, such a case shows that our overall
value judgment of someone's decision can depend on factors
beyond the control of the agent. We must conclude, then, that there is
a kind of value that competes with, if not trumps, moral value. And if
that is right, then we must give up "the point of
morality" so understood, namely, to "provide a shelter
against luck, one realm of value (*indeed, of supreme value*)
that is defended against contingency" (1993, 251, emphasis
mine). It seems that morality can only insulate itself from luck at
the expense of foregoing supreme value. Once we acknowledge this cost,
we can keep morality intact (although skeptical doubts about its
ability to resist luck can still be raised), but we have lost our
reason to care about it. Instead, Williams suggests, we should care
about *ethics*, where ethics is understood to address the most
general question of how we ought to live.



Questions can be raised about this line of reasoning. For example, we
can ask whether there is any sense in which Williams' Gauguin
ought to have left his family, despite the fact that the result was so
welcome. If there is not, then Williams has not shown that morality
competes with, or is trumped by, some other value. From the other
direction, we can ask whether Williams is right that morality loses
its point if it is not the supreme source of value. Of course, even if
Williams' reasoning is unsound, the conclusion could still be
correct, and others have offered different routes to it.



The idea that we ought to care about ethics, understood as Williams
does, finds inspiration in the work of Aristotle. Aristotle is
concerned with the nature of the good life in the broadest
sense--in what he calls "eudaimonia," often
translated as "happiness". Aristotle defends the idea that
happiness consists in being a virtuous person over a complete life,
and, in turn, the idea that being a virtuous person requires not only
that one have virtuous qualities and dispositions, but also that one
act on them. Luck enters into the account in at least two ways. First,
on Aristotle's account, one becomes a virtuous person by
undergoing the right kind of upbringing and training. Since whether
one receives this training is at least to some extent beyond
one's control, one's ability to live a virtuous life is
deeply dependent on luck. Second, the fact that being a virtuous
person requires the performance of certain kinds of activities means
that the world must cooperate in various ways in order for one to be
truly virtuous, and so be truly happy. Aristotle writes that happiness
"needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not
easy, to do noble acts without proper equipment" (1984 NE 1099a
31-33). For example, in order to engage in acts of generosity,
one must have resources at one's disposal to share. And since
having the right equipment is at least to some extent a matter of
circumstantial luck, the value of one's life itself will depend
in part on what is not in one's control. On one interpretation
of Aristotle, luck enters into the account in yet a third way. Acting
in accordance with virtue does not suffice for happiness, on this
interpretation, although it is the "dominant component" of
Aristotle's account of happiness (Irwin 1988, 445). According to
this view, one must also have a minimum provision of external goods
(e.g., health, security, access to resources) whose contribution to
happiness is independent of their making virtuous activity possible.
If this is right, then the value of one's life will depend at
least in part on factors beyond one's control. In sum, while
there is some dispute about whether Aristotle thought *more*
than a life of virtuous activity is required for happiness, it is
clear that luck plays a significant role in determining both whether
people are truly virtuous and whether people's lives are good in
the broadest sense. Hence, "the fragility of goodness"
(Nussbaum).


### 4.2 Acceptance



All of those who accept the existence of some type of moral luck
reject the Control Principle and the Kantian conception of morality
that embraces it. As a result, they must either explain how we can
revise our moral judgments and practices in a coherent way or show
that we are not committed to the Control Principle in the first
place.


#### 4.2.1 Accepting Moral Luck and Revising our Practices



Some who accept luck argue that doing so requires a significant change
in our moral practices. Browne (1992), for example, suggests that if
the Control Principle is false, we ought not to respond to an
agent's wrongdoing with anger and blame that is
"against" him, but rather with anger that does not include
hostility or the desire to punish. Nevertheless, we can still respond
to the successful murderer with more of the "right" kind
of anger than we feel toward the unsuccessful one. One question that
might be raised here is whether we are left with enough of our
ordinary conception of morality to include genuine notions of blame
and responsibility.


#### 4.2.2 Accepting Moral Luck Without (As Much) Revision



Others suggest that the Control Principle does not have nearly the
hold on us that Nagel and Williams assume, and that rejecting it would
not change our practices in a significant way. Among these are some
who focus on the free will debate and others who take on the broader
problem of moral luck directly.


