Assessing Moral Responsibility in the Presence of Luck: A case for Constitutive Moral Luck

Abstract

This thesis examines the tension between moral responsibility and moral luck. The question it asks is whether moral responsibility can survive a full acknowledgement of constitutive luck, the fact that the character and capacities shaping an agent's actions are products of factors entirely beyond their control. It pursues this question through the case of the psychopath: an agent who possesses intelligence and intentional agency but lacks, through no fault of their own, the emotional capacities that normally ground moral responsiveness. The thesis examines different ways philosophers try to respond and defend the concept of moral responsibility which seems to be threatened by moral luck. I argue that these approaches are limiting and propose Patricia Greenspan's scalar account of blameworthiness as the superior alternative. Her historical standard, that blameworthiness depends on what self-control it was reasonable to expect of an agent given their constitutional endowment and developmental history, provides the graduated, case sensitive framework that rival compatibilist accounts lack. The thesis concludes that moral responsibility does not require escaping constitutive luck. It requires governing oneself within it, and the degree to which that governance can reasonably be expected is precisely what blameworthiness tracks.