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The Moral Luck Machine.
The Great Moral Project was
re-started in 2067. The most powerful, self-learning, self-
developing bioquantum computer ever constructed called
the God Machine has been improved. The Moral Luck
Machine would monitor the thoughts, beliefs, desires and
intentions of every human being. However, instead of
modifying these directly, it creates the circumstances under
which a person who formed an intention to commit a
grossly immoral act would change their minds of their own
accord. The Moral Luck Machine would never influence the
behaviour of other people directly, but, through a network
of hired staff and changes to inanimate objects, create the
circumstances in which a person would change her mind.
Sometimes it would be a brick falling close to them that
would make them reflect on how short life is. Sometimes it
would be delays in the metro or a hologram of a street
preacher saying just the right words. Since the Moral Luck
Machine was monitoring the thoughts, beliefs and desires of
everyone and had run simulations, every intervention of the
Moral Luck Machine would be effective. As before, it
would only intervene once the threshold of harm to others
interest was reached. Murder of innocent people no longer
occurred and everyone was given the best chance to
(inevitably) change their minds.
What would be the implications of the Moral Luck Machine for praise and blame in
the imagined society? The Moral Luck Machine creates conditions for change of
intention, which could be seen as an instance of a hybrid between circumstantial
and constitutive luck. Among those we would praise for moral conduct in the God
Machine scenario, there are a) those who changed their minds even without
circumstantial-constitutive moral luck, b) those whose actions were influenced by
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circumstantial-constitutive moral luck, and c) those who had their intention directly
changed. In the Moral Luck Machine scenario there are a) those who changed their
minds even without circumstantial-constitutive moral luck, b) those whose actions
were influenced by circumstantial-constitutive moral luck, and c) those whose
actions were influenced by circumstantial-constitutive moral luck delivered by the
Moral Luck Machine. The central question is whether there is a significant
difference
for praise and blame judgements
between the circumstantial luck of
those in the Moral Luck God Machine scenario and those whose intention was
directly changed.
It seems to me that the relevant difference lies in
some
engagement of the agent in
the process of changing her mind – the Moral Luck Machine might appeal to some
values and preferences of the agent that perhaps would be weaker or not otherwise
effective. If the God Machine changed people's intentions by evoking an intrusive
thought to which one would have to relate instead of changing the intention
directly, there would perhaps be little difference between the Moral Luck Machine
and the God Machine. Thus, the difference may not be control or the external-
internal influence, but rather the degree of agents’ engagement with either internal
(intrusive thought) or external (circumstantial moral luck) circumstances. While the
Moral Luck Machine intervention allows agents such engagement with internal
influences, the God Machine scenario does not.
In his discussion of
moral luck,
Adams (1985) makes a similar point. He recognizes that there are limits to what we
can be responsible for, and writes that the states of mind ‘for which we are directly
responsible are those in which we are responding, consciously or unconsciously, to
data that are rich enough to permit a fairly adequate ethical appreciation of the
state's intentional object and of the object's place in the fabric of personal
relationships’ (1985, p. 26).
As a result, it would make sense to confer a certain degree of praise for all people
who experience a temptation but refrain from acting on it, as in the Moral Luck
Machine scenario. The kind of moral luck provided by the original Savulescu and
Persson’s (2012a) God Machine, however, seems to deliver a rather different kind
of moral luck that is relevant for the ascription of praise and blame. At least in part,
the ascription of praise and blame depends on the ability to relate to the internal or
external influence independently of the outcome. I will return to the importance of
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appropriate engagement of the agent with external influences in the latter sections.
Here it suffices to say that even if the influence of the various morally relevant
machines discussed in this section would be construed as instances of moral luck, it
matters what shape that moral luck takes.
In the next section we will leave the issue of moral praise and blame aside and
focus on the impact of the God Machine on free will and free action.
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