##### 4.2.2.1 Accepting Moral Luck and the Free Will Debate



A large group who accept moral luck do not explicitly address the
problem of moral luck as so formulated because they focus on what
Nagel identifies as a narrower issue, namely, that of free will. One
traditional problem of free will is posed by the following line of
reasoning: if determinism is true, then no one can act freely, and,
assuming that freedom is necessary for responsibility, no one can be
responsible for their actions. Compatibilists have argued that we can
act freely and responsibly even if determinism is true. Since most do
not adopt Zimmerman's radical account of moral assessment in
which one can be responsible despite not being responsible
*for* anything, they admit the existence of causal moral luck.
If, as some have argued, causal luck is exhausted by constitutive and
circumstantial luck, then they also accept that there can be these
sorts of moral luck, as well.



A basic compatibilist strategy is to argue that agents can have
control over their actions in the sense required for freedom and/or
responsibility even if they do not control the causal determinants of
those actions. For example, if one acts with the ability to act in
accordance with good reasons (Wolf 1990) or if one acts with
"guidance control" which consists in part of acting on a
reasons-responsive mechanism for which one has taken responsibility,
(Fischer and Ravizza 1998), one can be responsible for one's
actions. The key move here is to distinguish between different kinds
of factors over which one has no control. If one's actions are
caused by factors that one does not control and that prevent one from
having or exercising certain capacities, then one is not responsible.
However, if one's actions are caused by factors that one does
not control, but that do allow one to have and exercise the relevant
capacities, then one can be "in control" of one's
actions in the relevant sense, and so responsible for one's
actions.



Interestingly, compatibilists are often silent on the question of
resultant and circumstantial moral luck, although these forms of luck
might represent an underutilized resource for them. For if it turns
out that the luck--or lack of control--delivered by
determinism is but one source of luck among others, then determinism
does not embody a unique obstacle to free will and responsibility, at
least when it comes to control. This is to expand the application of a
widely used compatibilist strategy to show that when it comes to
*causal* luck, compatibilists are not alone.



For within the free will debate, compatibilists are not alone in
accepting the existence of certain types of luck. Many libertarians
assume that our actions are caused by prior events (not themselves in
our control) in accordance with probabilistic laws of nature (see, for
example, Kane 1996, 1999, Nozick 1981). Given this view, it is natural
to conclude that if determinism is false, there is at least one kind
of luck in what sort of person one decides to be and so in what
actions one performs. That is, there is luck in the sense that there
is no explanation as to why a person chose to be one way rather than
another. At the same time, Kane, for example, denies that there must
be luck in the sense that one's choices are flukes or accidents
if determinism is false. In Kane's view, what is important is to
be free from luck of the second kind. For even if one's action
is not determined, it can still be the case that the causes of
one's action are one's own efforts and intention. And if
one's action is caused by one's own efforts and
intentions, then one's action is not lucky in the sense of being
a fluke or accident. But while this shows that one's actions can
be free of luck of an important kind, it still leaves unaddressed luck
of a third kind, namely the kind at issue in the moral luck debate:
the dependence of agents' choices on factors beyond their
control. And it appears that on the libertarian view in question, our
choices are indeed subject to luck of this sort. (See Pereboom 2002
and 2014 for a discussion of the similar burdens shared by
compatibilists and this sort of libertarian.) Only the agent-causal
libertarians discussed above offer an account that aims specifically
at eliminating a type of moral luck. (See Levy 2011 for an argument
that no account of free will can avoid challenges concerning
luck.)


##### 4.2.2.2 Accepting Moral Luck and Distinctive Conceptions of Morality



It is also possible to argue that we are not committed to the Control
Principle by taking on the problem of moral luck directly.



One strategy is to argue that moral luck is only a problem for an
overly idealized conception of human agency. But once we adopt a
realistic conception of human agency, the problem evaporates. Margaret
Urban Walker (1991) argues in this vein that moral luck is only
problematic for a conception of moral agents as "noumenal"
or pure (238). In contrast, adopting a conception of morality that
applies to human beings in all of their impurity will not be
threatened by moral luck. According to Walker, the Control Principle
is far from obvious, and we would not want to live in a world in which
it held sway. The argument appears to rest on the idea that without
moral luck, we would lack several virtues that allow us to help each
other in most essential ways. Our very reactions to moral luck can be
virtuous. For example, by accepting that our "responsibilities
outrun control," we are able to display the virtue of
dependability by accepting that we will be there for our friends, even
if their needs are not in our control. In contrast, pure agents who
are only responsible for what they control "may not be depended
on, much less morally required, to assume a share of the ongoing and
massive human work of caring, healing, restoring, and cleaning-up on
which each separate life and the collective one depend." (247).
Thus, if we focus on our actual moral commitments, we will see that
the Control Principle is neither attractive nor necessary for
morality.



