A Challenge to Moral Luck

A CHALLENGE TO MORAL LUCK

December 12, 2009

Introduction

In this paper I aim to provide a persuasive answer to the following question: Why in certain cases we seem to be obliged to engage in actions aimed at providing some sort of reparation, relief, or comfort to a Victim[1] of Φ, even if we did not have anything to do with Φ?

For a better understanding of my argument, I will abide by the following definition of moral luck.

"Moral luck is the phenomenon whereby a moral agent is assigned moral blame or moral praise for an action or its consequences even when it is clear that the agent in question did not have full control over either the action or its consequences.”[2]

My hypothesis is that a person X who did not commit Φ is blameworthy if he does not show proper Concern (C) to the Victim of Φ, not because he owes something to the Victim because of Φ, but because he owes something to the Victim because of some consequence (Q)[3] that Φ created.

The duty to C, which was triggered by Q, which in turn was triggered by Φ, evinces that moral luck is an unnecessary concept to explain what occurs in this case, as it is true that the moral blameworthiness for Not-C, depends entirely on X. Moral consequences in the form of sanctions or disapproval would arise for him if he does not C.[4] Nonetheless he is not blameworthy for Φ; he is only blameworthy for Not-C.

Tristan und Isolde

According to Daniel Baremboim, the greatness of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, depends partly in the fact that the tension of the music is extended, unresolved, never-ending[5]. The music of the composition is like a series of waves about to break, but that instead of doing so (breaking), simply dissolute in the immensity of the ocean, only to grow bigger next time. That characteristic of Tristan und Isolde creates in the listener an awkward feeling – a sentiment of unease. The listener knows that something is missing, that something is unresolved; the listener suffers throughout the whole play.

This happens because, for good or for bad, persons have a natural tendency toward equilibrium; we constantly search for the golden mean, in spite the fact that some of us do it – very often – rather erratically. In the golden mean (the aura mediocritas) is where we feel good, warm, safe, comfortable. Whatever drags us out of that comfort zone makes us feel strange, anguished, stressed. We need balance and harmony in order to be happy. That is the essence of Taoism and many other “religions”.

The Duty to Show Concern – First Part

In the paradigmatic case where X runs his car over V and kills V (this is Φ), and V and only V is guilty for Φ, some authors have argued that X should feel some sort of moral guilt; they argue that that is a case of moral luck. I believe that is not true. Others, like Enoch[6], argue that moral luck does not exist, and try to provide alternative explanations that I do not find convincing either. What I believe that occurs in this case is that Φ creates a consequence (Q) that obliges X to show Concern for V. Or put in other way: X should not show C because of Φ, but because of Q. But what is Q then? Why does Q creates on X the duty to show Concern?

Before moving further I want to make a short explanation with regard to what I have called Concern. Authors such a David Enoch, to my understanding, have argued that in cases such as the presented above, X should apologize (or something like that) with V.

Enoch doesn’t really elaborate much on this issue, so I will leave it there for now. However, I feel that his intuition is incorrect. If only V was guilty for the accident, why should X apologize with V? Nevertheless, we do expect X to do something. But what is that something? I believe that what we expect him to do is show Concern, to show a sincere and transparent preoccupation for the other’s fate, as a form of reconciliation, not necessarily with regard to an action for which he is blameworthy, but with unfortunate events where X took a relevant role[7].

I will try to make my point clearer: If X does not do C he will not have omitted an obligation to perform an action to which he is obliged because of Φ, but will have omitted an obligation to which we was obliged to perform C, because of Q. Moreover, unlike Enoch suggests, we never have a moral duty to undertake responsibility for other person’s (son, employee, etc.) Φ, provided that Φ was performed beyond our own scope of control or capacity.  But still, I insist, that doesn’t mean that we do not have some responsibility to do something (S).

Let’s leave this argument here for a while. I want to introduce a case that might help to support my argument.

Juan Pablo Escobar, Rodrigo Lara and the Galan Family

Juan Pablo Escobar (JPE), the son of Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the undisputed capo of the Medellin Cartel[8], recently sent a public letter to the sons of former Presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan and former Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, who were murdered by Pablo Escobar’s death squads during the 1980s. The purpose of the killings was to prevent the enactment of extradition legislation by Congress and by the National Constituent Assembly, as well as to avenge the public unveiling that those two politicians were leading of the links between Pablo Escobar and Colombian politicians.

In the letter JPE asks the sons of Lara and Galan for forgiveness, in spite the fact that he was 10 when the killings took place, and had nothing to do with them. Further, as of October 28, 2008, JPE and the sons of Galan and Lara had a meeting, where they finally reconciled.

