2 Recasting the Problem of Resultant Luck

8/12/2019 2 Recasting the Problem of Resultant Luck

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Legal Theory, 15 (2009), 267300.C Cambridge University Press, 2010 0361-6843/10 $15.00 + 00

doi:10.1017/S1352325209990073

RECASTING THE PROBLEM

OF RESULTANT LUCK

Marcelo FerranteUniversidad Torcuato di Tella School of Law,Buenos Aires, Argentina

I offer in this paper an argument in support of the orthodox view that resultant luck

should not affect judgments of blameworthinessand so, for example, that we shouldnot blame the successful assassin more than the attempted assassin who equallytries but fails. This view, though widely held among moral philosophers and legalscholars, has been severely challenged as implying either the implausible rejectionof moral luck or an equally implausible theory of wrongness according to whichactual consequences may play no wrong-making role. The argument I offer, however,assumes both challenges to be true and shows that the orthodox view is consistentwith holding them. Indeed, I argue that all other things being equal, successfuloffenders are no more to blame than their unsuccessful counterparts, even thoughagents are responsible for what they actually do (and therefore are subject to moral

luck), and successful offenders do more wrong than their unsuccessful counterpartsdo (and therefore consequences do play a wrong-making role). The reason is that thedifference in the amount of wrong done by one and the other offender, I show, iscounterbalanced by a difference in the degree to which the successful offense and theunsuccessful one are attributable to their respective agentsblameworthiness beinga function of both amount of wrong done and degree of attributability.

I. INTRODUCTION

Both in morality and in criminal law, we condemn the successful assassinmore intensely than we condemn the attempted assassin who equally triesbut fails. The orthodox view among legal theorists and moral philosophersis that we do wrong: the unsuccessful offender is as blameworthy as thesuccessful counterpart is. The luck in the way actions turn out,1 or resul-tant luck, is of no significance to the issue of deserved blame. Insofar asour condemnatory practices are to track judgments of moral responsibil-ity, we should make no distinction, ceteris paribus, between successful and

I would like to thank Amalia Amaya, Mitchell Berman, Jorge Cerdio, Lewis Kornhauser,Larry Laudan, Stephen Morse, Francisca Pou, Eduardo Rivera-Lopez, Scott Shapiro, SeanaShiffrin, Horacio Spector, and anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

1. The expression is Nagels.SeeTHOMASNAGEL,Moral Luck,reprinted inMORTALQUESTIONS(1979).

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unsuccessful offenders. Arguments of two different sorts have been ad-vanced in support of this orthodox view. According to the first kind of argu-ment, the orthodox view is an implication of the denial of moral luckor,more narrowly, of the principle that we mistreat a person when we let fac-tors she did not control influence whether or how much we condemn her.Arguments of the second sort show the orthodox view to be a reflection ofa theory of wrongness under which there is no more wrong done in suc-ceeding than in equally trying but failing. That is the case if, say, it is riskingor intending harm, rather than actually harming, that wrongness dependsupon.

Both the denial of moral luck and the equal-wrongness claim, however,have proven far from convincing. The denial of moral luck has implica-tions that the we are normally unwilling to hold. If the reason we shouldcondemn the pair of successful and unsuccessful assassins alike is that thesuccess-failure distinction tracks a feature of the world that lies beyond theagents control and that such features cannot ground differences in blame-worthiness, then we would be committed to condemn equally many otherswho did not actually try to murder or even think about it. Indeed, the twoassassins could not be more to blame than other individualsalmost every-one perhapswhowouldhave tried to murder, just as the pair of assassinsactually did try, but for some feature of the world they did not control,such as the lack of a propitious opportunity, the formation of an inconsis-tent intention, or the lack of the required character traits. If the denial ofmoral luck is what grounds the orthodox view, then it will entail a set ofequally blameworthy people that is far larger than the orthodox is willingto acceptfar too large indeed.2

One may try to escape this implication by basing the orthodox view on theequal-wrongness claim. David McCarthy has argued that for agents with ourcharacteristic epistemic limitations, the concern with harm to others andother evil consequences of our acts should lead to a theory of wrongnessaccording to which it is actsexpectedconsequences (or therisksacts create)that are the relevant wrong-making feature rather than (some of) the con-sequences actsactuallybring about.3 It is hard to disagree with the idea onwhich the argument depends: that for a feature of the world to count as awrong-maker, it must be somehow epistemically available.4 However, it doesnot follow from this that the relevant wrong-maker must be risk impositionrather than actual causation of something like foreseeable consequences orsome suitable combination of both. If, intending to kill my colleague nextdoor, I throw a grenade into his office, thereby killing him, it is not at allclear why we should give up the intuition that what makes my action wrong

2. SeeMICHAELS. MOORE, PLACINGBLAME191247 (1997); Michael J. Zimmerman, TakingLuck Seriously, 99 J. PHIL. 553 (2002).

3. David McCarthy,Actions, Beliefs, and Consequences, 90 PHIL. STUD. 57 (1998).4. Id.at 74.


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Recasting the Problem of Resultant Luck 269

is (in part) that I kill my colleague as I intended rather than (just) that Iimposed risk of death on him.5

I offer in this essay a defense of the orthodox view, which does not fallprey to the objections raised against the denial of moral luck and the equal-wrongness claim. As I argue below, there is room for the orthodox vieweven if, plausibly enough, (i) people are blameworthy for what they actuallydo, which implies that they are subject to moral luck; (ii) blameworthinessand the degree to which one is to blame depend partly on the wrongnessof that which the agent is to blame for; and (iii) wrongness depends onexternal features rather than only on internal features such as beliefs andother intentional states, such that successful offenders may be said to dowrong in a way or to a degree that is more serious or higher than the wrongthe unsuccessful counterpart does.

II. SUCCESS-FAILURE PAIRS

Arguments for the orthodox view normally involve a pair of cases of a char-acteristic sort, and mine will be no exception. I call these pairs success-failure

pairs. Success-failure pairs are supposed to make it salient that in treatingsuccessful and unsuccessful offenders unequally, we afford significance to afeature that, we should recognize, has no significance at all. The first mem-

ber of the pair, the success case, describes the action of an agent, Alvarez,for which Alvarez is indisputably to blame. It might be that Alvarez kills herneighbor by shooting at her from the attic or burns down her enemys houseby throwing an incendiary bombthe details of the case are unimportant;you may bring in those of your choice. For convenience, I use the variablefor the type of action that best describes Alvarezs doing in this context.

The only crucial feature to observe in devising the success case is thatthere must be some room for failure in the agents -ing. The -ing mustultimately depend on conditions that are, as it were, up to nature.6 Human

actions in the actual world are always like that, so any realistic case will do.The reason for this condition is that the failure case, the second case of thepair, is to fall within the space of Alvarezs likely failurethe failure caseactualizes a possible but unactualized failure of the success case.

The agent in the failure case, whom I will call Borges, is identical to Alvarezin every respect, displays the same skills, beliefs, and intentions as Alvarezdoes, engages in an identical course of action that is as likely to succeed as hiscounterparts is, but unlike Alvarez, Borges fails. The particular conditionsof -ing that the agents neglect are again unimportant: the neighbors

5. I think that Thomsons objections in herImposing Risksarticle still hold after McCarthysargument.SeeJUDITHJARVISTHOMSON, RIGHTS, RESTITUTION ANDRISKS173191 (W. Parent ed.,1986).

6. I play here with a sentence of Davidsons with which he characterizes basic or primitiveactions: We never do more than move our bodies: the rest is up to nature. DONALDDAVIDSON,Agency,inESSAYS ONACTIONS ANDEVENTS59 (1980).


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window might happen to have bullet-proof glass, or an unexpected passingbird might deviate the shot; a sudden rainstorm might kill the fire, or a teamof firefighters might happen to be partying in the house next door, with thefire truck and equipment. The pair of cases must be such, in other words,that Borges does everythingAlvarez does except-ing, and Borgess failurecannot be explained as the consequence of something one agent has doneor omitted to do which the other has not. To simplify, I use the variable for the type of action that best describes Borgess doing. Both Alvarez andBorges thus do , but Alvarezs -ing becomes an -ing, while Borgess doesnot, in virtue of some nonactional difference between the cases.

Let me clarify a bit more what the relationship is between the typesof actions ( and ) for whose instantiations in success and failure theagents (Alvarez and Borges) are to blame. First, -ing is for the agents theactional meansto -ing, which entails the following two things: (i) -ing ismore basican action than -ing is (in the sense of basic in which we say,noncomparatively, that a given action is a basic action),7which means thatfor the agent to do , she must do as partof it, or that she can only do bydoing ; (ii) -ing ispractically sufficientfor -ing, which is to say that theagent does justby doing . This does not mean that-ingentails-ingitdoes not; it is indeed practical rather than logical sufficiency that is at stake.

