Constitutive Luck Research Articles

Editorial: Moral luck, social networking sites, and trust on the web

In June 2009, the Eighth International Conference on Computer Ethics—Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE 2009) was held at Ionian University, Corfu, Greece. Four papers originally presented at that conference are included in this issue of Ethics and Information Technology. The selected papers examine a wide range of ICT-ethics related issues, which, at first glance, might seem too diverse to be included under the rubric of a conventional theme in applied ethics. On closer inspection, however, many readers will note that the topics discussed in these papers either overlap or intersect in certain areas, especially in their examination of some controversies that have recently emerged in the field. These include challenges posed by social networking sites such as Facebook, as well as concerns affecting trust in online environments. Another challenge addressed in one of the selected papers involves the role that ‘‘moral luck’’ can play in ICT ethics. In our effort to highlight the key ethical issues examined in these four papers, we categorize them under the theme ‘‘Moral Luck, Social Networking Sites, and Trust on the Web.’’ The opening essay, by David Horner, examines the ‘‘problem of moral luck’’ in ICT ethics—a problem that Horner describes as an ‘‘unjustly neglected topic’’ within this field of applied ethics. Following a brief introduction and summary of Bernard Williams’ argument that moral values, like other kinds of values, can be subject to moral luck, Horner applies Williams’ scheme to ICT ethics. Horner also draws on Thomas Nagel’s insights with respect to distinguishing four categories affecting moral luck: consequentialist luck, constitutive luck, circumstantial luck, and luck in antecedent conditions. Horner pays particular attention to the way that moral luck can impact our understanding of both professional responsibility and (what he calls) the ‘‘identification and attribution of responsibility.’’ He then describes some ways in which the notion of moral luck can erode our understanding of the ‘‘scope of responsibility and agency,’’ and he shows how this notion also poses a challenge for the kinds of theoretical approaches that are often used in analyzing moral questions that arise in designing and implementing ICTs. But Horner also points out that by analyzing moral luck in the context of ICT ethics, we can begin to think in new ways about some of our traditional concepts such as moral responsibility, accountability, and risk. In the second essay, Michael Zimmer examines some ethical concerns affecting research on social networking sites (SNSs). In particular, he focuses on the ‘‘profile data’’ that was collected from the Facebook accounts of a cohort of students (at a university in the US) and then publicly released in 2008 by a group of researchers. Zimmer M. C. Bottis Department of Archive and Library Sciences, Ionian University, Iannou Theotoki 72, Corfu 49100, Greece e-mail: botti@otenet.gr

Autonomy Luck

I bring together three philosophical accounts to argue that differential social shaping puts agents' autonomy status outside their complete control, thanks to specific forms of good and bad luck generated by agents' membership in socially privileged and socially oppressed groups. Oppression generates psychological harms and external damages, all of which can impede autonomy. Relational Autonomy analyses suggest that agents become autonomous only through relationships with others and further enact that autonomy in social contexts. Moral Luck theorists examine the apparent paradoxes involved in our being held responsible for states and results outside our control; I consider the import of constitutive luck, situational luck, and resultant luck. We have limited control-hence, luck-with reference to beneficial and harmful ways in which relationships and social institutions affect our autonomy.

LUCK AND HISTORY-SENSITIVE COMPATIBILISM

Libertarianism seems vulnerable to a serious problem concerning present luck, because it requires indeterminism somewhere in the causal chain leading to directly free action. Compatibilism, in contrast, is thought to be free of this problem, as not requiring indeterminism in the causal chain. I argue that this view is false: compatibilism is subject to a problem of present luck. This is less of a problem for compatibilism than for libertarianism. However, its effects are just as devastating for one kind of compatibilism, the kind of compatibilism which is history-sensitive, and therefore must take the problem of constitutive luck seriously. The problem of present luck confronting compatibilism is sufficient to undermine the history-sensitive compatibilist's response to remote - constitutive - luck.

