Moral Luck: Crash Course Philosophy #39
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Date: 2022-04-04
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Comments and reviews: 10
Jeremy
The problem with example praise and blame is the the injustice of it. Punishing a drunk driver for every person ever killed by a drunk driver does not create a sense of responsibility in the individual(important if you are going to let them back into society one day, not does it create a personal sense of consideration because it inflates the crime to beyond common expectation. We typically have to reinterpret the crime in order to justify the level of blame by adding conditions of malice. We say -that person DECIDED to drive drunk-. We say -it was YOUR responsibility to create a safe place for throwing coconuts and your failure to do so was willful and therefore the injury to my head is not only ALL your fault but it will be interpreted as just short of an active desire to hunt me down and bash my brains out-.
Then we have the examples of heroism. The entire situation actually makes very little sense. If you hope to promote heroic behaviour by randomly picking individual heroes and granting them social credit, then you are essentially creating an unwritten social contract in which heroism is rewarded. Once you have failed to recognize and reward a person who thinks THEY deserve it(which they wouldn't if you hadn't promoted the idea, nothing good happens. So is it moral to reward one person more than another for the same action, and punish too, or is it an expression of the built in inequality of our whole system?
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The problem with example praise and blame is the the injustice of it. Punishing a drunk driver for every person ever killed by a drunk driver does not create a sense of responsibility in the individual(important if you are going to let them back into society one day, not does it create a personal sense of consideration because it inflates the crime to beyond common expectation. We typically have to reinterpret the crime in order to justify the level of blame by adding conditions of malice. We say -that person DECIDED to drive drunk-. We say -it was YOUR responsibility to create a safe place for throwing coconuts and your failure to do so was willful and therefore the injury to my head is not only ALL your fault but it will be interpreted as just short of an active desire to hunt me down and bash my brains out-.
Then we have the examples of heroism. The entire situation actually makes very little sense. If you hope to promote heroic behaviour by randomly picking individual heroes and granting them social credit, then you are essentially creating an unwritten social contract in which heroism is rewarded. Once you have failed to recognize and reward a person who thinks THEY deserve it(which they wouldn't if you hadn't promoted the idea, nothing good happens. So is it moral to reward one person more than another for the same action, and punish too, or is it an expression of the built in inequality of our whole system?
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Rue
I feel that the problem with a lot of people who are blameworthy for just being morally horrible is that they then assign just as much blame on somebody else who did a zillionth of a percentage of what the accuser did. And the person, with a zillionth of a percentage of responsibility, then goes on living their life with the knowledge of desperate equalising human nature.
It-s not hard to shrug off a petty mistep in the face of brutalising adversity, if your morals are in the right place and you just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, without a devious or immoral fibre in your being, but it-s still a clawing factor of somebody, you realise as you get older, none the less.
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I feel that the problem with a lot of people who are blameworthy for just being morally horrible is that they then assign just as much blame on somebody else who did a zillionth of a percentage of what the accuser did. And the person, with a zillionth of a percentage of responsibility, then goes on living their life with the knowledge of desperate equalising human nature.
It-s not hard to shrug off a petty mistep in the face of brutalising adversity, if your morals are in the right place and you just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, without a devious or immoral fibre in your being, but it-s still a clawing factor of somebody, you realise as you get older, none the less.
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Mateo
I've been thinking about this. In terms of rule utilitarianism, if you give punishment to morally unlucky individuals who cannot logically be assigned moral blame (i. e, a violation of ought implies can, doesn't that set up a society without a rule of fairness, leading to overall less util? This is obviously just a thought experiment-no society today is perfectly fair-but would the util gained by a rule of fairness outweigh that which is lost by the hypothetically increased amount of drunk driving resulting from the lack of (more) punishment or moral blame for running over pedestrians as a deterrent?
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I've been thinking about this. In terms of rule utilitarianism, if you give punishment to morally unlucky individuals who cannot logically be assigned moral blame (i. e, a violation of ought implies can, doesn't that set up a society without a rule of fairness, leading to overall less util? This is obviously just a thought experiment-no society today is perfectly fair-but would the util gained by a rule of fairness outweigh that which is lost by the hypothetically increased amount of drunk driving resulting from the lack of (more) punishment or moral blame for running over pedestrians as a deterrent?