During those days, JPE had also set a private meeting with Rodrigo Lara Jr. (RL). The conversation they had goes as follows:

“JPE:

It is very difficult to delink these issues. There are family names in between, there are families, loved ones; the terrible death of your father… and, in the end, all of us are orphans.[9] We cannot continue with this trend of hatred, or we will always live in the mud.

RL:

The past is hard, but the important thing is to look forward. You are man of peace, you are a good man; I am a good man, I am a man of peace… So, let’s look forward.” (My translation)

After the interlocutors stopped talking they embraced each other. The episode is absolutely touching. Making some remarks on this encounter, RL later said:

“After so much time that the fact occurred (meaning the killings), it (the embrace) is to send a message of reconciliation in a country where there is so much violence, orphans, and widows, because it is necessary to put an end to the cycle of violence”.[10] (My translation)

When this news was released by the press, the whole country felt some kind of relief (or that’s what it seemed). It was as if the final harmonizing notes of Tristan und Isolde had been played. It was like solving some non resolved tension that had been there for years. But what happened not only had a symbolic value for the majority of Colombians; rather it first and foremost had a real value for the Victims of Escobar, and particularly, for Lara and Galan families.

We (Colombians), and them (Lara, Galan, and Escobar family) felt that something that was indeed indispensable had finally been done. We felt that JPE had done the right thing. The odd thing is that in some way, what he did could be seen as undertaking his father’s guilt. At least, that is what it seems to be in the letter he wrote to Lara and Galan families. The letter reads as follows:

“How do you write to a family to which your father caused so much harm? What can be said to some youths of your same age that are so profoundly hurt? How to begin a conversation with somebody that carries inside a pain that is so legitimate? Apart from asking them for forgiveness in the name of your father, and even knowing that you are in the ignominy (SIC), is that enough? How can you approach someone from this place? How can you ask for forgiveness without offending?”[11] (My translation)

But, JPE was required to do that? If he did not do it could we have thought that he was blameworthy for something? And if he was not required to do it, then why did he do it? The explanation that JPE made recently seems entirely compatible with Enoch’s intuition (the intuition that in certain cases we ought to Y, even though we did not Φ, or that Φ is not a blameworthy action or omission, in principle).

But Escobar’s letter gives us a hint of why Enoch is incorrect. Escobar’s real duty was not to undertake the responsibility for his father’s actions, for which he had no fault, but to C because of Q, given the particular and somehow arbitrary circumstances in which (bad) luck placed him (Q).  He had a duty to C (ask for forgiveness and show concern as a means to reconciliation) in order to play the final chord of Tristan und Isolde of the dramatic episode of Colombian violence here portrayed.

The letter cited above, continues like this:

“How is it possible to (…) look at the eyes of the sons of the leaders that promised to make your own country to progress? How can one live like this? What allow us to find solace each day as to be able to get up and keep moving forward? PEACE. The peace that I search every day within me in order to be able to sleep, in order to be able to dream with the sons that I haven’t had yet with my beloved wife, and fight for building the world that I want them to find when God allows them to come. I don’t want for my children a country bathed in blood. (…) My only reason to be here is to help to find peace, to help to build it.”[12] (My translation)

But it was not only the peace of the country what JPE was looking for; it was his interior peace as well. He had to do it. He felt he ought to do it. His main concern was reconciliation. He had that duty, because it was the only way to live at peace with what had happened. And what triggered his duty was not his own conduct but simply an unfortunate situation which by bad luck placed him in a horrible situation.

However, JPE didn’t have to undertake responsibility – and as a matter of fact, didn’t really undertake responsibility – for what his father did. He simply couldn’t do that. But we did expect him to show Concern for the Victims of his father as a necessary means for reconciliation, as he precisely did.

Now, that duty to show Concern evinces the lack of necessity of moral luck. His duty, thus, is a duty created by the need of reconciliation, which was triggered by his father’s actions. Even though the duty comes from the need of reconciliation, and from the particular conditions in which luck had placed him, not from his father’s wrongdoings in themselves, the fact that he is obliged to C, implies that the blameworthiness for Not-C is a consequence of his own action, and nobody else’s.

The Duty to Show Concern – Second Part

Let’s try to resume what we have said or tried to say till now. Should Escobar’s son take responsibility for every action his father did? Should he feel guilty? Responsible? Blameworthy? Should he ask forgiveness to all the victims? I have argued that he should not (and could not, even if he wanted to) undertake responsibility for what his father did.

