Luck and Desert - by Logan Conklin

In response to Nagel's argument that we do not judge people for what they would have done, Richards says that you can treat someone a partiular way based on what you think that individual would do if presented with the opportunity. However, this argument seems to contradict one of his earlier arguments in which he says: "his acting in a way which deserves their rebuking him does not entitle them to rebuke him, since their grounds for believing him to have done so may be inadequate." In the example that Richards gives involving the repairman and how he would have stolen the wallet had he not been under surveillance, the evidence is inadequate and he cannot therefore be judged. In this case, I agree with Nagel and that you "judge people for what they actually do or fail to do, not just for what they would have done if circumstances had been different." Had the repairman not been under surveillance he may well have stolen the wallet but we will never know for sure. Therefore it is not appropriate for that individual to be judged in such a way.

Nagel's "Moral Luck" - by Emily Cooper

Thomas Nagel argues that human morality is confounded by circumstances out of our immediate control. People are “morally at the mercy of fate” (34). Kant believes the essence of good will “would sparkle like a jewel in its on right”. Nagel argues that people outside of Nazi Germany were not presented with the opportunity to be moral or immoral in response due to their distance.

I believe that people have the moral responsibility to respond to situations which may not be in their immediate environment. This is what makes us human and imposes Kant’s good will in the face of mankind. We are all given these moral opportunities. For example, the starvation and genocide in Africa is a very real, extremely serious and devastating reality. However, it is not necessarily in our face due to the distance.

It seems to me that even though there are situations which many not be in our face, we are still morally responsible to respond. As humans, I feel as though we are all responsible to look after each other and do everything in our power to help one another whether we are immediately faced with situations in which we should respond or not immediately faced with these dilemmas. I think that moral responsibly is more in our control than Nagel assumes. We are all given choices in life and opportunities to respond to things that are morally wrong. It is up to us to make these changes occur; if we as humans don’t immediately help in any which way that we can, than nothing will ever change. Therefore, the direction of moral luck is a human imposition and truly our responsibly.

Moral Luck - by Kathleen Emberger

Williams argues against morality by appealing to the case of Gauguin. By this case, he shows that there are instances where rational justification trumps moral justification. This is a problem for morality because it is supposed to be the supreme value that appeals to justice and fairness. Therefore morality is not the supreme value people believe it is or that morality is subject to luck and in this admission morality is severely weakened. The problem with Williams’ argument is that he fails to argue why rational justification is retrospective. He argues that Gauguin is only rationally justified if he succeeds, thus requiring some amount of luck to help him succeed.

I argue that when Gauguin rationally justifies his leaving to become an artist is some island he appeals to the current situation and not the future possibilities. When Gauguin made the decision to leave his family, did he rationally believe that he may succeed? If he did then, I think that he was rationally justified. But when he left if someone asked him to justify his leaving, he would not suggest that he will only be justified in the future if he succeeds. He would offer an immediate justification and offer reasons why he is justified. If Gauguin was relying completely on luck then any justification would not be rational because such a choice seems irrational. Therefore, I do not see how rational justification relies on luck. Rational justification relies on a human’s ability to take the facts that they know now, faith in their own ability, and using this to logically argue why they are justified.

On Conee - by AJ Davis

In Earl Conee's "Against Moral Dilemmas" he attempts to deny the existence of moral dilemmas by providing dilemma-free accounts in all the case-arguments posited by dilemma advocates. The final case he deals with is that of Ruth Barcan Marcus. Her view is the following: similar to Williams, individuals in moral dilemmas do experience guilt after a decision is made (the presence of that guilt is evidence that it was a dilemma) and that guilt strengthens one's desire to arrange his life in such a way that future dilemmas are avoided. Conee then tries to provide a dilemma free account by claiming that there can still be a negative feeling associated with the decision, that is not guilt (if it is not an emotion like guilt that infers something wrong was done the argument for the existence of dilemmas in Marcus's case fails) but still provides an inclination to arrange one's life in such a way that it avoids future conflicts. His negative emotion is, "abhorrence of ensuing evils." Such a negative feeling would provide the above inclination but this feeling is only suitable in conflicts like that of the spy who had to torture and lie or allow for nuclear war. That is it only suitable in cases where both choices in the conflict are independently evil. However, in the more common cases like having two obligations to meet two friends for lunch at the same time, but you can only meet one the negative feeling Conee recommends does not apply. In this case, there is ensuing evil as he would see it, only the evil of having to fail to meet one of your promises to your friend. In these more common cases the evil can only be captured by the stronger negative feeling of guilt.

On Hare - by Jesse Pavelka

Hare is correct in stating that it is a good thing that we have all (well most of us, psychopaths excluded) acquired the basic moral sentiments that are generally bestowed on us by our parents and were discussed by both Plato and Aristotle. I agree that it is not enough to have simply "like and dislike" but wonder who exactly is suggesting this. He seems to be taking aim at what he terms "intuitionists", but if that is the case then it seems he is mischaracterizing what exactly they seem to be saying. Like and dislike are childlike terms, and I doubt anyone would seriously say that those constitute a complete moral education. Rather, I believe Hare's opposition would term the idea the "difference between right and wrong," which the author acknowledges later in the paragraph. However, he misrepresents this description as his opponent's ultimate view of a moral education. I consider myself an opponent of Hare, and I do not believe that a view of right and wrong is ultimate, but I do believe it is sufficient for some basic analysis of most moral situations.

In the following paragraph, Hare gives an example of when he lied and felt guilty simply due to the fact that he had lied, regardless of his belief that he ought to have done it. I could not disagree more with his concept of guilt. When one feels guilty, it is because one believes that s/he has done something that ought not to have been done. At the very least, there is some ambivalence about whether the action was right or wrong. Hare claims that he felt guilty for telling a lie, but has no doubts that he ought to have told it. This is contradictory. A lie detector will expose deception based on the physiology of fear; it cannot detect a sense of guilt. If you do something which you believe you ought to do, you don't feel guilty; perhaps it is regret, or something else altogether. I can certainly imagine situations where I would feel no guilt about telling a lie (I am no psychopath). For instance, I would feel no guilt about lying to save an innocent victim from a knife-wielding killer. Similarly, many non-Jews during World War II lied to the Gestapo about the location of Jewish families; I can't fathom having any guilt if I was in the same situation.