Thomas Nagel Moral Luck Paradox Summary

Lauren Johnson
Professor Parsons
Philosophy 1000
March 5, 2017
Nagel’s Moral Luck Paradox
In this paper I will explain Thomas Nagel’s view of our moral practices being paradoxical and how they cannot be resolved. I’ll begin by presenting the overall argument, then what he thinks to be the paradoxical nature of our moral practices. Afterwards, I will explain why paradoxes are to be unresolvable in his opinion. At the end of the paper, I will raise an objective to Nagel’s argument.
According to Thomas Nagel, at the heart of our moral practices lies a paradox. A paradox is an argument that is apparently valid, has apparently true premises, and has an apparently false conclusion. This paradoxical argument also is apparently sound. A paradox is

very contradicting of itself. For example, if someone were to say to you “I’m a compulsive liar,” do you believe them? Or do you not believe them because they could be lying? The statement is a paradox within itself. A paradoxical statement contains truth within it just as it cannot be true. Within Nagel’s excerpt on moral luck, he explains his view on the paradox by incorporating one’s own control and responsibilities over their outcomes in life situations. “A person can be morally responsible only for what he does; but what he does results from a great deal that he does not do; therefore he is not morally responsible for what he is and is not responsible for.”
One of the most basic principles or doctrines of our moral practices is what Nagel calls the “control principle”. He argues that moral judgment of a person is judgment not of what happens to him, or of his existence or characteristics, but of him. Issues concerning this principle within moral luck arises because we are stuck on the principle that we are morally judged only to the extent that what we are judged for depends on what we can control. Paradoxically, at the same time, we morally judge others for elements that depend on factors out of their control.
Nagel argues, however, that the cases in which we lack control over what we do go far beyond the clear cases such as physical force. He argues “the mind-body problem is difficult enough that we should be suspicious of attempts to solve it with the concepts and methods developed to account for very different kinds of things.”
To validate his point, Nagel introduces the concept of moral luck. In a summary, moral luck is basically being in control of your own reality and luck, but paradoxically not being in control of it due to uncontrollable or outside forces. We humans are moral agents because we have control over who we are and what we do. Control is a condition of praise and blame, meaning it is a condition of moral responsibility. Within that category includes involuntary movement, ignorance of circumstances, and physical force. Nagel seems to think that actions can be evaluated as blameworthy or praiseworthy when and only when it is possible for us to trace them back to something we may call the “responsible” or “active” self. Nagel thinks in actions, there are at least four kinds of moral luck at work. His four kinds of moral luck include Resultant Moral Luck, Circumstantial Moral Luck, Constitutional Moral Luck, and Casual Moral Luck.
Resultant Moral Luck is the first type of moral luck described by Nagel, which is based on how things turn out in a situation. Nagel explains that the moral judgment of the two drivers is different, even though the only difference between them is out of their control. For example, if a young girl were to unexpectedly run out in the middle of the road in front of a moving car, and the driver unintentionally hit the child while driving, we would all blame him for the death of the child. With that being said, although it wasn’t his intention to hit and kill the little girl, we would still consider him more responsible for reckless driving than we would another truthfully reckless driver that has not hit or killed anyone. Although the first driver was not driving recklessly, it was out of his control that the little girl ran in front of him, causing him to hit and kill her. Controversially, we would consider him to be more responsible for reckless driving than we would consider an actual reckless and careless driver that got lucky by not hitting or killing anybody yet.
Circumstantial Moral Luck exists if how good one is can depends on how one acts, even when how one acts is due to factors beyond one’s control.