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R.
Completely ignored in the analysis is this part from the set-up: B's reaction time is impaired by the alcohol, which he chose to drink. Regardless of whether he is more or equally blameworthy than A, he is clearly more blameworthy than a sober driver whose reaction time is not impaired but who hits the child because the child was too close when she ran out for any normal human being to react. Also, if we do catch a drunk driver, we prosecute him even if no one is harmed, so as a society, we do assign blame -- moral responsibility -- to A as well.
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Completely ignored in the analysis is this part from the set-up: B's reaction time is impaired by the alcohol, which he chose to drink. Regardless of whether he is more or equally blameworthy than A, he is clearly more blameworthy than a sober driver whose reaction time is not impaired but who hits the child because the child was too close when she ran out for any normal human being to react. Also, if we do catch a drunk driver, we prosecute him even if no one is harmed, so as a society, we do assign blame -- moral responsibility -- to A as well.
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Tom
I'm reminded of that fantastic quote from the Saw movies.
-You see, things aren't sequential. Good doesn't lead to good, nor bad to bad. People who steal, don't get caught, live the good life. Others lie, cheat and get elected. Some people stop to help a stranded motorist and get taken out by a speeding semi. There's no accounting for it. How you play the cards you're dealt--that's all that matters. - -Jigsaw
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I'm reminded of that fantastic quote from the Saw movies.
-You see, things aren't sequential. Good doesn't lead to good, nor bad to bad. People who steal, don't get caught, live the good life. Others lie, cheat and get elected. Some people stop to help a stranded motorist and get taken out by a speeding semi. There's no accounting for it. How you play the cards you're dealt--that's all that matters. - -Jigsaw
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Winslow
They aren't equally blameworthy. At least not in reality (outside of a thought experiment. Because actually hitting someone is stronger evidence that you were driving impaired than merely being drunk. It's an impossibility to actually know that 2 drivers would somehow be at -the same- level of impairment. Doesn't mean merely driving drunk has no moral blame.
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They aren't equally blameworthy. At least not in reality (outside of a thought experiment. Because actually hitting someone is stronger evidence that you were driving impaired than merely being drunk. It's an impossibility to actually know that 2 drivers would somehow be at -the same- level of impairment. Doesn't mean merely driving drunk has no moral blame.
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klink
This stuff needs more discussion. On a path to living well, we need to illuminate the obstacles in our path to proceed accordingly. but a lot of it is outside of our control. But maybe give us the chance to learn the easy way, instead of creating externalities in the world before finally being caught up in another person's
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This stuff needs more discussion. On a path to living well, we need to illuminate the obstacles in our path to proceed accordingly. but a lot of it is outside of our control. But maybe give us the chance to learn the easy way, instead of creating externalities in the world before finally being caught up in another person's
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Derek
This -No victim, no crime- principle is everything that is wrong with consequentialism. And yet when deontology is followed to its rational end, now you can be strung up for thought crime. What a mind F$&-! Feeling another existential crisis coming on. Maybe that-s enough philosophy for one night.
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This -No victim, no crime- principle is everything that is wrong with consequentialism. And yet when deontology is followed to its rational end, now you can be strung up for thought crime. What a mind F$&-! Feeling another existential crisis coming on. Maybe that-s enough philosophy for one night.
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Roger
You say wrong does not need to be related to harm, but in fact in the example of the dressing room, the guys taking pictures are willing to do so, even knowing that there is a possibility that it may cause harm to someone in the future. So basically wrong always relates to harm somehow.
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You say wrong does not need to be related to harm, but in fact in the example of the dressing room, the guys taking pictures are willing to do so, even knowing that there is a possibility that it may cause harm to someone in the future. So basically wrong always relates to harm somehow.
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Daniel
Some schools of theology would disagree that ought implies can. God gives laws that He expressly knows and says no one is able to perfectly keep. Why such an unreachable standard of moral perfection? To humble us, cause us to see our insufficiency, and ask for His sufficiency.
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Some schools of theology would disagree that ought implies can. God gives laws that He expressly knows and says no one is able to perfectly keep. Why such an unreachable standard of moral perfection? To humble us, cause us to see our insufficiency, and ask for His sufficiency.
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