Second, the label stands for the best description of Alvarezs behaviorfor which she is to blame; that is, the description picks out everyfeatureof the agents doing for whichthe agent is to blame, and these features, inturn, are the same as the features in virtue of which the doing is morallywrong. Particularly when wrongness is to do with doing harm, wrongnessturns not only on the fact that harm is caused but also on the way the harmis produced. So the label is meant to include not just the fact that a harmof a particular kind has been produced some way or another but also everyaspect of the way in which the harm is brought about that affects the overalljudgment of wrongness.

Suppose I intentionally kill Martha, my colleague next door, by throwinga grenade into her office. I do wrong, no doubt, in virtue of the fact thatI kill her; and assuming I have no excuse, I am to blame for killing her.Killing Martha is certainly the dominant wrong-making factor in this story,but it is not the only one. There are also other features of my behaviorthat are intuitively relevant for an exhaustive judgment of wrongness. Ithink most people would agree on the following: that it is an intentionalkilling (rather than, say, an accidental killing) by a close colleague whilethe victim is working at the university (rather than, say, by a war enemy onthe battlefield) and that it brings about death in a physically destructiveway (rather than in a focused, painless, clean, and quick way). If I am right,then, to blame me just for killing Martha would understate the ground of

7. An action is a basic action of an agent S if and only if there is no other action suchthat S does by doing as part of doing . SeeARTHURC. DANTO, Basic Actions and BasicConcepts,reprinted inTHEBODY/BODYPROBLEM4562 (1999).


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my blameworthiness. A more accurate description of that for which I am toblame would be something like intentionally killing Martha, the colleaguenext door, by throwing a grenade into her office. Thus, if I intentionallykill my colleague next door by throwing a grenade into her office picks outevery wrong-making aspect of my action, then I would stand for it.

The features of the action that the description picks out are in turndetermined by the description and the notion of actional means. Thus,in the example of my killing Martha, where I equals I intentionally killmy colleague next door by throwing a grenade into her office, I wouldstand for something like I throw a grenade into my colleagues office withthe intention of killing her. For I do just by doing that.

I mean the proposition Alvarez does to entail the proposition Alvarezdoesthough not the converseso that when we place blame on Alvarezfor her doing , we are expressly reacting to the features of the case thatmake the description true (as well as the description). This point rulesout the apparent oddity in the orthodox claim that Alvarez is no more toblame than Borges is, when Alvarez would be to blame bothfor -ing andfor-ing, whereas Borges is to blame only for-ing. My point ensures thatalthough we can describe Alvarezs doing as an instance ofand an instanceof, we cannot place blame on Alvarez bothfor -ingandfor -ing. Alvarezis to blame for -ing. That is the relevant description under which she isto blame. For any other description would either understate the groundsof her blameworthiness or include irrelevant features. We can describe herbehavior more narrowly by saying that she does . Underthatdescription,Alvarez would still be blameworthy (and no less blameworthy, according tothe orthodox view), just as Borges is.

But this is not to say that Alvarez may be blamed for the conjunction of thetwo wrongdoings. This is a rather general point that applies to any action thatis wrongful under more than one description when a description is entailedby another. If I intentionally kill Martha by throwing a grenade into heroffice, I also kill Martha, period. My behavior makes me blameworthy bothunder the description intentionally killing Martha by throwing a grenadeinto her office and under the narrower description killing Martha. Plac-ing blame on me both for the conjunction of my killing Martha and myintentionally killing Martha by throwing a grenade into her office would beto engage in a kind of double-counting.

Success-failure pairs are expected to highlight the role of luck in theagents doings. Alvarez succeeds, but she could as well have ended up as theagent of the failure case. Likewise, Borges fails, but he could as well havestarred in the success case. Neither of them does anything that the otherdoes not do to guarantee one particular role rather than the other. Theiractions turn out the way they do (-ing or just-ing) in virtue of sheer luck.8

In other words, Alvarezs -ing happensto turn into an -ing, in the sense

8. The impact of luck is higher if, say, an agent shoots in a game Russian roulette than if sheshoots after checking that the gun is fully loaded. The luckier Alvarez is, the less extraordinary


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that it could as well have remained amere-ing, as it is the case in Borgesscase. With success, the world is such that the -ing becomes an -ing. Withfailure, the world is minimally different, so that the -ing fails to becomean -ing.

Alvarez cannot be more to blame than Borges is, the orthodox claims,because such differences in the agents luck as to how their actions turn outcannot by themselves ground differences in blameworthiness. It is in thenature of blameworthiness that they cannot.

III. BLAMEWORTHINESS, WRONGNESS, AND OWNERSHIP

Blameworthiness turns on wrongness, so that all things being equal, the

more wrong an action is, the more blameworthy its agent will be. Now, if insuccess-failure pairs, Alvarezs conduct is more wrong than Borgess conductis, then, all things being equal, Alvarez must be more to blame for her -ingthan Borges is for his -ing. Things, I argue below, are however not equal.

Blameworthiness is a function of responsible wrongdoing, not justwrongdoingone can do wrong without being to blame for it, as whenwrong is done under insanity or other excusing conditions. Responsibilityfor a given action, as well as wrongness, comes in degrees. So one can bemore or less to blame for a given wrongdoing depending on the degree of

ones responsibility for that wrongdoing. Likewise, and this is the key to myargument for the orthodox view, one may be equally to blame for wrongs ofdifferent values if the corresponding degrees of responsibility are such thatthey counterbalance the difference in wrongness. Indeed, my argument isthat although Alvarez does more wrong by-ing than Borges does by-ing, Alvarezs responsibility for -ing is proportionally lower than Borgessresponsibility for -ing.

Being responsible here, as in the Strawsonian account of responsibil-ity, is being appropriately susceptible to any of the reactive moral atti-

tudes (e.g., love, admiration, gratitude, contempt, resentment, indignation,etc.).9 Blameworthiness is a species of this more general notion of moralresponsibility; being blameworthy is thus being appropriately susceptible toa particular reactive attitudenamely, blame. In this general sense, respon-sibility is, as David Copp puts it, response-worthiness.10 For an agent S to beresponsible for an action of hers is to be deserving of a moral response(any one) in virtue of her -ingthat is to say, her -ing makes it fittingthat S is reacted to with some of the characteristic reactive moral attitudes.

the corresponding case of Borges will be. Depending on the details of the case, Alvarez couldbe more or less luckybut lucky she always is.

9. Peter Strawson,Freedom and Resentment,reprinted inFREEWILL59 (G. Watson ed., 1982);John Martin Fischer,Recent Work on Moral Responsibility, 110 ETHICS9395 (1999).

10. David Copp, Defending the Principle of Alternate Possibilities: Blameworthiness and MoralResponsibility, 31 NOUS441, 452 (1997).


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In this sense of response-worthiness, responsibility centrally depends onwhat we may callattributabilityor ownership: S is responsible for her -ing ifand to the extent that the -ing isSs ownin a strong sense.11 Attributabilitywarrants only that some moral response is due. For a particular moralresponse to be warranted, further conditions need be met. Blameworthinessrequires that that for which one is to blame makes the distinctively negativevalence of the blaming reaction fitting. The natural view is that for S todeserve blame for her -ing, it must be that she ought not to , that itis morally wrong for S to . Thus attributability accounts for the fact thatS deservesblame for her -ing; wrongness in turn accommodates that it isblamethat she deserves.

I follow Robert Nozick in framing the interplay of ownership and wrong-ness in terms of the product of a variable representing a measure of the se-riousness of the actions wrongness multiplied by a discounting coefficientrepresenting the degree of responsibility of the agent for the wrongdoing(ranging from zero for no responsibility to one for full responsibility). Un-der this framework, an agents degree of blameworthiness for an action of hers is a function of the productr W, whereWstands for the mea-sure ofs wrongness andris the discounting coefficient representing thedegree to which the -ing is the agents own.12

I contend that between the cases in success-failure pairs there is a dif-ference in responsibilityone, moreover, that counterbalances the differ-ence in the amount of wrong done by one and the other agent. To showthis, I analyze attributability in terms of responsiveness to reasons. Reasons-responsiveness, as exhibited in Ss -ing, has two dimensions, I argue: onenegative (reactivity), which involves the capacity to not- in response to rea-sons to not-; and the other positive (reliability), which involves the capacityto in response to reasons to . In success-failure pairs, the reactivity vari-ables are fixed at constant values. Reliability, in contrast, changes its valuefrom one case to the other, and this variation accounts for the difference inattributability on which I base my argument for the orthodox view.

