Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

7.3.2. The making of moral luck 
The third doubt is that perhaps the God Machine could be treated as an instance of 
moral luck. Nagel (1979) and Williams (1981) have challenged the intuitively 
appealing ‘Control Principle’ (CP) as well as a corollary of it (CP2):
(CP) We are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are assessed for 
depends on factors under our control. 
(CP2) Two people ought not to be morally assessed differently if the only other 
differences between them are due to factors beyond their control. 
Although the principles seem appealing and plausible and are consistent with many 
instances of our moral assessment, there seem to be numerous cases in which those 
do not apply. For example, we seem to blame those who have murdered more than 
we blame those who have merely attempted murder, even if the reason for the lack 

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of success in the second case is that the intended victim unexpectedly tripped and 
fell to the floor just as the bullet arrived at head-height, by which time the person 
with the intention to murder was incapacitated by guards. Since whether the victim 
tripped or not and whether the guards arrived quickly enough or not is not 
something in control of either would-be murderer, the case appears to violate the 
Control Principle and its corollary. 
As Nagel (1979) puts it, ‘Where a significant aspect of what someone does depends 
on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an 
object of moral judgment, it can be called moral luck’ (p. 59). Moral luck includes 
instances of resultant luck (how things turn out), circumstantial luck (e.g. people 
working in Germany in the 1930s vs. those living in another time or place) and 
constitutive luck (the luck regarding acquisition of traits and dispositions). As 
Feinberg (1970, pp. 34–38) argued, moral luck can affect even our ‘willings’ and 
other internal states. According to Nagel’s development of this point, there are 
other types of luck that affect not only our actions but also every intention we form 
and every exertion of our will. Furthermore, once these kinds of luck are 
recognized, we will see that not one of the factors on which agents' actions depend 
is immune to luck. Those who formed the intention to commit gross immorality and 
were prevented from acting on it by the God Machine, at least for the purposes of 
moral praise and blame, could be seen as being like those whose victims tripped or 
those who, through a chain of lucky coincidences, changed their minds.
Consider the example of Wilson Jr. who formed an intention to kill in revenge, yet 
on the way to commit the murder passed through a student protest and was 
mistakenly arrested on suspicion of another offence. With his phone call from 
prison, he intended to get his friend to put forward bail so he could carry out his 
plan. However, influenced by the soothing conversation with the friend and the 
passage of time, his intention changed by the time he was released. Were it not for 
the accidental arrest, he would have killed. The God Machine could be seen as a 
rather ‘hands-on’ instance of (inescapable) moral luck.
One could object that there is something relevantly different for the ascription of 
praise and blame between the God Machine scenario and the instances of moral 
luck discussed above: in the God Machine scenario the agent is neither responsive 

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to reasons nor subject to a lucky coincidence or favourable circumstances, but 
rather directly affected. Let us imagine that a segment of the God Machine society 
raised this objection and as a result, the God Machine was improved.