Moral luck
is about external conditions outside one’s control, and if these conditions can
increase or decrease blame or praise. It determines whether a person should be
blamed or praised for an action and its consequences when it is affected by
external conditions. An example from my own life is when I and some of my
friends were playing soccer outside my friend’s house a couple of years ago. We
have been playing there a lot while growing up, and we have never broken
anything. So this was just a normal day of playing soccer, until one of my
friends had a little accident. As he was kicking the ball, he slipped, so the
ball went out of the field, hit a tree, changed direction, and hit the window
on my friend’s house, which broke. As I said, we had played there for many
years and nothing like that had ever happened. Should the unlucky guy who
kicked the ball be blamed for what happened, when it could happen to anyone of
us? And the parents of my friend who lived there had always allowed us to play
there.
I don’t
think that moral luck is a serious ethical problem. I think it’s just something
that the mankind has learned to deal with; it’s just a natural thing. If we use
my example, the guy who broke the window was really unlucky and I’m sure it was
a problem to him, because no one wants that to happen. But he can’t do anything
about it, he just have to live with it. And I think that’s the case for the
society as whole. Of course it’ll be individuals thinking that moral luck is a problem
and that it’s unfair, and they’ll spend a lot of time thinking of why things
like this happen instead of moving on. But I feel that moral luck is a part of
the cycle of life, we’re just used to it and we know that things like this
happen. So I would say no, moral luck is not an ethical problem because it’s a
part of life and we are used to it. I think that we have to take responsibility
of our actions, no matter if moral luck is involved or not.
I concur with what Mads has stated in his blog post. I think that we as a society have come to accept moral luck. For this example, it was not anyone’s fault that the window was broken. Like you stated, it could have happened to anyone. At the end of the day you are still responsible for what you did. In the case of a broken window, it is not a big deal. After all it is only a window and can easily be replaced. However, in the case where you drive drunk, there is no one to blame but the individual. If you hit someone, it is based on luck. Either way the responsibility belongs 100% to that individual. No one forced that individual to get behind the wheel.
ReplyDeleteNo one can predict the future, thus it is impossible for one person to know exactly what is going to happen. We as individuals should be held accountable for all our actions, regardless if "luck" is on our side.