A simpler example may serve to illustrate the kind of difference in at-tributability that, I argue, obtains between cases in success-failure pairs.Suppose that on my first day of archery, with my first shot my arrow happensto hit the bulls-eye. And suppose that my archery instructor also shoots andhits the bulls-eyeas she normally does when shooting from that distance.

11. SeeGARYWATSON, Two Faces of Responsibility, reprinted inAGENCY AND ANSWERABILITY260(2004). Watsons argument is that attributability corresponds to a kind, or a face, of respon-sibility, the other kind (or face) being accountability. Other philosophers understand respon-

sibility just in terms of attributability; seeFischer, supranote 9, at 96, citing Derk Pereboomas an example. Whether attributability exhausts the conditions of response-worthiness I neednot adjudicate here. I content myself with the view that attributability is at least part of theconditions of responsibility.

12. Nozicks framework is introduced in ROBERTNOZICK, ANARCHY, STATE,ANDUTOPIA5963(1974); and later elaborated upon in ROBERT NOZICK, PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLANATIONS ch. 4.III(1981).


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There is an intuitive sense in which the instructor may claim more responsi-bility for her hitting the bulls-eye than I can claim for my own. The reasonis that she was far more in control of her shot than I was of my own, andtherefore her hitting the bulls-eye is due more to her than my hitting thebulls-eye is due to me. Her hitting the bulls-eye is more her own doingthan mine is my own doing. For luck has played a larger role in my hittingthe bulls-eye than in the instructors, and the more an action owes to luck,the less it owes to the agent.

In the following three sections, I build my case for this part of my ar-gument for the orthodox view. Then I complete the argument by showingthat the difference in responsibility cancels out the difference in wrongnessbetween Alvarezs -ing and Borgess -ing.

IV. ON OWNERSHIP

Attributability or ownership is a relation that links agents and actions un-der descriptions.13 For one and the same actunderstood as a particulareventthere may be many things we may predicate of it as things thatan agent does.14 And responsibility varies depending on the descriptionunder which the action is evaluated. Suppose you phone your friend onhis birthday. Thus described, your action is something nice for you to do,

something that calls for a positive moral reactionsome sort of gratitudefor your remembering him on his birthday. But suppose that it is also trueof your action that your call is too late. Under the description telephoningyour friend late, your action is a poor thing for you to do, calling thereforefor some kind of negative response. Your friend may reasonably be resentfulat your calling him so late, and yet he may still reasonably feel thankful foryour calling on his birthday. The positive judgment that the friend expressesin his thankfulness is fixed to whatever it is that makes it true of your actionthat it is a calling your friend on his birthday. The negative judgment

that he also expresses in his manifest resentment attaches to other aspectsof your action, namely, those that make the description of it true as aninadequately late call.

As responsibility varies with action-description, so does ownership. Theattribution of an action , where stands for an act description, to anagent S depends on its being the case that (i) there is an eventesuch that

13. This is not to say that attributability may not link agents with other items. All that Iam saying in regard to the attributability of actions may be applied, duly adjusted, to other

things we may claim responsibility for, such as beliefs or emotions. I restrict my focus toresponsibility for actions just because my interest in this essay is to elucidate the issue of therelative blameworthiness of agents in success-failure pairs who differ from each other only in

what they do.14. I am assuming a coarse-grained view of the individuation of actions. Under a fine-grained

view of the individuation of actions, this point will not be in order. Nothing of importanceturns on the choice of the act-individuation approach.


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eis an action of Ss; (ii) eis that is, we may predicate with truth ofeor, which amounts to the same thing, we may speak with truth ofeas aninstance of or a-ing; and (iii) it is not just an accident for S thateis ,that is, S exerts some suitable degree of control overes being . Conditions(i) and (ii) just ensure that it is the case that S did actually.15 It is thecondition (iii), the control condition, that calls for some elaboration.

The relevant notion of control here is that which Timothy OConnor callsagent control.16 Agent control involves the internal relation between agentand action, a relation such that the action is an outflowing of the agent,17 itis something thatshedoes and somehow bears her personal mark on it. Theaccount of agent control that I favor is in terms of responsiveness to reasons:an agent S controls an action of hers if and only if S displays (some degreeof) responsiveness to reasons in -ing.18 On this account, very roughly, weare in control of something we dowhere the something is our actionbeing such that it satisfies a given descriptionwhen it is our response tothe circumstances as we see them. What we thus do is our doing in thestrong sense of attributability because and to the extent that it expresseswhat things we take to be reasons for action, how we weigh them, and howwe translate them into actionit expresses, in other words, what may becalled our practical identity.

Reasons-responsiveness is a modal conceptits meaning is not fixed bywhat the case is in the actual world. The attributability of Ss-ing in theactual world as Ss own depends on Ss behavior in a suitable range ofpossible worlds or scenarios. In John Martin Fischers and Mark Ravizzasrendition of the account, Ss -ing is reasons-responsive only if, holdingfixed the kind of action-producing mechanism that issues in -ing in the

15. I refer throughout to an instance of-ing that meets the first two conditions as an actionof Ss even though it fails to meet the third conditionand so it is not Ss own in the strongsense that would warrant a moral response. I do not mean to make any point about the use ofthe English language; I am just trying to isolate and then focus on the control condition in any

action for which an agent may be responsible. Whether what remains after we thus subtractthe control condition is something we can still properlycall an action is a question for whichI have no answer. Maybe the concept of action entails some nonzero degree of attributabilityso that it makes no sense to refer to a -ing as an actionof Ss if the control condition is notmet. Perhaps, as Davidson suggests (seeDAVIDSON,Agency,supranote 6), we should say that issomething Sdoesa deed of hersbut not an actionof hers. Again, I have nothing interestingto say in this respect.

16. Timothy OConnor, Indeterminism and Free Agency: Three Recent Views, 53 PHIL. & PHE-NOMENOLOGICAL RES. 499, 500 (1993). There is also what is often called alternative-possibilitiescontrol. Alternative-possibilities control emphasizes that the -ing that actually obtains is oneamong other possible actions actually open to the agent. Roughly, S has alternative-possibilitiescontrol over her-ing only if she could do other than-ing. Even if necessary for responsibility,

alternative-possibilities control bears no impact on therelativeblameworthiness of the individ-uals in success-failure pairseither both or none of them will lack alternative-possibilitiescontrol. The same, I show below, is not the case with agent control. Since my interest inelucidating the control condition is limited to what may impact on the judgments of relativeblameworthiness in success-failure pairs, I focus on agent control.

17. Id.at 500.18. SeeJOHNMARTINFISCHER& MARKRAVIZZA, RESPONSIBILITY ANDCONTROL(1998).


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actual world, there exists some possible world in which there is sufficientreason to not-and the agent does not-for that reason.19 Two remarksare in order.

First, Fischer and Ravizza restrict the set of possible worlds within whichto check for reasons-responsiveness to those where the kind of action-producing mechanism at play in the agents doing in the actual worldis held fixed.20 The concept of an action-producing mechanism refers tothe process that leads to the action, or the way the action comes about.21

Suppose I decide to after careful deliberation and consequently inten-tionally. The mechanism that issues in my intentionally-ing is my normalpractical reasoning, which involves some mental eventssuch as some sortof intention to, some beliefs as to how to , and so onand some physicalevents associated with those mental events. Holding this action-producingmechanism fixed means considering only worlds in which if I , I do it asthe output of the same kind of practical reasoningrather than, say, as aconsequence of the manipulation of my brain by a Frankfurtian neurosci-entist. The mechanism concept is admittedly vague but it is precise enoughfor my argument.

Second, the kind of reasons-responsiveness just introduced is too weak.There are cases of indisputably nonresponsible agents that exhibit this weaksensitivity to reasons. What responsibility requires, Fischer and Ravizza thenadd, is a more demanding kind of responsiveness, one that is revealed intherangeof relevant possible worlds in which the agent recognizes there isa reason to not-, and does not- for that reason. To warrant responsibility,that range of possible worlds should evince an intelligible pattern of reasonsthat the agent is receptive toa pattern that includes moral reasons.22

The relevant criterion for reasons-responsiveness should then be adjustedas follows: Ss -ing is reasons-responsive if and only if, holding fixed theoperation of the kind of action-producing mechanism issuing in -ing inthe actual world, (i) there exists a range of possible worlds in which thereis sufficient reason to not-and the agent does not-for that reason; and(ii) that range of possible worlds evinces an intelligible pattern of reasons(some of which are moral reasons) that the agent is receptive to.

Fischers and Ravizzas criterion of reasons-responsiveness captures onlyone aspect or dimension of ownership. This dimension of ownership is,in a sense, negative, as it is represented by the agent doing otherthan -ing in the relevant set of possible worlds. I call it, following Fischer and

19. Id., ch. 2 and 6364.20. Id.at 3839.21. Id.at 38.See also4647 for some observations that make the idea of an action-producing

mechanism somewhat more precise.22. Id. at 6985; for discussion, see Gary Watson, Reasons and Responsibility, 111 ETHICS

374394 (2001), reprinted inGARYWATSON, AGENCY ANDANSWERABILITY 289317 (ClarendonPress, 2004).


