Stephen Kearns

Reasons: Explanations or Evidence?

Imagine you are walking along a busy road, deep in thought, and someone suddenly pushes you over. You stand up and turn to confront the person responsible for your fall. Suppose this person tells you that he has just saved your life by pushing you out of the way of a fast-traveling bus (and suppose, if you like, that this story is confirmed by disinterested onlookers). He also tells you that he almost didn’t push you and thereby save your life because he is in a great hurry to get to a meeting. You thank him profusely, and he hurriedly goes on his way. It seems that a natural way of describing what just happened in this scenario is to say that this stranger considered the reasons for and against helping you and he made a quick judgment that, given the balance of reasons in play, he really ought to save you. No description of this kind would be appropriate if the person who pushed you over had simply accidentally tripped. Of course, he could appropriately say, “the reason I fell on you was that I tripped,” but in saying this he would not be providing a

Get lucky: situationism and circumstantial moral luck

Situationism is, roughly, the thesis that normatively irrelevant environmental factors have a great impact on our behaviour without our being aware of this influence. Surprisingly, there has been little work done on the connection between situationism and moral luck. Given that it is often a matter of luck what situations we find ourselves in, and that we are greatly influenced by the circumstances we face, it seems also to be a matter of luck whether we are blameworthy or praiseworthy for our actions in those circumstances. We argue that such situationist moral luck, as a variety of circumstantial moral luck, exemplifies a distinct and interesting type of moral luck. Further, there is a case to be made that situationist moral luck is perhaps more worrying than some other well-discussed cases of (supposed) moral luck.