Moral
luck is the idea that people receive praise or punishment for outcomes of
actions in which the person didn’t have full control. People should not be
punished or praised for things they do, because luck plays such a major role in
most actions. Every action has multiple possible outcomes because luck can come
into play and alter the results. For example I got into a car accident last
year where I rear ended someone. The other woman’s car wasn’t damaged at all
but my hood was messed up. This incident can obviously be viewed as moral bad
luck, because I got in trouble for something that wasn’t in my control. I couldn’t
control the road conditions or the mind of the woman that stopped short to
allow other cars to pass in front of her. However I was still held responsible
for the negative outcome of the accident. This could be seen as moral good luck
because she was happy her car wasn’t damaged and left. Obviously the situation
could have been better and it could have been worse. I do believe in the idea of
moral luck, and that people get praise or punishment for things that aren’t in
their control. If you think about it none of us can predict the future.
Everything has the ability to change course at a second. Even the simplest thing
like turning a light on can be altered with a power outage or a blown bulb.
Moral luck is not a
serious ethical problem, but I do believe it is slightly unethical. The unpredictability of the world is so common
in our lives that it is often overlooked. It can be hard to measure how much
luck a person gains within situations, therefore people overlook the luck
aspect of praise and punishment because it’s too difficult to replicate. If you
think about it none of us can predict the future. Everything has the ability to
change course at a second. Even the simplest thing like turning a light on can
be altered with a power outage or a blown bulb. So it’s a split decision
because it’s not fair to praise those that didn’t earn it but it’s also not
fair to punish those that hit bad luck. Therefore the topic of moral luck cant
fairly be determined as ethical or unethical, just somewhere in between. Its
ethical when the person deserves the praise or punishment and its unethical when
they don’t deserve the praise or punishment.
I agree with you in that people often get praised or punished for things that aren't in their control, and that something so small can totally change the course of someone's life. I think it's interesting that you said that moral luck is both ethical and unethical. Most blog posts I've read (mine included) argued that it was one or the other, but if you think about it, it could totally go both ways.
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