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Ravizza, reactivity.23 There is also, I contend, a positive dimension of reasons-responsiveness that Fischer and Ravizza fail to explore and which is crucialto my argument for the orthodox view. This dimension reflects the agents

ability to out of reasons for -ing.I use the term reliabilityto refer to this positive dimension of agent con-trol.24 Take the following example from Alfred Meles and Paul Mosersanalysis of intentional action:

A nuclear reactor is in danger of exploding. Fred knows that its explodingcan be prevented only by shutting it down, and that it can be shut down onlyby punching a certain ten-digit code into a certain computer. Fred is alone inthe control room. Although he knows which computer to use, he has no idea

what the code is. Fred needs to think fast. He decides that it would be better

to type in ten digits than to do nothing. Vividly aware that the odds againsttyping in the correct code are astronomical, Fred decides to give it a try. Hepunches in the first ten digits that come to his head, in that order, believingof his so doing that he might thereby shut down the reactor and prevent theexplosion. What luck! He punched in the correct code, thereby preventing anuclear explosion.25

I take the case of Fred and the nuclear reactor to be a good exampleof a doing that is a poor expression of Freds agency, that is, of a very lowdegree of attributability.26 I contend that we are inclined to believe that

the shutting down of the reactor is not an intentional actionof Fredsasthe proponents of the example suggestbecause we are inclined to believethat under that description, it is not anaction of Fredsthat is, that it is toocoincidental to be his own doing in the strong sense of attributability.

More generally, I propose, whatever the minimum of reliability might befor a doing to be an expression of agency, differences along the dimensionof reliability determine differences in attributability. Suppose a companioncase that is as close to Freds case as it can be but for the fact that the agent,Fred

, does know what the ten-digit code isbecause, say, he is the person

in charge of the reactor and has access to the secret document containingthe code. In the companion case, Fred

s shutting down of the reactor iscertainly his own doing. It is also meaningful to say, I contend, that Fred

sshutting down of the reactor is moreFred

s doing than Freds shutting downof the reactor is Freds own. The shutting down of the reactor in the com-panion case is, as it were, more due to Fred

than the shutting down of

23. Fischer & Ravizza, supranote 18, at 4142, 6976. Fischer and Ravizza further distinguishreactivity(as the capacity to not- out of reasons to not-) from receptivity(understood as the

capacity to recognize reasons in the world). I need not make that distinction here.24. I draw the term from Alfred Meles and Paul Mosers analysis of intentional action. Alfred

R. Mele & Paul K. Moser, Intentional Action, reprinted inTHEPHILOSOPHY OFACTION(Alfred R.Mele ed., 1997).

25. Id.at 224.26. Mele & Moser, in contrast, offer the case as an example of a doing that is too coincidental

to count as intentional.Id.at 225.


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the reactor in the original example is due to Fred. This difference in owner-ship may be accounted for as a difference in the relative degrees of reliabilityof the corresponding action-producing mechanisms.

Reliability is a variable property that may be understood, like the reactivitydimension of reasons-responsiveness, in terms of the agents performancein a set of possible worlds. Something like the following criterion will do:

Ss-ing exhibits reliability if and only if, holding fixed the operation of thekind of action-producing mechanism issuing in -ing in the actual world, (i)there exists a number of possible worlds in which there is sufficient reason to, and the agent does for that reason; (ii) degree of reliability is determinedby the ratio of the number of worlds in subset (i) to the number of worldsin the reference set of possible worlds in which there exists sufficient reason

to .

This criterion captures the intuitive view that whereas Fred

s shuttingdown the reactor is Fred

s own doing in the strongest sense, Freds shuttingdown the reactor is hardly an expression of his agency. What accounts for thisdifference in attributability is that the mechanism issuing in Freds shuttingdown the reactor in the actual world (i.e., typing in the first ten digits thatcome to mind) is such that Fred shuts down the reactor in too narrow arange of possible worldsin those in which the ten-digit code happens tobe the same as the first ten numbers that come to Freds mind, whereasFred s mechanism (i.e., typing in the ten digits that he knows figure as thecode in the pertinent secret document) is such that Fred

shuts down thereactor in most possible worlds within the relevant set.27

Since all other things are equal between these two cases, such differ-ence in the reliability dimension of attributability will warrant differentialresponsibility judgments.

V. SOME PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS28

I propose to conceive of attributability as depending on agent control andthis to be reducible to the properties I called reactivity and reliability.Reliability, in turn, is a variable propertyit comes in degrees. And in

27. As the contrast between these two cases shows, reliability (and hence agent control) maydepend on knowledge (or justified belief). But it may also depend on skill. Take the archeryexamples I gave above. It may very well be the case that the beliefs involved in my hitting thebulls-eye in my first shotin aiming at the target and releasing the arrow, sayare the sameas the instructors beliefs involved in her hitting the bulls-eye. And there is still an obvious

difference in terms of reliability and hence in agent control. That is what we call skill. Theinstructor is a skilled archer, which means that when acting from her normal action-producingmechanism, she exhibits high-reliability measures in making her actions meet the archery-relevant reasons for actionlike the reasons there might be for hitting the bulls-eye. See id.at252253. For Mele & Mosers notion of skill, see id.at 246.

28. I am thankful to an anonymous referee for helping me see that the arguments I makein this section were called for.


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my analysis, so does attributability. Recall the archery example above. In hisfirst day of archery, the novice archer surprisingly hits the bulls-eye withhis first shot. Aiming from the same spot, the skillful instructor also hits thebulls-eye, as she normally does. We say of the novice archers shot that itis an instance of beginners luck, implying that his hitting the bulls-eyeis not as attributable to him as his own doing as the instructors hittingthe bulls-eye is attributable to her as her own. My criterion of reliabilitypurports to articulate differences of this sort.

One may point out, however, that it is an odd implication of my analysisthat actions may be partially attributable to an agentthat, for instance, mydoing this or that might be, say, halfmine. Attributability, this concern wouldsuggest, appears to be a binary relationactions either are attributable toan agent or are not actions of that agent. There seems to be nothing inbetween.

I concede that there is a meaningful binary use of the concept of at-tributability under which it is meaningless to say of an action that it is, say,60 percent mine, orlessmine than that other action is yours. However, sincein my account the factor upon which attributability depends (i.e., agentcontrol) comes in degrees, it is also meaningful to conceive of attributabil-ity as a scalar or quantifiable relation reflecting the variable degree of agentcontroland to use attributability to refer to that relation. Under thisuse, nonattributability and full attributability are only the extremes of acontinuous scale.

Though I do use the language of attributability in its scalar form through-out the paper, I do not claim any privilege for that use. My only commitmentis to the substantive claim that differences in the degree of control an agentbears over a given wrongful action of hismore specifically, differences inthe reliability dimension of that controlaffect the agents blameworthi-ness for that action by affecting the degree of responsibility for that action.Whether we should call this variable upon which the degree of responsibilitydepends attributability or something else is an issue I need not adjudicatehere.

So the troubling question is whether the binary use of the language ofattributability reflects a substantive view about responsibility according towhich the degree of responsibility does notvary with the degree of agentcontrol, or at least, not in the way I claim it varies. Consider the killing of aninnocent victim committed with bow and arrow by my archery instructor,on the one hand, and a similar killing performed by a lucky novice archer,on the other. If, as I claim, responsibility varies along with the degree of reli-ability, we should find the instructor more blameworthy for the murder shehas committed than we find the novice archer for his. If I am right, equallywrongful but differentially reliable actions should warrant differential judg-ments of blameworthiness. And yet it seems that we would not intuitivelydraw any salient distinction in our blaming reactions to these two assassins;and this suggests that as far as our intuitive reactions go, differences in the


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reliability dimension of responsibility do notimpact on our blameworthinessjudgments.

The objection to my account that such a finding may groundthat is, thefinding that we would not to draw any significant distinction in our blamingreactions for equally wrongful but differentially reliable actionsis not asstrong as it might appear. The finding conflicts with other findings pointingin the opposite direction. Indeed, those intuitive blaming reactions contrastwith our reactions when what is at stake are instances not of killing but ofhitting the bulls-eye in an archery practice. In the archery scenario, theintuitive reaction is that the lucky novice archer is less deserving of praisefor his hitting the bulls-eye than the skillful instructor is for hers; and thissuggests that responsibility does vary with the degree of agent control, muchin the way articulated in the criterion of reliability proposed above. It maybe that we should revise one of these two reactions if we cannot properlyaccommodate bothit might be, for instance, that the reliability variableis relevant when the reaction at stake is of positive valence (say, praise),whereas it is irrelevant when the reaction is of negative valence (as in thecase of blame). In any case, adjudicating the matter requires an account ofthe relationship between responsibility and agent control. The finding of aconflicting intuition is just not enough.

