Moral Luck

[orthogonal]

"In 1967 a military coup in Greece installed an incompetent but ruthless junta. For the next seven years the government attempted to maintain itself in power through the use of torture. Youths were selected (not on the basis of their sadism) from the regular army and subjected to months of brutal training in which they were beaten and humiliated. At the end of their training they were given uniforms and suddenly treated with respect. They were the new security police and they were expected to torture and murder. Almost all of them did so. When the junta failed many of these men were arrested.

But it wasn't their fault that they had been selected. They were no better or worse (apparently so) than anyone else. The fact that nearly everyone chosen went on to torture and kill tells us that anyone of us might do the same if we had been selected. So, how could we judge a man for something we probably would have been guilty of? Aren't we blaming them for being unlucky enough to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time?"
Piers Benn, Ethics

I've little doubt that all of us could remember past situations in which our negligence might have resulted in a tragedy. For example, I once set my little brother on fire in a "chemistry experiment" gone awry. Only his heavy winter overcoat saved him from having been badly burned. I've mentioned before in this forum how at summer camp I once shot an arrow just over a target and struck a young woman (standing behind the target) in the arm. Had I aimed that arrow a half-a-degree further to the left I would have buried the arrow in her heart. While driving I've often taken my eyes off the road to retrieve something that had fallen under the seat, etc. Had a child just so happened to cross in front of my car while I was looking down, well...I doubt if I could today live with my guilt.

Kant says that in each of these cases my culpability doesn't rest with the contingency of the situation. He'd say I had a duty to: keep my brother away from that container of flammable acetone, to look behind the target before I loosed my arrow and to always keep my eyes on the road. It's clear that in each of these cases I failed in my duty. Should I go out to the barn and hang myself because of what I might have done? What of the young Greeks conscripted at random into the above mentioned torture brigade? If you or I had been selected to receive the same brutal training, statistics suggest that we'd have acted just as badly. If that's the case, shouldn't we all go out to the barn to hang ourselves? Kant wrote:

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."

Here Kant recognizes the imperfection of humanity, that it's perfectly human to be imperfect. The expectation that even the best of us might never fail in our moral duty appears to be entirely supererogatory. But if we were to agree up-front that we're all imperfect, wouldn't this inextricably complicate the assignation of blame when when things go horribly wrong? How does luck enter into our concept of moral responsibility?

Michael

 

[Adam]

Orthogonal

I believe every factor of humanity can be plotted on a bell curve. This includes strength of will. Most people are within one standard deviation of the norm. Most of the rest are within one more standard deviation. A very few have either exceptionally weak or exceptionally strong will. If beaten into a new shape by negative reinforcement, the majority will stick to that shape. Some few will be strong enough to overcome the negative reinforcement and choose their own path.

As for mistakes, errors in judgement... Well, people make mistakes. Hopefully we learn from them. I see very little connection between making a mistake and deliberately choosing to harm people.

Does a man choosing to harm others equal a mistake if he is beaten into a shape which will have no choice but to cause harm? We are homo sapiens. He has the ability to choose, regardless of what has happened to him. I absolutely believe in absolute personal responsibilty for our choices. For example, child abusers who were abused themselves should be locked away; their past is no excuse. In such an example, the behaviour was imprinted upon the person during their formative years, shaping their minds strongly; yet I say they have free will, and the choice to cause harm is their own free choice. This does not equal an accident.

 

[orthogonal]

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

Life is filled with instances of good men, who through their occasional lapses in good judgment precipitate terrible accidents. What driver doesn’t occasionally look away from the road if only for an instant? And if in that instant a child just so happens to run across the road...

The element of luck is never entirely absent from our lives. In his book, Being Good, the philosopher, Simon Blackburn, wrote:

”Luck can do more to sway the ways our lives go than virtue. Yet people are curiously unwilling to acknowledge this; we relentlessly take responsibility, as the myth of original sin shows. It seems we would prefer to be guilty than unlucky.... If we are good, it may be because we were never tempted enough, or frightened enough, or put in a desperate enough need.”

The philosopher, Thomas Nagel, identifies four ways that luck has a bearing on the moral lives of men; three of which I’ll mention.