JPE couldn’t live his life if that were the case. He couldn’t stop asking for forgiveness, but, as we have said, that would not be possible, anyway. We nevertheless feel that when he asked forgiveness to the Victims he did the right thing, he resolved some odd tension that had been for a long time in the air. But we must not get confused. His asking for forgiveness cannot be taken literally, as I explained above. The relevance of what he did is the meaning that it had for achieving reconciliation…

That is precisely what solves the tension. That is the something we have been looking for: the duty to reconcile. Now, why is he obliged to search reconciliation?

This is not an easy question. My guess is that praiseworthiness or blameworthiness are not, after all, only a matter of being accountable for ones owns actions. When we occupy a position in society from where we can become relevant agents that may contribute to solve tensions, we ought to contribute to solve them. It is our duty, a moral and societal duty. The relevant question here would be, Why? Well, because as human beings we are expected to care for each other, to show concern, to worry. And when we are placed in a position that allows us to do that, we should do it. That is one of the pillars of morality: caring for each other.

I find this conclusion paradoxical: I think I succeed in providing a persuasive argument in favor of the lack of need of moral luck to explain cases as the one presented above. But the reason that I have to use in order to answer the Why question of the last pages seems contradictory with all what I have said before. It doesn’t seem logical to argue that moral luck is unnecessary in order to explain the abovementioned cases because a collective sense of morality imposes certain duties on us simply because fate placed us in the wrong context.

I don’t know at this point how to solve this paradox, but I will certainly try to discover in the future the flaws of my reasoning and try to provide a good solution to the puzzle.

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[1] By Victim I mean the actual victim of the harm, its family members, or other persons or parties affected.

[2] http://www.moralluck.org/

[3] My guess is that the consequence is the birth a situation in which X should perform a (universal) duty to contribute to Reconciliation, where X is obliged to that Reconciliation simply because he can do it, and whereas social moral norms expect that moral agents engage in acts of reconciliation for the sake of social harmony.

[4] This is, moral luck.

[5] For a better understanding of what I mean please take a look at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLoHcB8A63M. In minute 5:30 the hearer can be easily consumed by anguish. Only the final harmony, at the end of the act gives him release.

[6] Enoch, David. Being Responsible, Taking Responsibility, and Penumbral Agency. Unedited.

[7] By Relevant Role I do not necessarily mean that X was engaged in Φ. It can be the case that X is simply some sort of unfortunate spectator with some link to the whole situation.

[8] The Medellin Cartel was one of the two biggest drug trafficking cartels in Colombia during the 1980s. During those years Pablo Escobar Gaviria became one of the richest men in the world. Forbes magazine listed him as the seventh richest person on earth in 1989.

[9] “JPE: Es muy difícil desligar….todas estas cuestiones. Hay apellidos de por medio, hay familias, hay seres queridos. Está la terrible muerte de tu padre… y finalmente estamos todos huérfanos… No podemos seguir esta ola de rencor porque sino vamos a seguir en la mierda.

RL: El pasado es duro, pero lo importante es que miremos para adelante. Usted es un hombre de paz, usted es un hombre bueno. Yo soy un hombre bueno, yo soy un hombre de paz, entonces para adelante.”

[10] http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2009/octubre/14/mundo2123498.html

[11] “¿Cómo le escribes a una familia a la que tu padre le causó tanto daño? ¿Qué les dices a unos jóvenes de tu misma edad y profundamente dolidos al respecto? ¿Cómo empezarías una conversación con alguien que lleva adentro un dolor tan legítimo?  ¿Además de pedirles perdón en nombre de tu padre y aún sabiéndote en la ignominia, es eso acaso realmente suficiente? ¿Cómo puedes acercarte a alguien desde este lugar? ¿Cómo puedes aún pedir perdón sin ofender?”

[12] “¿Cómo es posible (…) mirar a los ojos de los hijos de unos líderes que prometían sacar adelante a tu propio país? ¿Cómo puedes vivir así? ¿Qué te sirve de verdadero consuelo cada día como para levantarte y seguir? LA PAZ. La paz que busco cada día dentro de mí para poder dormir, para poder pensar en los hijos que aún no he tenido con mi adorada esposa y luchar por el mundo que quiero que encuentren cuando finalmente Dios les permita llegar. No quiero para mis hijos un país más ensangrentado aún. (…)No estoy acá sino para buscar la paz, para ayudar a construirla.”

Thoughts on Fair Governance, Paternalism and Perfectionism

November 16, 2009

The main problems of Fair Governance, Paternalism and Perfectionism (Buckley) are in my view (i) its lack of originality, (ii) its superficial analysis of some of the authors he mentions to explain issues addressed in the book, and (iii) that it takes certain assumptions for granted without sufficient ground. On the flip side, I think that (iv) it succeeds in (a) presenting certain interesting aspects of happiness and its relation with paternalism, and (b) in explaining the importance of default choices and the way in which choices are presented to us.