There are two plausible alternatives to my account that responsibility foran actionvaries as a direct function of the degree of reliability exhibited inthe agents-ing. The first alternative results from denying a fundamentalidea that undergirds my account. In effect, my account captures the idea thatresponsibility and luck are essentially in tension with each otherthat is,the idea motivating the debate on moral luck. The straightforward rejectionof moral luck is, as I claim in the introduction, too extreme an expression ofthis tension. It is too extreme, I posit, for it leaves no room for our ever beingresponsible for anything. The account of responsibility that I propose forthe domain of resultant luck does better than the utter rejection of moralluck, for it accommodates the same fundamental idea without falling intothe cumbersome conclusion that we are never responsible for anything. Inmy account, luck is indeed in tension with responsibility but it does notaltogether thwart responsibility; it modulates responsibility by diluting ouragencyby undermining, that is to say, the attributability relation linkingagents with actions.

The first alternative to my account results from dropping that funda-mental idea that luck and responsibility are mutually in tension, or, whichamounts to the same thing, that responsibility is essentially connected withcontrol. The absurdity of the implications of denying that there is some-thing like moral luck should, one might think, lead us straightforwardly toembrace moral luckthough perhaps with some marginal qualifications. Ifthus responsibility for actions had nothing to do with agent control, thenit would appear that the degree of responsibility would not depend on thedegree of reliability.


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My impression is that a conception of responsibility for actions that isnot fundamentally connected with control is just meaningless. As ThomasNagel maintains in his seminal paper on moral luck, the condition of con-trol is not the result of a generalization over a number of clear cases, norcan it be refuted by a number of wayward counterexamples. Elucidatingthe idea of responsibility is in part elucidating its troublesome and perhapsparadoxical relationship with luck.29 But even if that move were not mean-ingless in itselfif there were something left after removing the conditionof control that could be meaningfully recognized as responsibilityit wouldnevertheless not be a move I should make in the context of this paper. Ineffect, my goal here is to produce an argument for the orthodox viewthatis, the view that resultant luck is of no significance to the issue of deservedblame. And a conception of responsibility such that luck and responsibilityare mutually in tension is part and parcel of that orthodox view. So it is noargument against my account that it adopts a conception of responsibilitysuch that control is an essential factoror, conversely, one that is essentiallyin tension with luck.

This takes us to the second alternative to my account. This second al-ternative would concede that responsibility depends on control but woulddeny that degree of responsibility is a function of agent control in the wayadvanced in my account. Particularly, this alternative would assert that re-sponsibility is sensitive to control up to a threshold point, so that belowthat point the agent is not responsiblethat is, there is no responsibilityfor insufficiently controlled actionsand above the threshold point, vari-ations in the control dimension do not determine variations in degree ofresponsibility. Let us call this the threshold account.

I do not have an argument against the threshold account, as there seemsto be no argument against my own account either. Both my account andthe threshold account are sensible hypotheses about the way agent controlimpacts on responsibility. There is something, however, that may count infavor of my account, and that is its relative simplicity. Indeed, the thresholdaccount needs to explain why the agent control variable, which is relevantto responsibility up to the threshold level, becomes irrelevant once thethreshold is crossed. In the absence of such an explanation, it seems nat-ural to assume that differences in the degree of agent control above thethreshold level continue to be relevant, determining differences in degreeof responsibility. My account is simpler than its alternative in the sense thatit does not depend on whatever it is that might explain that behavior of theresponsibility variable.

Now, even if I am right in maintaining that the degree of responsibilityfor an action is sensitive to the degree of agent control for that action,one may still want to raise the following objection. My account includesa measurement scale for the reliability dimension of agent controlthe

29. SeeNagel,supranote 1, at 2628.


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dimension, that is, in which the difference in responsibility between thecases in success-failure pairs manifests itselfaccording to which degree ofreliability for an action is a directly proportional function of the frequencywith which the agent does for a reason to within the set of worlds inwhich there is sufficient reason for that agent to . Combined with the ideathat the degree of agent control determines the degree of responsibility,that measurement scale yields apparently counterintuitive conclusions, asillustrated in the following pair of cases.

Suppose that my archery instructor assassinates an innocent victim withher bow and arrow, and that her assassinating this victim exhibits an ex-tremely high level of reliabilityfor she succeeds in killing the victim inalmost every possible world within the pertinent set. Let us say that 0.99 ex-presses that ratio. And suppose, on the other hand, that the novice archeralso assassinates an innocent victim in the same way but with an action ex-hibiting a reliability level of only 0.01for he fails to kill the victim in almostevery possible world within the relevant set. If everything else in these casesis equal, it would follow from my account that the instructor is ninety-ninetimes more blameworthy for the murder she committed than the novicearcher is for his own act of murder. This seems counterintuitive. We maybe willing to revise our intuitions in our blameworthiness judgments toadjust them to what we do in our praiseworthiness judgmentsand so beprepared to have our blaming reactions be sensitive to the degree of agentcontrol. But to be committed to finding the instructor ninety-nine timesmore to blame than we find the novice archer appears far too weird to beacceptableor so the objection would go.

The objection, however, is only apparent. In my account, the level ofresponsibility of an agent for an action corresponds to a point on acontinuous scalethe scale representing all the possible frequencies withwhich an agent can succeed in doing out of a reason to . We maythus say that the level of responsibility of the instructor for the murder shecommitted corresponds to a point close to the top of the scale, whereasthe level of responsibility of the novice archer for his otherwise equivalentmurder corresponds to a point near the bottom of the same scale. Now,to tellhow many timesmore responsible than the novice archer the archeryinstructor is, we need to partition the continuous scale into a finite numberof discrete intervals. In my rendition of the objection, the scale is partitionedinto one hundred intervals, so that the level of responsibility of the novicearcher falls within segment number 1, and the level of responsibility of thearchery instructor falls within the segment number 99. Thus the instructoris ninety-nine times more responsible than the novice archer relative to thatdiscretedistribution.

More generally, how many times more (or less) responsible one agent iswith respect to another is relative to the granularity of the partition of thecorresponding responsibility scale: the coarser the partition is, that is, thefewer the number of intervals into which we divide the continuous scale,


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the fewer the number of times more responsible than the novice archerthe archery instructor will beand conversely, the finer the partition is, thelarger the number of times more responsible than the novice archer theinstructor will be.30

Whether we should partition the responsibility scaleand in that casehow finely we should partition itdepends on what we need the partitionfor. A salient reason to do it reveals itself when we are to express blameworthi-ness judgments through our behavior. We express judgments of blamewor-thiness by adjusting our behavior toward the blameworthy persontypicallyacting on her in harmful ways. But the repertoire of actions at our disposalthrough which we can express blame is finite and often pretty coarsethinkof our standing regimes of imprisonment sanctions. So, for any given kindof wrongdoing, we will have a finite and perhaps rather coarse set of possi-ble behavioral reactions through which to express an infinite set of possibledifferences in responsibility. Our blaming practices are thus inescapablyapproximative. The objection I am considering exploits this feature of ourblaming practices. If we intuitively presuppose a coarse repertoire of blam-ing reactions, it would seem counterintuitive to be committed to make moredistinctions than our repertoire of reactions allows.

But my account does not require any partitioning of the responsibilityscale. Indeed, I offer a model that purports to help us understand howagents may be more or less blameworthy for their actions, a model, more-over, that makes room for measurements of differences in degree of re-sponsibility that may compensate for differences in degree of wrongness. Inmy account, responsibility for actions depends on degree of attributability,which in turn depends on the variable I namereliability. Degree of reliabilitymay be understood, I propose, as the frequency of success of an action ofthe pertinent kind within a suitably restricted set of possible worlds. Weneed not translate the scale that this criterion presupposes into a scale ofdiscrete values in order to tell whether in success-failure pairs differences inresponsibility determined by differences in degree of reliability compensatefor differences in degree of wrongness. As is apparent below, the criterionI am proposing is just enough.

Furthermore, my account does not presuppose anything finer than thecoarse repertoires of blaming reactions that are available to usthose un-der which we may draw no difference in our blaming responses for equallywrongful but differentially reliable actions. If it did, that would naturallycount against my account. But it does not. My reducing the reliability di-mension of responsibility to a frequency allows the comparison of varia-tions in degree of responsibility with corresponding variations in degreeof wrongness and therefore the comparison of degrees of blameworthinessin success-failure pairs. If my complete argument is right, it proves thatagents in success-failure pairs are equally blameworthy. It follows from that

30. I thank Mercedes Etchemendy for helpful comments clarifying this point.


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conclusion that we have reason to blame agents in success-failure pairs thesame wayand not to blame one more than we blame the other.