It is not obvious that a world in which people denied the existence of
moral luck would be as bleak as the one Walker envisions. Moral luck
skeptics have material with which to question Walker's claim.
For example, those who deny resultant moral luck can still agree that
agents have an obligation to minimize their risks of doing harm, and
those who deny circumstantial moral luck can still agree that agents
have an obligation to cultivate qualities that prepare them to act
well in whatever circumstances arise.



A second strategy for rejecting the Control Principle turns
Nagel's argument on its head by taking as a starting point
ordinary judgments and reactions that reveal our implicit rejection of
the Control Principle. Adams (1985) adopts this strategy, drawing our
attention to common practices, such as blaming people for their racist
attitudes even if we do not think that such people are in control of
their attitudes. Since Adams focuses primarily on agents' states
of mind that have intentional objects such as anger and
self-righteousness, it is possible to see him as accepting the
existence of constitutive moral luck in particular. But it is also
possible to adopt the same sort of strategy for other sorts of luck,
including resultant luck. Moore (1997 and 2009), for example, points
to the fact that we resent those who succeed in causing harm more than
those who do not, we feel greater guilt when we ourselves cause harm,
and when we face decisions, we feel that the consequences of matter to
the moral quality of our choices. According to Moore, the best
explanation of these reactive attitudes, such as guilt and resentment,
is that their objects are genuinely more blameworthy.



Now opponents who deny the existence of moral luck have ways of
explaining away these phenomena. When it comes to cases of
constitutive luck, like the case of the racist, they can say that we
confuse agents' blameworthiness for their character and
attitudes with blameworthiness for their actions that manifest these
offending attitudes and for their failure to take steps to eliminate
them. On reflection, we can see that we ought to blame the racists
only for their actions or omissions, not for the attitudes themselves
over which they have no control. Similarly, as we saw earlier, when it
comes to resultant luck, moral luck skeptics have a variety of strong
alternative explanations of our judgments and emotional responses. It
is possible that there is a disagreement here at the level of
intuitions: some find it easier on reflection to reject moral
judgments that depend on results than others. Further, those accepting
resultant moral luck face a challenge of articulating a positive
theory of how exactly results affect one's moral status while at
the same time accounting for our intuitions. Sverdlik (1988) argues
that it is not obvious how such a challenge can be met.



At this point in the debate, those who accept moral luck offer
ordinary judgments and responses in their defense, while moral luck
skeptics offer alternative explanations of those practices and hold up
the Control Principle itself, together with other reflective intuitive
judgments, as reason to reject moral luck. We seem to have something
of a stalemate. So it is no surprise that those who accept moral luck
tend not to rely exclusively on ordinary judgments to make their case,
but rather go on to try to undermine the Control Principle in other
ways.



Another way of trying to undermine the appeal of the Control Principle
itself is to show how it might be mistaken for something else that is
more plausible. For example, Adams (1985) recognizes that there are
limits to what we can be responsible for, and writes that the states
of mind "for which we are directly responsible are those in
which we are responding, consciously or unconsciously, to data that
are rich enough to permit a fairly adequate ethical appreciation of
the state's intentional object and of the object's place
in the fabric of personal relationships" (26). Thus, according
to Adams' conception of morality, adherents of the Control
Principle are correct in an important respect, namely, in their
understanding that what one is responsible for springs in the right
way from *oneself*. But this requirement is more general than a
strict requirement of control, and although easily confused with the
Control Principle, is superior to it, on this view.



