Talk:Moral luck

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Philosophy: Ethics Mid‑importance

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Two Extremes[edit]

On the "Two Extremes" the second extreme states that "...there remains a single unappealing option: one is responsible for everything that one does, whether voluntarily or not, and for all the consequences, no matter how unforeseen or unlikely, that one's actions entail."

Well, to say that one is responsible for all the consequences, is to assume a consequentialist normative theory of ethics.(Something that Kant doesn't by the way) There are many other theories of ethics some that make denying moral luck much more attractive, as one wouldn't have to be responsible for the consequences of their actions.

Dark567 (talk) 00:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To respond to what precedes me, I would begin by pointing out that Bernard Williams notes that adherents of Classical Utilitarianism (a specific consequentialist theory) cannot separate results that are caused by the agent from those that simply result. This he calls a (strong) Doctrine of Negative Responsibility. Nonetheless, what one is responsible for (the action, the resulting state of affairs, or some other things) is not tied of necessity to any overarching moral theory. So it is not true that one is responsible for all the consequences of an action if and only if one is a consequentialist.

-Travis Rodgers

That may be true but there are definitely ethical theories that say the only things you are responsible for are your actions and absolutely none of the resulting consequences. This would seem to point to more then two extremes of moral luck. Dark567 (talk) 03:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

penal vs civil right?[edit]

I find interesting the possible relation of rational/irrational responsability to penal/civil right. What do you think? Denispir (talk)

"The wannabe murderer"[edit]

I find a much better and very real example of how the moral luck problem exists in real life. In what I call "The wannabe murderer": A man hits another man in the head with a baseball-bat with the intent of making him hurt. The other man dies. The violent man is convicted of murder. A second man hits another man in the head with a baseball-bat with the intent of killing him. The victim survives and the violent man is convicted of attempted murder, which, in most developed countries is a more lenient punishment than that of murder. This to me is not only a paradox, but it is philosophically wrong. The two violent persons should both have the same punishment since the actions of both persons hold the same potential consequences, and both perpetrators know this in advance (in this case death). But I´m not a lawyer but a doctor. Mikael Fotopoulos, Denmark (user "Foto" on Danish Wikipedia) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.184.206.253 (talk) 22:53, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Problem of moral luck" lacks citations[edit]

The article contains a section titled "Problem of moral luck," which, afaict, is excellent, but it lacks any citations. It's outside my area of expertise, so I wouldn't know where to look to fix it. Flies 1 (talk) 14:07, 20 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Locke?[edit]

According to Eric Nelson, "Locke thus gives us the first extended treatment of a philosophical problem that contemporary theorists have rediscovered under the heading of “moral luck"" (The Theology of Liberalism p. 16), starting with "When Truths are once known to us, though by Tradition, we are apt to be favourable to our own Parts; And ascribe to our own Understandings the Discovery of what, in reality, we borrowed from others." b uidhe 12:20, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]