The point that I want to stress now is that this implication holds inde-pendently of the granularity of the available palette of possible blamingreactions. Indeed, for a palette of blaming reactions to be coarse is for it toclump together under equivalent reactions cases yielding different blame-worthiness judgmentsthat is, cases that would deserve different reactionsunder an unconstrained, ideally perfect palette. But cases that yield equiva-lent blameworthiness judgmentsthat is, cases that would deserve the samereaction under the perfect palettewarrant equivalent blaming reactionswhatever the length of the intervals into which the applicable repertoire ofreactions divides the blameworthiness scale; hence my claim that agents insuccess-failure pairs, if equally blameworthy, are to be equally blamed evenunder a realistically coarse palette of blaming reactions.

VI. SUCCESS-FAILURE PAIRS: ASSESSING

RELATIVE OWNERSHIP

Let us go back to success-failure pairs. Alvarez is blameworthy for -ing, andher blameworthiness is determined by the amount of wrong done by her-ing and the degree to which the -ing may be attributed to Alvarez as herdoing. The same goes for Borges, whose blameworthiness for his -ing is afunction of the amount of wrong done by-ing and the attributability ofthis action as Borgess own doing. If, as I assume, -ing is somehow morewrongful than -ing is, then for the orthodox view to be true, there must bea proportional difference in the attributability variables such that it cancelsout the difference in the amount of wrong done by one and the other agent.

In this section I argue that there is indeed a difference in the relevant at-tributability variables between the cases in success-failure pairs that is similarin kind to the difference in attributability between cases like Freds shuttingdown the reactor and Fred s shutting down the reactor, and between thearchery instructors hitting the bulls-eye and the novice archers hitting thebulls-eye. More specifically, I maintain that we may conceive of the degreeof attributability of Alvarezs -ing as her doing as a determinate fractionof the measure of the degree of attributability of Borgess -ing as Borgessdoing.

The degree of attributability of an action, I claim above, is determined bythe degree of agent control exhibited by the agent in her action, which inturn has two aspects or dimensionsreactivity and reliability. There is nodifference of attributability between the success case and the failure caseas regards the dimension of reactivity. We measure reactivity, let us recall,by checking for possible worlds where the agent has sufficient reason toact differently from the way she does in the actual world, and where shedoes act differently for that reason. Reactivity does not vary from success to


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failure, for the set of possible worlds in which Alvarez has a reason to not-and does not-for that reason is identical to the set of possible worlds inwhich Borges has a reason to not- and does not- for that reason. Thispoint is ensured by the following two features of success-failure pairs.

The first feature is the fact that Borges and Alvarez are only numericallydistinctthey are in every other respect one and the same person and sothey are identically prone to find motivation in the same sort of facts. Morespecifically, for any factfand any act, iffis a reason for Alvarez to , it isalso a reason for Borges to , and vice versa. Therefore, in every world inwhich Alvarez finds a reason to and does for that reason, Borges wouldidentically find a reason to and would for that reason, and vice versa.

The second feature is the relation between actions and . Since is theactional means to(i.e., it is more basic than and practically sufficient to),they are identical at the level of reasons. This identity at the level of reasonsfor and stands for the conjunction of the following four propositions:For any factfand any agent S, (i) iffis a reason for S to , it is also a reasonfor S to; (ii) iffis a reason for S to , it is also a reason for S to ; (iii) if

fis a reason for S to not-, it is also a reason for S to not-; and (iv) iffis areason for S to not-, it is also a reason for S to not-. Propositions (i) and(iv) follow from the fact that is a constitutive part of, which is part of themeaning of its being more basic than ; and (ii) and (iii) follow from therelation of practical sufficiency. Particularly, proposition (iii) follows fromthe fact that if S is to not-, she must avoid -ing. For by definition, S cannotdo without making it likely that the -ing turns into an instance of-ing.

Proposition (ii) is a little trickier. For is a part of, and it seems that wemay have reason to do something that happens to be part of a more complexaction for which we have no reasonor for which the former reason is noreason at all. For example, I went out for a morning walk today, and thepath I took led me to the riverside. My need for some daily exercise andfresh air was the reason I set out for my morning walk. But I went downto the riversiderather than up to the parkfor no particular reason.Although my walking this morning was part of my going to the riverside,the reason for my walking was not also a reason to go to the riversideIcould have honored my reason for walking by heading to the park instead.But the relationship between and in success-failure pairs is not like therelationship between taking a morning walk and going to the riverside.Recall that the label refers to a rather peculiar action description, adescription we get at by subtracting only a nonactional feature from theaction described by thelabel, so that when we say of Borges that he does, we imply that there is no description of what Alvarez does other than that is not true as well of Borges.

If, say, I stands for I intentionally kill my colleague next door bythrowing a grenade into her office with the intention of killing her, myactional means to that action will be my throwing a grenade into my col-leagues office with the intention of killing herso in this example, I


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stands for I throw a grenade into may colleagues office with the intentionof killing her. The relationship between and is thus so tight that itensures that the agent cannot rationally choose to without thereby alsochoosing to(at least with some probability). Reasons are facts that groundconsiderations in favor of our choosing what to do. Given that tight con-nection betweenand , if a fact gives reason to , it must be that it givesreason (at least probably) to hence proposition (ii) above.

Those two features of success-failure pairsAlvarezs and Borgess per-sonal identity, and identity at the level of reasons between actions andensure, then, that the set of worlds in which Alvarez finds a reason tonot-and does not-for that reason is identical to the set of worlds in whichBorges finds a reason to not- and does not- for that reason; hence mypoint that there is no difference to draw between success and failure alongthe reactivity dimension of attributability.

Let us turn now to the reliability dimension of attributability. Unlikereactivity, reliability does mark a difference in attributability of Alvarezs -ing as her doing, and Borgess -ing as his doing. I analyze reliability of theagents doing a given action, let us recall, as the frequency of success in doingthat action across a range of possible worlds. The measure of reliability isthus to be expressed as a value ranging from one for full reliability to zerofor total unreliability, depending on the frequency with which the pertinentaction obtains within the relevant set of possible worlds.

Letrexpress the degree of attributability (as a function of reliability) ofBorgess-ing with failure. It will be at some point between full attributability(where r = 1) and nonattributability (where r = 0), depending on (i) thenumber of relevant possible worlds in which there is sufficient reason forBorges to and Borges does for that reason, and (ii) the number ofrelevant possible worlds in which there is sufficient reason for Borges to .The value ofr represents the ratio of the number of worlds in (i) to thenumber of worlds in (ii).

Whatever the actual value of r is, the value of the correspondingvariable expressing the degree of attributability (as a function of relia-bility) of Alvarezs -ing with success (or r) is equivalent to a fractionof r. The following three features of success-failure pairs support thisclaim.

First,rstands for the ratio of (a), the number of relevant possible worldsin which there is sufficient reason for Alvarez to and Alvarez does forthat reason, to (b), the number of relevant possible worlds in which thereis sufficient reason for Alvarez to . Now, it follows from the fact thatisthe actional means to , that Alvarez does only in those worlds in whichshe does . Moreover, since it is part of the definition of success-failurepairs that there is some room for failure in Alvarezs-ingfor it is withinthat space where the failure case liesthen it follows that the set of worldsin which Alvarez does is a subset of the set of worlds in which she does. There will be some possible world (or worlds), that is to say, in whichAlvarez does without doing as well. So the measure of variablerwill be


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lower than the corresponding measure of the frequency of Alvarezs -ingwithin the reference set of possible worlds relevant to reliability for Alvarezs-ingthat is, the set of relevant possible worlds in which there is sufficientreason for Alvarez to .

Second, the identity at the level of reasons ofand allows us to movefrom that observation to the claim that the measure of the attributability ofAlvarezs-ing as her doing is higher than the measure of the attributabilityof Alvarezs -ing as her doing. Indeed, we assess the reliability variable forAlvarezs-ing with success by estimating the frequency of Alvarezs -ingwithin the set of relevant possible worlds in which there is sufficient reasonfor Alvarez to . The identity ofand at the level of reasons warrants thatthis reference set is identical to the reference set within which to measurethe variable r (i.e., the set of possible worlds in which there is sufficientreason for Alvarez to). Since the frequency of Alvarezs-ing within thatset is higher than the frequency of her -ing within that set (for there aresome worlds in which she does without thereby doing ), it follows thatthe value of the variable expressing the attributability of Alvarezs -ing withsuccess is higher thanr.