The Case Against Moral Luck

In this essay we purport to suggest a comprehensive argument against the existence of moral luck. We argue that once some crucial distinctions are taken into account, our moral judgments are not as sensitive to luck as the proponents of moral luck suggest. The intuitions, or moral opinions, purportedly supporting moral luck, once carefully characterized, can be accommodated consistently with there being no moral luck. Those moral luck intuitions that cannot be thus accommodated do indeed have to be rejected, but doing so, we proceed to argue, comes with an intuitive price that is not unreasonable given the importance of the relevant version of the control condition. Indeed, one way of explaining these moral luck intuitions away is attributing them to a failure to distinguish between them and the more benign intuitions that are consistent with there being no moral luck. We concentrate on three out of the four main categories of (purportedly) moral luck: luck about consequences of actions (consequential luck), luck in the morally relevant circumstances one encounters (circumstantial luck), and luck about moral character (constitutive luck). As is now common in the literature on moral luck, we try to abstract from the larger issues concerning the freedom of the will, which is why we do not discuss the fourth category, concerning luck in how one's will is caused. There is a worry, however, that abstracting from these (even) larger issues is not philosophically legitimate. We address this worry, though in a somewhat preliminary way, in the last section.

The Case Against Moral Luck

In this essay we purport to suggest a comprehensive argument against the existence of moral luck. We argue that once some crucial distinctions are taken into account, our moral judgments are not as sensitive to luck as the proponents of moral luck suggest. The intuitions, or moral opinions, purportedly supporting moral luck, once carefully characterized, can be accommodated consistently with there being no moral luck. Those moral luck intuitions that cannot be thus accommodated do indeed have to be rejected, but doing so, we proceed to argue, comes with an intuitive price that is not unreasonable given the importance of the relevant version of the control condition. Indeed, one way of explaining these moral luck intuitions away is attributing them to a failure to distinguish between them and the more benign intuitions that are consistent with there being no moral luck. We concentrate on three out of the four main categories of (purportedly) moral luck: luck about consequences of actions (consequential luck), luck in the morally relevant circumstances one encounters (circumstantial luck), and luck about moral character (constitutive luck). As is now common in the literature on moral luck, we try to abstract from the larger issues concerning the freedom of the will, which is why we do not discuss the fourth category, concerning luck in how one's will is caused. There is a worry, however, that abstracting from these (even) larger issues is not philosophically legitimate. We address this worry, though in a somewhat preliminary way, in the last section.

Constitutive Luck

Abstract:‘Constitutive luck’ refers to luck that affects the sort of person one is. This article demonstrates that it is a philosophically troubling sort of luck, causing problems in, at least, ethics and political philosophy. Some, notably Susan Hurley, Nicholas Rescher, and Daniel Statman, have argued that such trouble can be avoided, by pointing out that the notion of constitutive luck is incoherent. The article examines this claim by means of a discussion of the idea of luck in general, settling on an account of luck in terms of the notions of chance, value, and (lack of) control. This account is then used to show that the notion of constitutive luck is not incoherent. We are stuck with the problems made by constitutive luck.

Justice without Constitutive Luck

What fundamental aim should be seen as animating egalitarian views of distributive justice? I want to challenge a certain answer to this question: namely, that the basic aim of egalitarianism is to neutralize the effects of luck on the distribution of goods in society. I shall also sketch part of a different answer, which I think does a better job of supporting egalitarianism.My arguments here are not presented in a way that is intended to win over those who have no sympathy with egalitarianism to begin with; they move within the compass of egalitarian concern. Moreover, it is difficult, for familiar reasons, to separate the question of what the basic aim of egalitarianism is from the question of what it should be. If one aim does a better job of supporting egalitarian results than another, then, even if few egalitarians recognize this, it may be regarded as a stronger candidate for what the basic aim of egalitarianism is. As with other essentially contested concepts, a new conception does not change the subject.