Adopting the same general strategy, Moore (1997) identifies still
other principles with which the Control Principle might be confused.
He points out that when we use the word "luck" in the
context of moral assessment, we tend *not* to mean that the
person lacked control over what he did, but rather that what happened
was far off of "some moral baseline of the normal" (213).
For example, consider two would-be murderers, one of whom fires his
gun and hits his target, and the other of whom fires in the same way,
from the same distance, and so on, but whose bullet is deflected by an
unexpected and unusually strong wind. Moore suggests that the first
gunman is not "lucky" in the ordinary sense, even though
it is true that whether a hurricane-force wind arose or not was not in
his control. According to Moore, there is something intuitively right
about morality being immune to luck, but only if we understand
"luck" in the sense of "freakishness."
Further, the successful murderer *is* "in control"
of his action in the normal sense of the word "control,"
even though he doesn't control the wind. Thus, while we do care
about luck and control in making both moral and legal assessments,
they aren't Nagel's concepts, on this view. Thus,
according to Moore, there is no contradiction in our everyday
commitments.



Now those who think we are naturally drawn to the Control Principle
can respond by pointing out both the intuitive plausibility of the
principle in the abstract and the cases described earlier that seem to
support it. They might also accept that Adams and Moore have pointed
out further necessary conditions for responsibility, while still
maintaining that the Control Principle is true. Again, differing
intuitions about cases and about the Control Principle have the
potential to make a big difference to one's view at this
point.



Michael Otsuka offers yet another principle in place of the Control
Principle: One is only blameworthy in cases in which one had the kind
of control that would have allowed one to be entirely blameless.
Consistent with this is a *kind* of moral luck, however:
one's blameworthiness can vary *in degree* as a function of
harm done, where harm done may be affected by what is not in
one's control. Although one cannot be blameworthy if one lacked
the control necessary to avoid blameworthiness, one's
*degree* of blameworthiness can increase if the risk one takes
comes out badly due to circumstances one could do nothing to avoid.
For example, in the case of the two assassins, both are blameworthy,
but, Otsuka argues, the one who hits and kills his target is more
blameworthy. In sketching the view, Otsuka draws a parallel with
Dworkin's (1981) treatment of option luck in the debate over
egalitarianism. In that debate, a distinction is drawn between option
luck ("a matter of ...whether someone gains or loses through
accepting an isolated risk he or she should have anticipated and might
have declined") and brute luck ("a matter of how risks
fall out that are not that sense...gambles)." If one's
luck is just brute-one did not assume a risk, as when one has done
everything a careful driver would do, and due to sheer luck, a dog
runs into the street and one drives over it-one is not blameworthy.
But if one assumes a risk by knowingly and freely driving recklessly,
and, as a result, one kills a dog, then one is blameworthy. And,
further, one might be more blameworthy in the case in which one kills
the dog than in the case in which one takes the same risk but luckily
reaches home without hitting anything. It would be reasonable, on
Otsuka's view, for the dog owner whose dog is killed to be more
resentful than the one whose dog escapes, and this supports the
conclusion that the driver who kills the dog is more blameworthy than
the one who does not. 



The parallel to option and brute luck is suggestive, but a defender of
the unqualified Control principle has resources here. Appealing to the
distinction between scope and degree, one might grant that the
reckless driver is, importantly, responsible for more things
(including a death), but not more blameworthy. In fact, the parallel
to the treatment of option luck in the debate about distributive
justice may fit best if we are interested in what we are responsible
*for*, rather than how responsible we are. Further, we have seen
reason to think that on reflection we should not blame one reckless
driver more than another. One might question Otsuka's premise
that degree of blameworthiness is to be understood in terms of
appropriate degree of attitudes such as resentment (or even the weaker
premise that the degree of blameworthiness tracks the appropriate
degree of such attitudes). But even if we accept this premise, we
might conclude that while it is understandable that one dog owner
would be more resentful than the first, more resentment is not
actually justified. This observation takes us back to the subtle
nature of the dialectic. 



In adjudicating this debate between those defending the Control
Principle and those defending alternative principles, we can ask just
how much weight should be given to our natural reactions to cases,
and, in particular, to our reactive attitudes, such as resentment and
guilt. At least in some cases, these can be tempered when we reflect
explicitly on key features of cases, and our initial responses can be
revised in light of these reflections, together with reflection on
general principles.