Third, cases in success-failure pairs are as close to each other as to ensurethat the -ing with success is as much Alvarezs doing as the -ing withfailure is Borgess doing. Indeed, we may conceive of success and failureas describing two members of the reference set of possible worlds withinwhich we measure the frequency of Alvarezs -ing (and -ing) to establishattributability (Alvarez and Borges are the names with which we referto one and the same agent, depending on the world she/he is in, a successworld or a failure world). Hence the degree of attributability of the -ingwith success to Alvarez as her doing is equivalent to r, which is in turn,then, higher thanr.

Success-failure pairs illustrate a general thought about attributability. Thethought is that attributability decreases as the complexity of the actionincreases, all things being equal. More specifically, for any agent S and anynonbasic action of hers, there will be some more basic (or less complex)action that S does as a part ofby which S does for example, S turnsthe light on by flipping the switch; her flipping the switch is more basicthan her turning the light on. The more basic the action is, the fewerthe external conditions that need be met for it to succeedfor example,S succeeds in flipping the switch even if the bulb fails to light, but sheneeds the bulb actually to work for it to be the case that she turns thelight on. Hence, if there is room for failure in the more complex actionfor example, if it is possible that the bulb failsthe set of the possibleworlds in which the agent does the more complex action will be smallerthan the set of the corresponding possible worlds in which she achieves themore basic action. (In the extreme, attributability would reach its maximumlevel with the corresponding noncomparatively basic act.) The differencein the attributability degrees in success-failure pairs instantiates this generalthoughtthat is,r is higher thanr becauseis more basic than, and


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there is no difference between Alvarezs -ing with success and Borgess-ing with failure.

This argument shows that the level of attributability of Alvarezs -ingis necessarily lower than the corresponding degree of attributability ofBorgess -ing. Let me now state more clearly how to measure such dif-ference.

Letrbe the coefficient representing the degree of Alvarezs responsibil-ity for her-ing, andrbe the corresponding coefficient representing thedegree of Borgess responsibility for his -ing, and reduce both coefficients(randr) to the corresponding reliability variables.

According to what I am arguing,r may be understood as the measureof the frequency with which the agent does within the relevant referenceset of possible worlds in which there is sufficient reason to . Coefficientr, in turn, represents the measure of the frequency with which the agentdoes within the same reference setthat is, due to the identity at the levelof reasons between and , the set of worlds in which there is sufficientreason tois identical to the set of worlds in which there is sufficient reasonto . Since the agent can only do by doing as a part of it, the set ofworlds in which the agent doesis in turn a subset of the set of worlds inwhich she does .

Let variable r| representtheratioofthenumberof-ingstothenumberof-ings within the reference set of possible worlds, or the fraction of-ingsthat are also -ings within that set. Variabler|thus represents the degreeto which the attributability of Alvarezs-ing is lower than the correspondingattributability of Borgess -ing. Indeed, ifris the frequency of the -ingsobtaining within a given set of possible worlds,ris the frequency of the -ings obtaining within the same set, and the frequency of-ings depends onthe frequency of-ings (for an instance ofcan obtain only if an instance ofhas obtained, but not the converse), then, applying elementary probabilitycalculus, we may calculateras the product ofrmultiplied by the relativefrequency of-ings to -ings, orr|. That is,r = r r|. Variabler|is therefore a sort of discounting coefficient that multiplied byryields thevalue ofr. In that sense I claim thatr|represents the degree to which theattributability of Alvarezs-ing with success is lower than the correspondingattributability of Borgess -ing with failure.

To complete my argument for the orthodox view, then, I offer in the nextsection a conception of wrongness such that the value of the wrong done byBorgess -ing is lower than the wrong done by Alvarezs -ing in a degreethat matches the difference in attributability as represented by variable r|.

VII. DISCOUNTED WRONGNESS

I contend that the most natural account of the wrongness of the actionalmeans to a wrongful actionthat is the wrongness of an action that stands


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to a wrongful action as stands to , involves the following two claims.First, the wrongness of the actional means is of a derivative nature: theactional means is wrongful, that is, because the less basic action to whichit is a means is wrongful. Second, the path through which this derivativewrongness is derived is some sort of likelihood or probability of the actionalmeans becoming the less basic nonderivatively wrongful action. For theactional means and the wrongful action to which is the actionalmeans, this natural view may be put in the following terms.

IfWrepresents the amount of wrong done by-ing, then the wrongnessof-ing, or W, is a function of W and the conditional probability ofthe agent achieving once she has done . Letprepresent the measureof this conditional probability (ranging between 0, where -ing createsno probability of-ing, to 1, where -ing necessarily ends in -ing), andtherefore W = p W. Under this view, then, the wrongness of an actionalmeans to a wrongful actionvaries with the probability of the agent doingonce she has done . The more likely it is that the -ing turns into an-ing, the more wrongful it is for the agent to do . In the extremes, wheredoing has no chance whatsoever to bring about the wrongful action, i t i snot derivatively wrongful for the agent to ; and where doing necessarilybrings about, it is no less wrongful for the agent to than it is for herto .

In this account of derivative wrongness, probability is neither objectivephysical probability nor purely subjective probability understood as degreeof confidence. Indeed, we may speak in terms of probability, as this termfigures in the account, even if the world is deterministic. We can say, forinstance, that I create a probabilityp(wherepis at some point higher than0 and lower than 1) of killing you by playing Russian roulette on you orthat shooting at you after checking that the gun is fully loaded creates ahigher probability of killing you than just playing Russian roulette on you,whatever the actual outcome happens to be and even if it is fixed by thephysical history of the world and its natural laws. To claim in this sensethat a particular event makes it probable that another particular eventensues is to express a kind of uncertainty about how the world is or how itfunctions.

This is not to say, on the other hand, that the language of probability,as it is used in this account of wrongness, is a purely subjective matter.By playing Russian roulette on you, I act derivatively wrongly because byplaying Russian roulette on you, I may very likely kill you, and killing youis nonderivatively wrong. Now, by playing Russian roulette on you, I wrongyou in this sense even if, being unreasonably confident in my good luck,I believe that you will not die as a consequence of the shot. By the sametoken, I do no wrong in trying to kill you by sticking pins in a voodoo dollbecause there is no chance whatsoever that I can kill you by thus stickingpins in such a doll, even though I unreasonably believe that by sticking pinsin this doll, I make it likely that you will die.


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Particularly, we may understand the probability variable pas a measureof the frequency with which the nonderivatively wrongful action obtainswithin a reference set of possible worlds in which the agent does as shedoes in the actual world. The reference set should be so restricted as toreflect the relevant kind of uncertainty that judgments of probability aremeant to express. Suppose that S punches you in the nose and your nosestarts bleeding, and we want to estimate the probability of Ss making yournose bleed by punching you in the nose. If we consider what the frequency isof Ss making your nose bleed by punching you in the nose within the set ofworlds that are identical to the actual world in every causally relevant respectup to the time when S punches you in the nose, then we will come up witha frequency that matches the objective, physical probability or, if the actualworld is deterministic, with the finding that S makes your nose bleed bypunching you in the nose in every possible world within the set. So in orderto capture the kind of probability in force in discounted wrongness, weshould adjust the restriction of possible worlds, moving from such causallyrelevant identity with the actual world to something like perceived identityfrom a given agential point of view.

Let us call this latter set of possible worlds the set of possible worldspractically equivalentto the actual world. Practical equivalence is relative toa given kind of action and an agential standpoint. Thus possible world wispractically equivalent to the actual world as regards the action making yournose bleed by punching you in the nose and from Ss point of view if andonly if S finds in was propitious an opportunity to make your nose bleedby punching you in the nose as she finds in the actual world. Put anotherway,wis practically equivalent to the actual world with respect to that kindof action and from Ss point of view because if S wanted to make your nosebleed by punching you in the nose, she would be totally indifferent as towhether she is in wor in the actual world.

Practically equivalent worlds may be very different from one another.They may differ both in features epistemically unavailable to the refer-ence agentsuch as low-level physical properties or the contents of secretdocumentsand in any accessible feature bearing no influence on theprospects of the action from the point of view of the reference agent.

By restricting the reference set of possible worlds to the worlds that arepractically equivalent to the actual world, we make the probability judgmentreflect the epistemic limitations of the reference agent (i.e., the agent whoseepistemic abilities we take into account to determine practical equivalence),so that the more epistemically able the reference agent is, the closer tothe physical, objective probability (if there is such a thing) the resultingprobability measure will be.