Resultant Luck:
None of us can perfectly predict how our actions will affect a given situation. Nagel gives an example of an attempted coup to oust a brutal regime. Without the coup the government will continue to brutalize the people. If the coup is attempted but fails, the regime is likely to take out massive reprisals against the people, making life even worse than before. Things often go badly wrong despite our best efforts.

Circumstantial Luck:
This has to do with the kind of problems we happen to face. I missed the Vietnam draft by two years. It was my good fortune that I didn’t have to make the decision whether to fight in an unjust war or to flee the country of my birth. During the Second World War, Norway was invaded by the Germans, Finland was invaded at various times by both the Russians and the Germans. Individual Norwegians and Finns had to choose which side to ally themselves. Those who chose the losing side ended up paying dearly for their mistake. Sweden, on the other hand, was lucky enough to be left in peace throughout the war. The Swedes were lucky enough not to be called to make these "life and death" decisions.

Adam wrote:

(Man) has the ability to choose, regardless of what has happened to him.

This is the answer most of us, myself included, intuitively want to give. We want to say that anyone worth a damn should have a backbone strong enough to overcome whatever life might throw at them. But how does one acquire a sufficiently strong moral backbone?

Constitutive Luck:
A book I read a few years ago detailed the case histories of people who’d been tortured by the various repressive regimes in South America. Some of the victims had given up the names of their friends with the first slap across their face, others held on for weeks or months, enduring unspeakable agony before breaking down. Others died without ever divulging the names of their friends. I’d like to think that I’d also die before giving up the names of my friends, but how could I really know what I’d do? How do I know that I wouldn’t cry like a schoolboy as soon as they attached the electrodes? Are we personally responsible for having a low threshold for pain and fear? Do we choose to have a weak backbone or are we born and bred to it? If we could excuse a man’s weakness in giving up the names of his friends too easily under torture, where could we draw the line of culpability? If people are not responsible for having a weak backbone, how could they be responsible for having a mean-streak down their back?

Some men are born clever, others die dimwitted. Adversity might send one man into a violent rage as easily as it gives another pause for quiet contemplation. As the song goes:

“There are sober men a-plenty, and drunkards barely twenty,
There are men of over ninety that have never yet kissed a girl...”

Adam, you’re probably correct to think the plot of our moral behavior assumes the form of a bell-curve. But are we each ultimately responsible for the nature of our individual constitution? Nagel thinks that our character is based, at least in part, on our constitutive luck. In summary:

What we are is determined, in part, by luck.
The problems we face are determined by luck.
The results of our actions are determined, in part, by luck.

But if we failed to hold men responsible for their actions wouldn’t our (relatively) civilized society fall apart? Yes, it probably would. Nagel says, "In a sense the problem has no solution." Some men deserve the cage we build around them; others deserve to be knighted for their goodness. Yet, I share Nagel’s belief that luck plays a larger part in the making of our character than most of us are willing to admit. The extent of the responsibility each of us bears for our own character remains an open question in my mind.

I absolutely believe in absolute personal responsibility for our choices.

I hold no absolute beliefs. Absolute beliefs allow no latitude for correction. That we should doubt the nature of our moral responsibility worries me far less than that we should be absolutely certain of it. A doubtful judge is more apt to be a merciful judge. The worst atrocities in history have been committed not by the doubtful, but by the righteously certain. The proper aim of moral philosophy is not to relieve us of our doubt, but, in the words of Bertrand Russell, “...to teach us how to live without certainty.”

Michael

 

[Adam]

Orthogonal

”Luck can do more to sway the ways our lives go than virtue. Yet people are curiously unwilling to acknowledge this; we relentlessly take responsibility, as the myth of original sin shows. It seems we would prefer to be guilty than unlucky.... If we are good, it may be because we were never tempted enough, or frightened enough, or put in a desperate enough need.”

I dislike his assumption about taking responsbility having any connection whatsoever with that myth. The idea of taking personal responsibility for my actions is a free choice, not some remnant of upbringing and teachings of Middle Eastern mythologies.

But are we each ultimately responsible for the nature of our individual constitution?