(i) It is not very original to assert that paternalism and perfectionism fail in many respects, proving such assertion by providing different kind of examples which argue for and against the former and the latter. Buckley seems to defend some kind of middle point (199). As I see it, Buckley thinks that that middle point would be the aura mediocritas or the golden mean of public intervention. However, he fails in pointing the criteria we should employ in finding where such aura mediocritas lay, and further, on how a politician or a government could make specific decisions, given the enormous difficulty of balancing good government with morality (of the ruler) and liberty of the members of the community. (Weber. Politics as Profession).

The majority of the weak points of paternalism which Buckley addresses had already been attacked during the past century with far more convincing arguments by authors like Hayek or Misses. In their critique to the planned economy of totalitarian states and to the Keynesian approach of state intervention they tried to demonstrate how the state proved to be a poor distributor of goods and services. Hayek argued that the state was incapable of organizing the productive apparatus of the state, as to decipher the deep wishes of its citizens and their preferences over certain type of goods and the prices they would be willing to pay for them, thus, creating market inefficiencies. (Hayek. The Road to Serfdom). Further, he also argued that such deficiencies of paternalism, or collectivism, to use Hayek’s terminology, had a direct relation with human liberty, moral autonomy, and individuality, as for Hayek they were elements that could only flourish in the midst of a free market based society.
In brief, where citizens cannot choose freely what they produce and consume, they cannot be free as economic agents of the market nor as moral beings. Thus, Hayek proved the relationship between economic paternalism and moral perfectionism, and the causality influence that flows circularly between them. Thus I think that Buckley does not have anything new to offer, even more, if we consider that Buckley does not provide any specific solutions to the decision making problem.

The book also lacks originality in this regard: The debate behind the narrative of the book is, using Karl’s Popper categories, the non resolved confrontation between the historicism and tribalism of the enemies of the free society, on one side; and the individualism and liberalism of the open society, on the other. (Popper. The Open Society and its Enemies).

In this framework, Buckley stands, in my opinion, in a similar position to one of the most prominent authors of a liberal sort of communitarianism, namely Michael Walzer, at least in regard to the scope of permissible intrusion of the state into one’s own pursuit of good life. Walzer, as Buckley, I believe, would argue in favor of a certain kind of mild perfectionism and mild paternalism. But he would argue in favor of a mild form of perfectionism not only because of its political value, but rather because it is inevitable. No political organization can escape from it. Not even liberal societies, which evidently defend a particular type of morality. As I see it, liberal communitarianism succeeds in proving that the premise according to which states can be morally neutral is a fallacy (Etzioni. New Communitarian Thinking. 14), thus evincing certain theoretical difficulties of John Stuart Mill’s neutralism. Liberalism and Mill, particularly, assumes that we can have two spheres of morality, one private, and other public, which isn’t entirely true. Our public morality is not only determined by our private morality and vice versa, but they are one altogether kind of morality. The liberal argument in favor of strict separation between the two spheres is simply not real. (Bonilla. 25)

(ii) I also said in the introduction of this paper, that Buckley’s reading of some authors is not accurate. I will take Plato as example. Buckley contends that Plato was a perfectionist. (11). He argues that “The Perfectionist would overrule individual choices when these are immoral. Such theories, which are as old as Plato, assume that the state in its role as a perfectionist has a privileged view of the good and a duty to reform people, whether they want it or not.” I cannot agree with his reading of Plato. Plato’s idea of the “good” was not equivalent to moral righteousness, but rather to what is “true”, even though it is true that the truth is good per se, because it is the nearest reminisce to the archetypical form of things. This clarification leads us to contend that Plato is not an ancestor of perfectionism, but rather of paternalism. The central role of virtue in Plato’s Republic is relevant in the decision process of who must rule, and who has the right to occupy a higher rank in the social structure, but not in the interference in the private life and morals of citizens.

All the elements of cognitive paternalism presented by Buckley in chapter three (3) are present in Plato’s Republic. Every person in the society has to have certain particular intellectual conditions in order to advance to the next level of education. In the top of the hierarchical organization is the philosopher king, which has access to the idea of the good, this is, to the idea of what is, aside from any type of biases, errors of understanding, or lack of information. Thus, Plato is a cognitive paternalist, not a moral perfectionist. Against this argument it could be claimed that Plato was indeed a perfectionist, and that a proof of that was his admiration for the Spartan society, and his intent of creating a similar state in Syracuse. (Jaeger. Paideia) I would be willing to admit this argument as plausible, but this is not was Buckley says.