Notably, there has recently been an attempt by philosophers to appeal
to results from empirical psychology to explain away some set of
intuitions or other, and this strategy has been applied in the area of
moral luck in particular. For some examples, see Domsky (2004) and
Royzman and Kumar (2004) whose explanations in different ways support
the preservation of our adherence to the Control Principle, and see
Enoch and Guttel (2010) for a reply to both. Psychologists and
experimental philosophers have also simply tried to offer explanations
of our intuitions, particularly of ones that appear to conflict as we
find in the debate about moral luck. For example, see Cushman and
Green (2012), who offer an explanation of apparently conflicting
intuitions about moral results luck in terms of two dissociable
processes, and Bjornsson and Persson (2012), who offer an
explanation in terms of shifting explanatory perspectives. In an
interesting set of studies, Kneer and Machery (2019) found that when
participants were asked for comparative judgments about pairs of
scenarios, varying only in outcome, they tended to offer anti-moral
luck responses, judging agents in both scenarios equally blameworthy.
In contrast, in related studies in which each participant only saw one
scenario without a comparison, participants' judgments of
degrees of blameworthiness varied by scenario, with the more harmful
outcome scenarios receiving judgments of higher degrees of blame.
However, Kneer and Machinery found that the differences in judgments
in these cases was nearly entirely mediated by a disproportionate
attribution of negligence to the agents in the harmful scenarios,
suggesting the possibility that, when presented only with one
scenario, participants read backwards from harm to a morally
significant attribution of features in the agents. If this is correct,
then it may not be outcome per se that provides the grounds of
differential judgments, but, rather, a distinct morally salient
feature of agents that is often associated with outcome. Taken
together, Kneer and Machery's studies support the idea that
people have anti-results-luck intuitions and lay theories, and that
where they appear to have pro-results-luck intuitions, these can be
explained as people tracking something only contingently associated
with outcome rather than outcome itself. It is worth noting, however,
as several of these authors do themselves, that even if we were
confident in our possession of psychological explanations of our
intuitions, there would still be philosophical work to do to sort out
what the normative facts are. But it is helpful to have a growing body
of systematic studies of intuitive reactions to scenarios involving
moral luck, as well as investigation into the features of cases people
find salient.



There is a final argument in favor of the acceptance of moral luck of
a very different kind that might ultimately help decide the issue in
one direction or the other. It explicitly encompasses every kind of
luck and thus poses a deep and difficult challenge to moral luck
skeptics, particularly the large group who focus exclusively on
resultant luck. The main idea is that rejecting resultant luck, but
not other sorts of luck, is an unstable position (e.g., Moore 1997 and
Hartman 2017). In a nutshell, one cannot find a principled place to
draw the line at refusing to accept moral luck. In effect, this
argument is Nagel's argument in reverse. Begin by observing that
we lack control over everything: the results of our actions, our
circumstances, our constitution, and our causal history. If we are to
avoid moral skepticism, then we must accept moral luck in some areas,
and if we do that, then we ought to accept it in the area of results.
Particularly if we accept that we are not predisposed to accept the
Control Principle in the first place, then we ought to accept luck in
all areas, thereby avoiding moral skepticism.



Hartman (2017) offers a version of this strategy that is explicitly
analogical (pp. 105-07). Consider three agents who all form the
intention and plan to carry out a murder. Each has a single
opportunity to pull the trigger of a gun. Sneezy sneezes and so is
unable to pull the trigger; Off-Target pulls the trigger, but the
bullet is intercepted by a bird, and Bulls-Eye pulls the trigger and
hits her target. By hypothesis, there is circumstantial luck, so,
claims Hartman, Sneezy is less blameworthy than Off-Target, even
though she would have pulled the trigger had her allergies not acted
up. But given the parallels between Sneezy and Off-Target (same
intentions, plans, and so on) are similar to the parallels between
Off-Target and Bulls-Eye, we have analogical evidence that Off-Target
is less blameworthy than Bulls-Eye. 



There are a variety of possible replies, such as that offered by
Rivera-Lopez (2016), which claims that there is a principled
difference resting on the need to make moral attributions at all. We
should accept moral luck where it is necessary for making the practice
of attributing responsibility possible, but given that it is necessary
in the case of circumstantial luck and not in the case of results
luck, we can draw a principled line between the two pairs of cases.
Hartman takes it that what is really needed here is that we ought to
accept moral luck only if it is needed for our practices of
attribution, but also suggest that it that this begs the question in
the context at least without further defense. Another reply is that
accepting circumstantial luck does not require accepting that it makes
a difference everywhere, and that indeed Sneezy and Off-Target are
themselves equally blameworthy. Thus, the analogical argument does not
get off the ground with this set of cases. And yet if we turn to a
different set of cases, such as the case of Jenny described earlier,
who lives in a utopian world but would have collaborated with the
Nazis, where the intuition of differential degrees of blameworthiness
is stronger, the analogy becomes much weaker. Nevertheless, the
general line of argument poses a challenge for anyone who wishes to
draw a line, accepting some kinds of moral luck and not others. 



