Constitutive Luck Research Articles

Big Data, Behavioral Genetics and Risk of Future Offending

A convergence of trends in assessing the future risk of reoffending could result in morally questionable inputs into the criminal process. Advances in the analysis of DNA and increases in the availability of information about people gleaned from social media might allow for new inferences to be drawn against offenders during the sentencing process. We explore how developments in forensic DNA analysis methods and law enforcement DNA databases in conjunction with information about an offender’s developmental environment could lead the prosecution to postulate a high risk of recidivism and thus argue for a longer sentence. We then consider some reasons why such a prosecution strategy might be troubling. In doing so, we focus on issues related to the inferential process, discrimination, privacy and constitutive luck.

Against epistemic accounts of luck

Abstract Epistemic accounts of luck define luck’s chanciness condition relative to a subject’s epistemic position. This could be put in terms of a subject’s evidence or knowledge about whether the event will occur. I argue that both versions of the epistemic account fail. In §2, I give two types of counterexamples to the evidence-based approach. In §3, I argue—contrary to the knowledge-based view—that an event can be a matter of good or bad luck for a subject even if she knows that it will occur. In §4, I argue that epistemic accounts cannot explain some instances of constitutive luck. Because of these problems, luck’s chanciness condition cannot be adequately defined in epistemic terms.

The Luckiest of All Possible Beings: Divine Perfections and Constitutive Luck

Many theists conceive of God as a perfect being, i.e., as that than which none greater is metaphysically possible. On this grand view of God, it seems plausible to think that such a supreme and maximally great being would not be subject to luck of any sort. Given the divine perfections, God is completely insulated from luck. However, I argue that the opposite is true: precisely because God is perfect, he is subject to a kind of luck called constitutive luck. In this paper, first I provide an analysis of luck and then explain the concept of constitutive luck. I proceed to defend constitutive luck from charges of incoherence and examine a different approach to make sense of this luck. Furthermore, I distinguish between two kinds of constitutive luck and argue that even if God isn’t subject to one kind, evading the second kind is unsuccessful. I offer two ways that God is constitutively lucky and reach a surprising conclusion: a perfect being is the luckiest of all possible beings.

ACT-Endorsing Libertarianism, Constitutive Luck, and Basic Moral Responsibility

Because an agent’s constitutive luck may seem to preclude free will, it may seem to preclude moral responsibility. An agent is basically morally responsible for performing action A at time t only if there is another possible world with the same past up to t and the same laws of nature in which the agent does not perform A at t. A compatibilist can solve the constitutive luck problem for moral responsibility without worrying about basic moral responsibility. According to compatibilism, if determinism is true, then agents can be morally responsible for performing actions without being basically morally responsible for performing them. But a libertarian who thinks agents can be basically morally responsible for what they do must explain how basic moral responsibility is possible. ACT-endorsing libertarianism can both solve the constitutive luck problem for moral responsibility and explain how agents can be basically morally responsible for what they do.

Circumstantial and constitutive moral luck in Kant's moral philosophy

AbstractThe received view of Kant's moral philosophy is that it precludes all moral luck. But I offer a plausible interpretation according to which Kant embraces moral luck in circumstance and constitution. I interpret the unconditioned nature of transcendental freedom as a person's ability to do the right thing no matter how she is inclined by her circumstantial and constitutive luck. I argue that various passages about degrees of difficulty relating to circumstantial and constitutive luck provide a reason to accept a pro‐moral luck interpretation of Kant.

What's Luck Got to do with the Luck Pincer?

AbstractLuck skepticism is the view that no one is ever morally responsible for anything because of the nature and ubiquity of luck. One acclaimed argument in favor of this view is Neil Levy's luck pincer. The luck pincer holds that all morally significant acts or events involve either present luck, constitutive luck, or both and that present and constitutive luck each negate moral responsibility. Therefore, no one is ever morally responsible for any action or event. I argue that this argument is unsound as both of its premises are false. First, not all morally significant events involve present or constitutive luck. Some morally significant events are non‐lucky. Second, present and constitutive luck do not always negate moral responsibility. Luck – independent of ontological concerns – is not as threatening to free will as is often thought.

The Moral Irrelevance of Constitutive Luck

One’s constitution—whether one is generous or miserly, temperate or intemperate, kind or mean, etc.—is beyond one’s control in significant respects. Yet one’s constitution affects how one acts. And how one acts affects one’s moral standing. The counterintuitive inference—the so-called problem of constitutive moral luck—is that one’s moral standing is, to some significant extent, beyond one’s control. This article grants the premises but resists the inference. It argues that one’s constitution should have no net impact on one’s moral standing. While a bad constitution lowers the chance that one will act morally, it offers significant gains to moral standing should that chance materialize. A good constitution increases one’s chance of performing good acts but for correspondingly more modest gains. This effect should smooth out, and possibly eliminate, the expected impact of constitution on moral standing.