(iii) I also said above that the author takes certain assumptions for granted, without sufficient ground. I would like to explore one example. When talking about Nozick’s experience machine (6), Buckley assumes that none of us would agree to be hooked up to the machine. This is not true. At least, I believe there would be sufficient reasons to think that in certain social circles, like persons with drug addictions, certain kinds of diseases, extreme hunger, low self esteem, etc., the machine option would be very attractive.

This is relevant because the assumption that people prefer to take their own decisions, as given, speaks strongly in favor of anti paternalism and anti perfectionism, thus narrowing the scope of its reach. But such assumption is not necessarily correct. The example of Grille is more than exemplary in this regard, and definitely it is much more than fictitious. The thoughts of hundreds of thousands of Germans after the breakdown of the Berlin wall are symptomatic in this regard. Many would prefer to return to the commodity of a bureaucrat type of life, working as robot type automats and not as free and autonomous individuals. Cases as Egypt and Sparta, India and China, just to name a few examples, also speak in favor of this tradition in which people are not free to choose a great deal of important things of their lives, but which nevertheless stand tall as plausible cases of political organization. It is equivocal to reject the possibility or goodness, indeed, of preferring a life in which others take the decisions for us, particularly when the world has moved in that direction during thousands of years.

Moving to other critique, Buckley thinks that paternalism has a direct connection with search costs and constrained choice (83), but oddly, instead of elaborating more in the education issue he switches rapidly to other topic. I think that the issue of education is directly related with the problem of capacity. When persons have low capacity, more paternalism is to be expected; and when they have a high capacity, less paternalism is to be expected. We would not be willing to let alone persons of poor China to take the decision if they should or should not pay taxes, say, in order to improve the quality of potable water in far regions of the country. But, we could expect that the people of a well educated country would be willing to do so, if they can be sure that doing such thing is necessary for the improvement of life conditions. Thus, I assert that a society that wants to promote more freedom should make a serious effort in raising the level of education of all its citizens.

(iv) In Chapter Six, Buckley analyses the relationship between paternalism and happiness. (a) I find this to be the most interesting part of the essay. If government and intrusions on liberty have a direct impact on happiness, as the most relevant social good, then the former should be directed as to maximize overall happiness of members of society (I am not completely sure that this is equivalent to what Bentham, Mill, or Zidwick understood anyway by maximization of social happiness). The problem is that if the overall happiness of the members of society does not rise, then the government function would seem to be futile. (101). Even though Buckley is aware that people have an “innate adaption set-point of happiness, determined by character of genes, to which we revert after every gain or loss” (101) he does not go far in analyzing the implications of this for government. If we could trace a graphic of happiness of citizens in a well governed society it would look more or less like this,

were, H is happiness of individuals, T is time, and E is the adaption-set point of happiness. If it is true that human feelings of happiness vary in a way similar to this, then (a) the function of the government would be futile, as it is true that it will never be complete, but (b) necessary, as a government should indeed promote the happiness of its individuals, as even the American Declaration of Independence states.

                However, the hedonic treadmill theory would suppose, I guess, that even war prisoners in a certain point after their captivity would start to enjoy life, under its new conditions, thus achieving happiness, even without intervention of any authority, as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius would claims. (Marcus Aurelius. Meditations). The hedonic treadmill theory thus leads us to a blocked road.

 (b) Finally, Buckley successfully argues how default rules shape our choices (115) by presenting, among others, a case of organ donors in the United States and Europe. (120). He affirms that “How we choose depends on how the options are framed”. I think that this is probably the issue which would likely have the major impact over real government decisions. Facts and statistics in hand, Buckley shows how framing options in one way or another has an impact on psychological biases and particular preferences of agents, thus proving the irrationality with which people behave and take decisions, and thus how the state plays an important role in guiding our preference toward the best options available. Buckley’s argument is that government intervention is admissible, and perhaps, desirable, when default rules would be necessary to foster certain kind of preferences, which the government believes are better for us, but giving citizens opt-out alternatives, in order to strengthen their right to free choice. (125).

As a conclusion I would say that Buckley’s book succeed in highlighting interesting points of reflection and debate, but fails to provide any solution to overcome the problems which derive from his analysis. Anyway, he is coherent in admitting that he does not expect to give magic solutions to the problems raised in the book, and I intuitively adhere to his skeptical approach to the topics analyzed, as I believe that temperance and prudence are the only secure ways toward freedom and a strong democracy.