Yes. DNA analysis may find that certain people are more predisposed toward certain things, but I believe our will can triumph over any such things. Why do I say that? We have the capacity for self-sacrifice, even at the expense of our lives; that surely goes directly against all our constitution and demonstrates the power of the will. Billions of years of evolution tells us to stay allive, or at least keep our relatives alive so our genes may continue; fear tells us to avoid harm; yet people have been known to sacrifice their lives for strangers, for causes, for many things.

What we are is determined, in part, by luck.
The problems we face are determined by luck.
The results of our actions are determined, in part, by luck.

The events in our lives are determined partially by luck, or by causes we may not know. But unless there are chains forcing your limbs to move in certain ways, what you do, yourself, is under your own control. What you think is under your own control.

But if we failed to hold men responsible for their actions wouldn’t our (relatively) civilized society fall apart? Yes, it probably would. Nagel says, "In a sense the problem has no solution." Some men deserve the cage we build around them; others deserve to be knighted for their goodness. Yet, I share Nagel’s belief that luck plays a larger part in the making of our character than most of us are willing to admit.

I think luck plays a part. The less self-control, or self-guidance, you have, the more your character is shaped by external events. This was kind of the whole point of Buddhism; getting beyond external influence, and beyond the base urges of humanity, to become a being ruled by conscious decisions. That is enlightnement, in my opinion; realising what we are, realising how we fit into the universe, and acting based on free will rather than simply being a walking reflex. I don't mean that we should be beyond all biological drives; some are both useful and fun, such as the drive to shag. Don't conquer our animal nature, but rather accept it and understand it, and make it part of us. Yin and yang, part of us if what we are, what evolution has made us, and part of us is pure free will. For example, accept our biological drives, and act upon those we choose. Acept external influences, but act only as we choose.

I hold no absolute beliefs.

I must absolutely believe in free will. The alternative is that we are not Homo Sapiens, that we are not sentient. And indeed sometimes I feel that much of the species barely qualifies, and are more walking reflexes. Perhaps I should say that I hope we can all become Homo Sapiens, and that hope must be absolute. The alternative being to accept that we are monkeys with shiney toys, we will always have superstitions and wars, and we will always behave like these people.

Absolute beliefs allow no latitude for correction. That we should doubt the nature of our moral responsibility worries me far less than that we should be absolutely certain of it. A doubtful judge is more apt to be a merciful judge. The worst atrocities in history have been committed not by the doubtful, but by the righteously certain. The proper aim of moral philosophy is not to relieve us of our doubt, but, in the words of Bertrand Russell, “...to teach us how to live without certainty.”

I agree, righteousness is dangerous. I hope I have clarified my opinion in the above paragraph.

 

[spookz]

Re: Orthogonal

Originally posted by Adam
For example, child abusers who were abused themselves should be locked away; their past is no excuse. In such an example, the behaviour was imprinted upon the person during their formative years, shaping their minds strongly; yet I say they have free will, and the choice to cause harm is their own free choice. This does not equal an accident.

that is your righteousness. that is why you are dangerous and inhumane. for example stealing to feed starving children/stealing for personal gain will be punished in the same manner? the law is the law? how fortunate it is that we do not live in a world where you are the arbiter of justice

 

[EvilPoet]

"Even if moral value were radically unconditioned by luck, that would not be
very significant if moral value were merely one kind of value among others.
Rather, moral value has to possess some special, indeed supreme, kind of
dignity or importance. The thought that there is a kind of value which is,
unlike others, accessible to all rational agents, offers little encouragement
if that kind of value is merely a last resort, the doss-house of the spirit."
-Bernard Williams, Moral Luck

 

[Adam]

Spookz

Originally posted by spookz
that is your righteousness. that is why you are dangerous and inhumane. for example stealing to feed starving children/stealing for personal gain will be punished in the same manner? the law is the law? how fortunate it is that we do not live in a world where you are the arbiter of justice

I really have no idea where you get these whacky ideas from. Have you been on the mushrooms again?

What I said:
1) Person A chooses to hurt person B.
2) Person B chooses to hurt person C.

What you claimed I said:
1) Person A chooses to hurt person B.
2) Person C hurts nobody but steals a material possession to maintain life.

Note how the two situations are different? What comparison are you trying to draw?