Responsibility in Cases of Structural and Personal Complicity: A Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract:In cases of complicity in one’s own unfreedom and in structural injustice, it initially appears that agents are only vicariously responsible for their complicity because of the roles circumstantial and constitutive luck play in bringing about their complicity. By drawing on work from the phenomenological tradition, this paper rejects this conclusion and argues for a new responsive sense of agency and responsibility in cases of complicity. Highlighting the explanatory role of stubbornness in cases of complicity, it is argued that although agents may only be vicariously responsible for becoming complicit, they can be held more directly responsible for entrenching their complicity. The complicit agent is responsible for their complicity to the extent that they fail to take responsibility for it.

"КЛЕЩИ УДАЧИ" НИЛА ЛЕВИ ПРОТИВ КОМПАТИБИЛИСТСКИХ ТЕОРИЙ МОРАЛЬНОЙ ОТВЕТСТВЕННОСТИ

The article discusses Neil Levy’s argument against compatibilist theories of moral responsibility based on his concept of luck. The author considers possible ways for criticizing the concept of moral responsibility by undermining the control condition or the epistemic condition. Levi follows the second path. The author analyzes specifics in Levy’s interpretation of the epistemic condition: according to Levy, the epistemic condition is built into the control one; it is considered from an internalist position (from the point of view of availability to an agent of the grounds for his action). Levy analyzes the concept of luck and identifies several types of it: chancy and non-chancy, present and constitutive. Cases of luck are not controlled by an agent, and he or she is not responsible for them. Then the author considers Levy’s argument against compatibilism based on his concept of luck: any compatibilist explanation of an action for which an agent is morally responsible rests either on constitutive luck, or on present luck, or on a combination of them. The substantiation of such a trilemma leads Levy to the concept of intellectual vice. FitzPatrick’s answer to the issue formulated by Levy is analyzed. It is shown that, even though Fitzpatrick’s solution is problematic, his general approach is correct: it is necessary to develop a theory of epistemic responsibility by the means of virtue epistemology and show its connection with moral responsibility.

Moral responsibility and manipulation: on a novel argument against historicism

Taylor Cyr offers a novel argument against, as he puts it, “all versions of historicism” about direct moral responsibility (Philos Stud. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01315-y , 2019). The argument features constitutive luck and a comparison of manipulated agents and young agents performing the first actions for which they are morally responsible. Here it is argued that Cyr’s argument misses its mark. Alfred Mele’s historicism is highlighted.

Manipulation and constitutive luck

I argue that considerations pertaining to constitutive luck undermine historicism—the view that an agent’s history can determine whether or not she is morally responsible. The main way that historicists have motivated their view is by appealing to certain cases of manipulation. I argue, however, that since agents can be morally responsible for performing some actions from characters with respect to which they are entirely constitutively lucky, and since there is no relevant difference between these agents and agents who have been manipulated into acting from a character bestowed upon them by their manipulators, we should give up historicism. After presenting this argument and defending it against some potential objections, I briefly criticize the standard structuralist alternative and propose a new structuralist position that is shaped by reflection on constitutive luck.

Constitutive Moral Luck and Strawson's Argument for the Impossibility of Moral Responsibility

AbstractGalen Strawson's Basic Argument is that because self-creation is required to be truly morally responsible and self-creation is impossible, it is impossible to be truly morally responsible for anything. I contend that the Basic Argument is unpersuasive and unsound. First, I argue that the moral luck debate shows that the self-creation requirement appears to be contradicted and supported by various parts of our commonsense ideas about true moral responsibility, and that this ambivalence undermines the only reason that Strawson gives for the self-creation requirement. Second, I argue that the self-creation requirement is so demanding that either it is an implausible requirement for a species of true moral responsibility that we take ourselves to have or it is a plausible requirement of a species of true moral responsibility that we have never taken ourselves to have. Third, I explain that Strawson overgeneralizes from instances of constitutive luck that obviously undermine true moral responsibility to all kinds of constitutive luck.

Moral Responsibility, Luck, and Compatibilism

In this paper, I defend a version of compatibilism (about determinism and moral responsibility) against luck-related objections. After introducing the types of luck that some take to be problematic for moral responsibility, I consider and respond to two recent attempts to show that compatibilism faces the same problem of luck that libertarianism faces—present (or cross-world) luck. I then consider a different type of luck—constitutive luck—and provide a new solution to this problem. One upshot of the present discussion is a reason to prefer a history-sensitive compatibilist account over a purely nonhistorical structuralist account.

Can Self-Forming Actions Dispel Worries about Luck?

