5/5 Notes

Lecture notes on Inchoate offenses and Moral Luck

The lecture will address intuitions about morality from chapter six, specifically focusing on inchoate offenses.
Inchoate offenses refer to incomplete actions, like attempted murder versus successful murder.

Moral luck arises when moral outcomes depend on factors beyond one's control.
Consider two equally determined murderers, one an excellent shot, the other lousy. The excellent shot succeeds, the other misses.
The successful murderer is typically punished far more severely than the one who merely attempts due to competence.
Another case: Two equally competent assassins; one succeeds, the other is foiled by a metal cigarette case.
Successful Completion hinges on uncontrollable external circumstances/chance.
The negligent driving example: reckless driving that luckily doesn't harm anyone versus reckless driving that results in a fatality.
The driver who causes a fatality is punished more harshly, even though the internal state (negligence) was the same in both cases.

A Kantian perspective focuses on internal motivations and intentions, judging these cases as morally equal.
A consequentialist view, like utilitarianism, would punish actions with worse consequences more harshly.
Law often aligns more with consequentialist morality in this respect.

Need to distinguish wrongness from badness and potentially from blameworthiness.
Something is morally bad from a utilitarian perspective if it causes disutility (suffering).
A utilitarian must distinguish between wrongness and badness.
Even if both choices involve bad consequences, one must choose the lesser of two evils, as illustrated in the Trolley Problem.
- Trolley Problem: Save 5 people or divert the trolley to kill 1.
- From the utilitarian perspective the action that saves 5 people, even though it involves harm, is the correct one.
Choosing the lesser evil does not eliminate the fact that it is still an evil.
An action can be good but still wrong if there was an alternative that produced more utility.
The move from worse consequences to more culpability requires careful consideration.
- If an action x causes more harm than another action y, then x is morally worse than y, all things being equal (utilitarian calculus).
- If a's action is morally worse than b's action and a is culpable, then a is more culpable than b, all things being equal.

Utilitarianism determine that an act is right if and only if it maximizes overall utility.
Hypothetical Scenario: Saving baby Hitler prevented the Holocaust and World War II and other events; therefore, doing so was wrong from the utilitarian perspective.
- If the aggregate suffering of Hitler’s life and the war he started outweighs the life of toddler Hitler, it might be argued to have been better for him to have died.
It's wrong to save baby Hitler due to the immense disutility that follows.
This example highlights the tension between act utilitarianism and moral intuitions.
People erroneously assume blameworthiness is proportional to wrongness. Utilitarianism does not support this assumption.
Blame is forward-looking and should maximize overall utility, not simply reflect the wrongness of an action.
The consequences of blaming the person are what matter, not the act itself.
There might be situations in which its better to choose something that isn't the action that maximizes the overall utility. The utility calculus needs to be objective.

Utilitarianism is not necessarily a good guide to action.
Rules of thumb are useful for guiding behavior when one lacks the time or knowledge to calculate utility.
These rules are breakable in certain circumstances with special knowledge.
Important to also break between the connection between graceworthiness and blameworthiness.
Consequentialist theories of punishment should take retributive intuitions into account when dishing out punishment.

The idea that some people haven't been tested.
The banality of evil: evil is not special to certain people but could be done by ordinary people.
This plays into ideas against contributivism. Moral luxury can be connect to contributivism because you can't fully place yourself in the other person's viewpoint and expect the same outcomes that you would do.
It's way worse to excessively punish than to punish less.
The Treaty of Versailles leading to the rise of Nazi Germany is cited as an example of excessive punishment leading to negative consequences.
The dehumanization of marginalized groups can lead to a disregard for their well-being.

Ordinary people can commit terrible actions when given orders.
Two common explanations: following orders and blaming the victim.
Students were instructed to administer electric shocks to a subject (who was an actor) for incorrect answers.
65% of participants continued to administer shocks even when the subject expressed pain. Justification given by subject was that they were told to do so.
Two main excuses given: following orders and blaming the victim for making mistakes.
The experiment highlights the dangers of deference to authority and dehumanization.
Participants could not see the faces of the subject who was being electrocuted, but could hear the screams.
It's important to note what the roles and positions of different people are doing in the experiment.
Discussion of ethics review boards and informed consent: modern boards prevent experiments with deception.

Debate on whether lighter punishments are justifiable based on luck.
The legal system judges both the actus reus (action) and mens rea (mental state).
There is the defense that in an imperfect world unjust things are going to occur.
Random searches at airports, profile, or ticking time bomb is what philosophers worry about.
Racial profiling: If there are bad enough numbers, then ignoring the knowledge is dumb.
- In the TSA, people are always concerned about profile especially racial profiling.
It's a mistake to think it would be impossible to meet the injustice burden.