Now, regarding my beliefs on law and legal punishment, prison, et cetera. I suspect you have been either too lazy to read, or are deliberately ignoring, the several threads in which I have described the legal system I would like implemented. Your insane assumptions about me are either an attempt to push my buttons, which is about as clever as a chimp trying to push Einstein's buttons; or a display of honest ignorance. At least the latter can be remedied with education.

I suggest you read more and assume less.

 

[orthogonal]

Hey Adam,

I must absolutely believe in free-will.

That statement is an oxymoron. You are saying that you're forced to believe in free-will. Don't you see that the more you're forced to believe in free-will the less of it you necessarily possess? Isaac Bashevis Singer said as much:

"We must believe in free will, we have no choice."

Of course, he was only joking.

Adam, you and I both agree that society can only function if each individual is held personally responsible for his or her actions. Our difference of thinking in lies in the degree to which we believe people ought to be held responsible. My understanding of your position is that we ought to be held absolutely responsible for our own actions. It's my view that the degree to which we ought to be held responsible is an open question.

While talking with a friend yesterday in the gym, I thought of an analogy to this discussion. My friend is the captain of a Boeing 777 aircraft. He and I were discussing last Wednesday's crash of a commuter airplane in North Carolina that killed all 21 persons on board. There is some preliminary speculation about a directive issued last November warning that:

"...screws in the elevator balance weight attachment could come loose and interfere with the horizontal stabilizer. This interference could restrict elevator movement and result in loss of elevator pitch control."

The aircraft in question climbed far too steeply at takeoff before corkscrewing back into the ground. A problem with the elevator pitch control could produce just such an uncontrolled nose-up attitude (the blackbox indicated that it was 52 degrees above the horizontal).

My friend mentioned that as captain, he is responsible for both his aircraft and for everyone aboard his aircraft. I agreed that this is true, but when we say that he is responsible we don't mean to imply that he is absolutely responsible for his or her aircraft. If that Beech 1900 crashed last week because of a loose screw buried in the elevator mechanism, then the responsibility ultimately rests not with the pilot, but possibly with the airline, or with a mechanic. If a mechanical failure caused the plane to crash it might even be the case that no one was to blame. Pilots normally do a pre-flight walk-about inspection of their aircraft. But pilots don't have x-ray eyes; they can't look through the skin of the aircraft fuselage. They exercise the elevators, swing the rudder, and test the engines before they take-off, but when they sign their name for that aircraft they take it on faith that the aircraft has been properly maintained. The pilot simply has no way of knowing if a critical bolt in this aircraft is already cracked halfway through.

There is also the question of weather. The most conscientious pilots have in the past, flown directly into an invisible but deadly windshear. Until wind-shear detectors were installed at airports no one would blame the pilot for a wind-shear having slammed his aircraft into the ground. The situation was beyond the pilot's control. We hold pilots responsible for certain of their actions and omissions to act, but no one holds them absolutely responsible under every circumstance.

Pilots suriviving the accident of their aircraft are expected to appear at a court of inquiry. No one doubts the accident has occured. The pilot usually does not deny that he or she was at the controls. Yet these courts, as often as not, find the pilot innocent of all responsibility. From what I understand of your concept of absolute responsibility, Adam, no pilot could be cleared of the responsibility for the crash. Your court might simply ask, "Are you the pilot of the crashed aircraft?" To which the pilot would answer, "Yes, your Honor." Upon which the gavel comes flying down with a bang. "Guilty!"

No matter how hard we might struggle to do what is right, there are an indefinite number of circumstances quite beyond our control that could cause our actions to produce negative consequences. If we knew ahead of time what these circumstances were, then we might be able to do something about them. We live in an imperfect world and few would deny that we are ourselves, imperfect beings. So how clever would it be of us to hold imperfect beings, living in an imperfect world, to an absolutely perfect standard of moral responsibility? Each time an airplane crashes we investigate the crash on a case-by-case basis. It's terribly expensive to do so, but we judge it even more costly not to do so. Humans deserve no less. Whenever a human commits a gross violation of the moral code we ought to investigate their failure on a case-by-case basis. Responsibility is never absolute. And as such, punishment should never be automatic.

Michael

 

[Adam]

Orthogonal

That statement is an oxymoron. You are saying that you're forced to believe in free-will.

