Moral Luck (an idea by Bernard Williams)

[Columbo]

Bernard Williams has an interesting idea which he calls "moral luck".
He says that in a lot of situations it is a matter of luck as to whether the
outcome of our actions is deemed good or bad, in this way:

suppose a man decides to abandon his wife and child because he believes
he can be a successful artist. If he leaves them they will live in poverty.
If he stays they will do a lot better in life but just scrape by.
He says that if he becomes a successful artist he will return and take them
to a much better life than they could have dreamt of.
Naturally people would think his project to be immoral, after all to abandon
a wife and children is a despicable act and the chances of success in the art
world are slim.

However if he later succeeds and reclaims the family, he will have stopped
the condemnation of his actions because the action of returning and
making their lives better is equal to or worth more than the pain he caused
by abandoning them.
So The way he is percieved, morally, depends upon luck

Is that the way morality operates?

[themnax]

we live in a probablistic universe. there are rather close parallels between real morality and what improves the odds of the best possible outcome. it's still a statistical probablistic reality, which means anything can happen, but somethigs do happen a LOT more often then others and more or less often depending on what other things happen first.

no the irresponsibilty of ignoring probability is not morality. the avoidance of causing harm is.

there are several assumptions in this story.

the most bizzaar and improbable being that the wife and children will more likely be in poverty when he goes then if he stays with them bitter and disillusioned. if anything they might well be better off, not to mention safer.

=^^=
.../\...

[johnnystillcantread]

Hello! I find this thread interesting but I am having a hard time getting my head around it. So I cut and pasted a part of it and added my opium



“He says that in a lot of situations it is a matter of luck as to whether the outcome of our actions is deemed good or bad,”



I thought the outcome of something doesn’t matter as long as you know your actions were morally correct.