Libertarian theories of freedom and responsibility face a worry about luck: if an action is undetermined, the action cannot be legitimately attributed to the agent; instead the action is a matter of luck, and so the agent is not responsible for the action. Robert Kane defends libertarianism by appealing to self-forming actions (“SFAs”). These actions are undetermined because the agent is attempting to act on two conflicting motives, but the agent is responsible for the outcome if she is responsible for having those motives. If the agent “endorsed” both motives in earlier SFAs, Kane argues that we can hold the agent responsible for both motives, and hence responsible for the later SFA. We will further develop others’ arguments that Kane’s appeal to earlier SFAs to explain responsibility for a later SFA is unsatisfactory. We then raise a second objection to Kane’s use of SFAs. On one formulation of an SFA, the agent does three things: she exerts two efforts of will to make opposing choices, and she also acts on one of them. On another formulation of an SFA, the agent does just two things: she exerts two efforts of will to make opposing choices. One of those efforts turns out to be successful, but that success doesn’t require any further intervention from the agent. We distinguish two worries involving luck, a problem of resultant luck and a problem of constitutive luck, and show that neither model of SFAs solves both problems.

Moral luck and the talent problem

My objective in this project is to explore the concept of moral luck as it relates to sports. I am especially interested in constitutive luck. As a foundation I draw from both Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel’s classic handling of moral luck, generally. Within the philosophy of sport are similar explorations of this nexus by Robert Simon and David Carr that also factor into the present work. My intent is to put a new lens in front of a puzzle drawn from Torbjörn Tännsjö’s well-known article ‘Is Our Admiration of Sports Heroes Facistoid?’ Specifically, the idea that we might admire an athlete who excels without having worked hard for it (i.e. though talent per se). If we may call this puzzle ‘the talent problem,’ the questions driving the present work are as follows: (1) what is the relationship between moral luck and the talent problem, and (2) can this relationship provide a prescription for morally assessing the talent problem? The thesis that this exploratory work suggests that more complex games (and therefore sports) are more praiseworthy than simpler ones because the former require an athlete to nurture a more complex matrix of talents, skills, and capacities and are therefore less vulnerable to the natural lottery.

The Zygote Argument is invalid: Now what?

Alfred Mele’s original Zygote Argument is invalid. At most, its premises entail the negative thesis that free action is incompossible with deterministic laws, but its conclusion asserts the positive thesis that deterministic laws preclude (make impossible, undermine) free action. The original, explanatory conclusion of the Zygote Argument can be defended only by supplementing it with a best-explanation argument that identifies deterministic laws as menacing. (By the same reasoning, it follows that every manipulation argument pinpointing a specific threat to free will requires a best-explanation argument). Arguably, though, the best explanation for the manipulation victim’s lack of freedom and responsibility is his constitutive luck, which is a problem irrespective of the natural laws that obtain. This proposed explanation leads to a new “diagnostic” version of the Zygote Argument which concludes that free action is impossible even though deterministic laws pose no threat whatsoever to free will.

Playing the Hand We’ve Been Dealt: On Constitutive Luck and Moral Education

Playing the Hand We’ve Been Dealt: On Constitutive Luck and Moral Education

Justice, Reason, and Luck in Rationing Lifesaving Medical Resources

Justice, Reason, and Luck in Rationing Lifesaving Medical Resources

Formative and Punitive Assessment

Matthew Hayden takes aim at high stakes uses of student assessments to evaluate, reward, and penalize teachers. He argues convincingly that such uses of assessments are misguided and counterproductive. In making that argument, he relies on aspects of my analysis in “Academic Standards and Constitutive Luck,” evidence that teachers’ efforts account for only three percent of measurable variation in student achievement, and the research of my colleagues, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci. His essay may be regarded as a friendly amendment or extension of my own, and I am sympathetic to his main conclusions. We agree that students and teachers should not be judged on the basis of results they cannot control, we agree that grades should be used to promote learning and fair equality of opportunity, and we agree that the information provided by assessment of student learning should be used formatively to promote good teaching — and rarely, if ever, to sanction teachers without more direct knowledge of the quality of their teaching. The logic by which Hayden extrapolates from fairness-to-students to fairness-to-teachers is not as straightforward as it seems, however.

Fair Is Fair: Outcome Assessment, Constitutive Luck, and Teacher Evaluation

The influence of the so-called “accountability movement” in education in the United States has elevated the perceived importance of student assessments to predominance over most other educational issues. The emphasis has been so great that the two most recent national-level educational policy initiatives, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, placed student assessment outcomes at the center of their policies. As a result, schooling reform movements have increasingly focused on the use of student assessments to evaluate teachers. In this essay, I will attempt to show not only that such practices are flawed, but that they also undermine the stated goals of their advocates.