An example of circumstantial moral luck existing would be, for instance, if two married men happen to find a stripper attractive and are willing to each pay her to have sex with them. The stripper only agrees to accept the money from one of the guys and only have sex with one of them. Therefore, only one of them cheats on his wife. Although he is the only one who cheated, they both have morally wrong intentions. But, according to society’s view, only people who cheat are the ones who are morally wrong and who are to blame. Society will not shame the married man who did not cheat, although it was beyond his control, thus creating circumstantial moral

luck.
Constitutional Moral Luck describes luck in our own inclinations, capacities, and temperament. Constitutive Moral Luck incorporates character traits and “upbringing”. For example, although the African American community seems to have higher criminal rates and worse upbringings, it is plausible to think that whether one is a violent African American criminal or an upstanding Caucasian citizen depends one one’s genes and the environment and culture in which he or she was raised in. Thus, if African Americans are worse than upstanding Caucasian citizens, then constitutive moral luck exists.
Casual Moral Luck suggests that actions are determined by external events and are thus consequences of events over which the person taking the action has no control. Casual Moral Luck is largely based on determinism, which is the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. It is implied that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. An example of determinism is when people are free to choose if whether or not they want to commit a crime. We as humans are free from the casual influences of past events. Paradoxically, an individual who commits a crime has no real choice. He or she is driven in this direction by their environmental circumstances as well as a personal history. These factors make breaking the law natural and inevitable. Everything about us is ultimately beyond our control.
According to Nagel, when we take all four types of moral luck together, the condition of control is questioned to ever be satisfied through our moral judgments. As we continue discovering all of the outside factors that dictates an individual’s actions, Nagel argues that nothing remains which can be credited to self-responsibility. If we accept the facts of a situation to its logical conclusion, then there is no part of us that is not determined by factors beyond our control.
Moral judgment of a person is judgment not of what happens to him, or of his existence or characteristics, but of him.

The last type of moral luck that I want to address in this essay is the concept of moral control and moral responsibility. In Nagel’s view, a person can be morally responsible only for what he does; but what he does results from a great deal that he does not do; therefore he is not morally responsible for what he is and is not responsible for. This is not a contradiction, but it is a paradox. Isn’t it obvious that there is a connection between these problems about responsibility and control? He states that a condition of moral responsibility is that the person has control over the factors that he or she is morally judged for. Controversially, if that person’s actions are due to factors beyond their control, then they are not morally responsible. Nagel believes that if the only difference between two people is out of their control, then they should not be judged differently. Everything seems to result from the combined influence of factors, antecedent and posterior to action, that are not within the person’s control. Since he cannot be responsible for them, he cannot be responsible for their results. With that being said, Nagel claims, that through the four types of moral luck, our moral judgments are almost always dependent on factors that are beyond our control. Because he believes that the condition of control is not satisfied in most of our moral

judgments, we are not morally responsible for our moral judgments.
Now that we see where the paradox lies with the claims put together above, I can now explain how allegory is paradoxical. An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. A common allegory is the tortoise and the hare story where the tortoise wins a race against the hare. Although they were both traveling at a constant speed, the tortoise did, in fact, have a head start to the race. What makes this allegory paradoxical is that the story claims all premises to be true, but the conclusion is false. If it were to happen in a real world situation, we all know and would conclude that the hare would win the race against the tortoise. Winnie The Pooh, a common childhood movie and book, is rarely recognized as another one of the most common allegories of my time. Winnie The Pooh is an example of an allegory in the fact that every single character represents some sort common mental disorder. Christopher Robin represents Schizophrenia. He is delusional because he sees all of the other characters, but they are not real to anyone else except him. Piglet represents general anxiety. Eeoyore represents depression. Tiger represents Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Pooh represents an eating disorder as well as low self-esteem. Rabbit represents OCD. Kangaroo represents Social Anxiety Disorder. Finally, Owl represents Dyslexia. The movie is made for children’s entertainment, but, if it were a real life situation, Christopher Robin would be considered a little insane, and would need to get some help. All of the situations in the movie would not play out that same way if it were a real life situation. For instance, those animals would not have such disorders like those that as humans can have. Also, if they did happen to be diagnosed with such disorders, then they would need to be receiving some sort of treatment for them.
According to Nagel, the problem of moral luck cannot be understood without an account of the internal conception of agency and its special connection with the moral attitudes as opposed to other types of value. The degree to which the problem has a solution can be determined only by seeing whether in some degree the incompatibility between this conception and the various ways in which we do not control what we do is only apparent.