I must believe in free will, because it is the only worthwhile choice. Believing we don't have free will invalidates all of our existence. Assuming we are mere cogs in a machine means everything we do is merely going through the motions, rather than living. Screw that.

 

[orthogonal]

La Forza del Destino

Hi EvilPoet,

Thanks for posting that excellent quote by Bernard Williams. If I remember correctly, it was Williams who initiated our modern debate about moral luck. Thomas Nagel, in a manner of speaking, took the ball and ran with it.

The argument for moral luck is related, but not identical to the classic argument of free-will verses determinism. But since the topic has already arisen I'll offer my position.

We're probably all familiar with examples of beings whose every action is determined by an external agent. This is the proverbial, "puppet on a string." The prospect of this clearly frightens most people. We would like to think that we are the masters of our own destiny. Some people go so far as to say that we have an absolutely free will.

What would it mean to have a perfectly free will? It would mean that all of our actions originate entirely from within us. That is, no outside agency could have the slightest role in either prompting or determining our response. In fact, we could not even have a response and at the same time possess a perfectly free-will! Thus, to outside observers it would appear as though our actions were generated entirely at random. It might be possible for such a being to look like a human, but such a being could never act like a human. Humans continuously interact with their environment as they do with each other. Humans therefore, do not possess a perfectly free will. I would argue further that they should never wish to possess such a perfectly free will.

Our actions are neither entirely free nor entirely determined. As interacting organisms, we probably live a good bit closer to the extreme of determinism than to the extreme of an absolute free-will. We respond to our environment, we respond to other people, but try as psychologists might; no one could predict with certainty how a human might respond to a given circumstance. There's an element of unpredictability about us. And when this slight inherent unpredictability of ours is coupled with the inherent unpredictability of the world, well, it adds richness to our lives. It produces luck, fate, destiny, whatever you choose to call it.

Betrand Russell, writing in his A History of Western Philosophy, quite rightly says:

"The most important thing philosophy can do for us, is...to teach us how to live without certainty..."

Michael

 

[orthogonal]

Adam,

Thanks again for the reply.

I must believe in free will, because it is the only worthwhile choice. Believing we don't have free will invalidates all of our existence. Assuming we are mere cogs in a machine means everything we do is merely going through the motions, rather than living. Screw that.

The uranium 238 isotope decays spontaneously by emitting an alpha particle. The reason I know this is because philosophers, physicists and mathematicians are forever pointing out this rare example of a naturally occuring random event. Random number generators are notoriously difficult to design. The reason is that this world is fundamentally causal. It's difficult to isolate actions from the surrounding environment.

Adam, why do you think that your life in this world is an all or nothing enterprise? What aspect of your life is entirely black or white? What decision have you made in your life that has been entirely free from external influences? My experience leads me to believe that this world eschews absolutes, that life undulates in shades of gray.

No one wants to be a little cog in the giant engine of life, neither should anyone wish to be entirely removed from the influences of their world. It's true that the actions of some hypothetical Unmoved Mover would be entirely undetermined. Such actions would be entirely free, yet at the same time, entirely meaningless. I suggest that you really shouldn't wish to model your life on that uranium 238 isotope, Adam.

Michael

 

[Adam]

Orthogonal

Adam, why do you think that your life in this world is an all or nothing enterprise?

Life is like that. Alive or dead. You can either be what you want, or be a walking reflex. You live by whatever standards you set for yourself, or you compromise yourself. There are many "black and whites" in life. Unofunately the life those black and whites exist in is grey.

What aspect of your life is entirely black or white?

- I don't hit women.
- When it comes to things I consider important, I stick with absolute honesty.
- I will not stand by and let something bad happen right in front of me.

There are probably more I could think of when not so incredibly tired.

What decision have you made in your life that has been entirely free from external influences?

I gave up on revenge against people who permanently injured me. Even now I could find them, and do anything I want to make life hell for them. But I choose not to, because I don't want to hurt people. Right now some of them could have wives and kids; I wouldn't want a little kid to get home from school and find out his dad had been beaten to a pulp and had his spine broken.

No one wants to be a little cog in the giant engine of life, neither should anyone wish to be entirely removed from the influences of their world.

The outside is there, no use ignoring it. But actions need to be controlled from inside. Reactions, feelings, meaning, purpose, these are internal matters.