It is unclear to me who the relevant reference agent should be: the agentwhose action is under evaluation or someone elseperhaps somethinglike an ideal, reasonable agentthough I am inclined in favor of theformer. The choice of the actual agents stance as the relevant agential


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point of view is in keeping with the theory that moral reasons in general andwrong-making factors in particular must fall within the cognitive capacity ofthe agent whose conduct they purport to guide. In general, judgments ofrightness or wrongness, Jonathan Dancy has argue, are relative to a certainbody of facts; and judgments of moral rightness or wrongness in particularare relative to the body of facts available to the agent. The reason is thatif something is to count to us as a moral reason, it must be capable ofbeing practically relevant for us.31 By including the agents point of view inthe criterion of practical equivalence of possible worlds, we ensure that theresulting wrong-making factorthat is, the probability of the action turningout to make your nose bleedis accessible to the agent and therefore mayplay a role in guiding her conduct.

VIII. CLOSING THE ARGUMENT

I wish now to complete my case for the orthodox view by arguing that insuccess-failure pairs, the degree to which the attributability of Alvarezs-ingis lower than the corresponding attributability measure of Borgess -ing isequivalent to the degree to which -ing is less wrongful than -ing isorwhy, formally,p = r|.

Bothr|andpmay be understood as expressing the ratio of the number

of-ings to the number of-ings within a suitably restricted set of possibleworlds. Variablepexpresses the ratio of the number of times the agent doesto the number of possible worlds in the set of possible worlds that arepractically equivalent to the actual world with respect to and from theagents point of view (the actual world being that in which failure obtains)and in which the agent does . Let us call this reference setP. The r|variable, on the other hand, stands for the ratio of the number of times thesame agent does for a reason to to the number of possible worlds in theset of possible worlds in which there is sufficient reason for the agent to

and the agent does for that reason. Let us call this latter setR.These two sets, Pand R, are identical to each otherand hence r|

andpstate identical ratiosif the features of the agents doing that the label picks out are such that (i) the agent can only do for a reason; and(ii) doingentails that the agent (in doing ) entertains causal beliefs onthe prospects of her achieving of some given kindso that if acted withrelevantly different beliefs, it would not be (nor ) that she does, butsomething else. Indeed, condition (i) ensures that in every world in whichthe agent does (or just its actional means, ), she does so in response to a

reason to and so that every world inPbelongs as well inR. Condition (ii),in turn, warrants the converse, that is, that every world inRalso belongs inP, for every possible world in which the agent does (or just) for a reason

31. SeeJONATHANDANCY, PRACTICALREALITY5660 (2000) at 59.


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is a world that is practically equivalent to the actual world with respect to and from the agents point of view.

Conditions (i) and (ii) are met, I contend, in every case of intentionalwrongdoing that may play the role of a success case. This turns on twoassumptions. The first assumption is that when an agent does somethingintentionally, she does it for a reason.32 So, if describes an intentionalaction (i.e., an action that is intentional under the description), there isno world in which the agent does (or its actional means ) without doingit for a reason. Hence condition (i) is met.

The second assumption is that if describes an intentional action,it implies that the agent acts (in doing ) with certain beliefs as to theprospects of her achieving .33 So every possible world in which the agentdoes (or just) is a world in which she entertains (in doing ) those samebeliefs as to the prospects of her achieving and is also a world in whichthegroundsof those beliefs are relevantly the same. BygroundsI mean thefeatures of the world on the basis of which the agent believes that she will(or may with a given degree of likelihood) achieve once she has done. This ensures that every feature of the actual world that from the agentspoint of view is causally relevant to her achieving must obtain in everypossible world in which the agent does (or just). In other words, everypossible world in which the agent does (or just) is practically equivalentto the actual world (in which the agent has done ) with respect to andfrom the agents point of view. Hence condition (ii) is satisfied.

If my contention is right, variables r| and p in success-failure pairsnecessarily represent equivalent ratios, at least when that for which theagents are to blamethat is, the actions that and describeareintentional actions. In the domain of those kinds of actions, then, theorthodox view that successful offenders are no more to blame than theirfailing counterparts is true on the basis of the argument I am deploying.

Let me finally summarize my argument. I start with the assumptions thatin success-failure pairs, the successful agent does more wrong than the un-successful counterpart does and that the magnitude of wrong done impactson the agents degree of blameworthiness. I argue next that blameworthi-ness is a function not only of the magnitude of the wrong done but alsoof the degree to which the wrongdoing is attributable to the agent as herown doing. Thus, applying the Nozickian framework r W,

34 we canunderstand the orthodox view in terms of the following equation:

r W = r W (1)

32. For this relation between acting intentionally and acting for a reason,see, e.g., DONALDDAVIDSON,Actions, Reasons, and Causes,reprinted inESSAYS ONACTIONS ANDEVENTS6 (ClarendonPress, 1980); Robert Audi, Acting for Reasons, reprinted inTHEPHILOSOPHY OF ACTION 75105(Alfred R. Mele ed., 1997).

33. See, e.g., Mele & Moser,supranote 24, at 240241.34. Supranote 12.


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The left-hand side of this equation expresses the magnitude of Alvarezsblameworthiness for his -ing with success determined by the value of thewrong done by-ing (W) multiplied by the coefficient representing thecorresponding degree of attributability (r),or r W. On the right-handside, we find the expression of Borgess degree of blameworthiness for his-ing with failure, as it is correspondingly determined by r W. Theorthodox view is true, I claim, because the difference between attributabilitycoefficients (r and r) cancels out the difference in wrong done by oneand the other agent.

I interpret the attributability coefficients (r andr) in equation (1) toreflect only the measures of reliability of each agents doingthe otherdimension of attributability, that is, reactivity, being constant from one caseto the other. Thus they are understood to express a measure between 0 and1 of the frequency with which the pertinent action obtains within a givenset of possible worlds. Coefficientrin equation (1), I argue, is a fraction ofcoefficientr and may be reduced, I propose, to the product ofr r|,wherer|represents the ratio of the number of actions of the type to thenumber of actions of the type within the relevant set of possible worlds.Together with the claim thatr = r r|, equation (1) yields:

r r| W = r W (2)

which in turn yields the simpler equation:

r| W = W (3)

I maintain that the wrongness of Borgess -ing should be conceived asa derivation of the wrongness of -ing and its measure as a fraction ofthe value of the wrong done by-ing. More specifically, I argue that thevalue of wrong done by-ing equals the value of wrong done by-ingdiscounted by the probability of the agent achieving once he has done. If we letpstand for a discounting coefficient representing the measureof that probability, then we may state the wrongness of Borgess -ing asW = p W. ReplacingWin equation (3) with its equivalent expressionleads to:

r| W = p W (4)

which in turn yields:

r| = p (5)

As (5) makes explicit, my argument ultimately depends on there being anargument that the frequency represented by coefficientr| is equivalentto the measurepof the probability of the agent achieving once she has


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done . I argue that such is the case at least when the label stands for anintentional wrongdoing.

IX. SOME FURTHER OBJECTIONS

Before concluding, I would like to discuss another group of possible objec-tions. I start by taking into account opposition stemming from disagreementwith my account of wrongness. Consider first the view that denies that thereis any wrong done by the actional means to a wrongful act: that the wrong-ness of an action , wherever it comes from, is not conveyed to its actionalmeans. Take a version of the success-failure pair in which Alvarez and Borgesattempt to kill Victor by shooting him; Alvarez succeeds, and Borges fails. If,

as I am assuming, blameworthiness entails wrongness, this view implies thatagents like Borges, who attempt to do serious wrong but fail, are blameless.I take this conclusion to be highly implausible and therefore not a reasonto abandon my account in favor of this alternative view.

One may, however, escape the implausible conclusion by revising theassumption on the relation between blameworthiness and wrongdoing,thereby making room for judgments of blameworthiness in the absenceof wrongdoing. Though possible,35 this move is not without costs for itbreaks the identity between that which we would say an agent is to blame

forand thatin virtue of whichhe is to blame.To illustrate, take again the version of the success-failure pair in which

Alvarez and Borges attempt to kill Victor, Alvarez succeeds, and Borges fails.The cases describe an episode in the agents livestheir respective attemptsto kill Victorthat leads us to the judgment that both agents are to blame.In judging an agent blameworthy, we are expected to state what it is that theagent is to blame for. In my cases, the natural answer, I take it, will be thatAlvarez is to blamefor killing Victor intentionally, and that Borges is to blamefor attempting to kill Victor. The account that best accommodates what we do

in filling in these for clauses is that we are stating the groundorbasisof thejudgment of blameworthiness we have just passed; that is to say, we indicatethe features of the case in virtue of whichthe agent is blameworthy. Underthis account, what we offer as the basis of the judgment in the for clauseshould thusexplainwhy the agent deserves blame.

We honor this expectation if, in S is to blame for -ing, we imply thatit is morally wrong for S to . For the fact that Ss -ing is morally wrongwould indee

2 Recasting the Problem of Resultant Luck

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