Now even if no one has adequately defended a way of drawing a line
between different sorts of luck, it is not obvious that the door has
been closed on all future attempts. Thus, one way of seeing this
argument is as a shift-the-burden one. Those who wish to draw a line
between different sorts of moral luck must offer a deeper rationale
for doing so than has yet been offered. 


### 4.3 Incoherence



According to this approach, it is simply incoherent to accept
*or* deny the existence of some type(s) of moral luck. This
approach has been used for constitutive luck in particular.



Among those who wish to preserve the centrality of morality in our
lives, many have appealed to an idea formulated by Nicholas Rescher
(1993), according to which "[o]ne cannot meaningfully said to be
lucky in regard to who one is, but only with respect to what happens
to one. Identity must precede luck" (155). It is easy to take
Rescher's point out of context without realizing that he is
working with a notion of luck that differs from the notion of
"lack of control." According to Rescher, something is
lucky if (i) it came about "by accident" where this seems
to mean something like "unplanned" or
"unexpected" or "out of the ordinary" and (ii)
the outcome "has a significantly evaluative status in
representing a good or bad result, a benefit or loss"(145).
Taken this way, it does seem at least very odd to say that one's
identity is (or is not) a matter of luck. But it is less clear that
there is anything odd--let alone incoherent--about saying
that one's identity is not a matter within one's
control.



Could there nevertheless be some truth to Rescher's claim even
if we understand "luck" as "out of one's
control?" Perhaps it does not make sense, for example, to say
that a person is in control of who she is. For one could argue that
this would amount to saying that a person is a self-creator. And in
fact the Control Principle, taken to its logical extreme, seems to
lead to just such a requirement (see, e.g., Browne 1992, Nagel 1986,
118). If it turns out that self-creation is conceptually impossible as
many argue (e.g., Galen Strawson 1986), then perhaps there is a sense
in which it is right to say that being in control of one's
constitution makes no sense. But it does not follow from this that it
is meaningless to *deny* that one can control one's
constitution.



Perhaps the best way of deploying the insight that there is something
special about luck and constitution is not to say that it is
meaningless to discuss it, but to say that constitutive moral luck is
simply unproblematic for morality in the way that resultant moral luck
is. This would be to take up the "line-drawing" challenge
as described in the last section. On this line of reasoning, for
purposes of moral assessment, it does not matter how you came to be;
what matters is what you do with what you are. Of course, as we saw,
this requires defense and explanation, but it is a way of capturing
the insight that constitutive luck is relevantly different from the
resultant luck that has captivated a number of commentators.


## 5. Conclusion



The problem of moral luck is deeply unsettling. Naturally, there is a
wide variety of responses to it. On the one extreme are those who deny
that there is any sort of moral luck, and on the other are those who
accept every sort of moral luck. Most writers who have responded to
the problem fall somewhere in between; either they explicitly take a
mixed approach or they confine their arguments to a carefully
delineated subset of types of moral luck while remaining uncommitted
with respect to the others. The extreme positions are vulnerable to
the objection that they have left some consideration or other
completely unaccounted for. But those who occupy the middle also face
a formidable challenge: where can one draw a principled line between
acceptable and unacceptable forms of luck? As we have seen, one
apparently natural place to draw a line is between resultant luck and
all of the other sorts. On this view, there is no resultant moral
luck, despite initial appearances, although there is moral luck of all
the other kinds. Thus, occupiers of this position face the challenge
of setting out a plausible rationale for drawing the line where they
do. But they also face the challenge of where precisely to draw
another line, namely, the line around what counts as
"results." For we can ask on which side of this line do
intentions, willings, bodily movements, and so on, fall. Do results
include everything that happens after the formation of an intention or
the exertion of the will, for example? Or everything that follows the
*beginning* of the formation of an intention or the
*beginning* of the exertion of the will? Or everything that
follows the "affection of the heart" of which Adam Smith
wrote so eloquently? These are difficult questions for those who would
draw a line at resultant luck. But difficult questions await every
other proposal, too. Fortunately, there is a rich and growing
literature providing a full spectrum of responses to explore.