Blackburn, Simon - Williams, Smith, and the Peculiarity of Piacularity

2015/08/07

Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2015

This is a paper that revisits Bernard Williams' discussion of moral luck and compares and contrasts it to Adam Smith's treatment of it. In this case we're talking about the moral luck of outcomes to actions-- how events can twist and turn in non-moral ways and yet influence our judgments about the moral worth of the intention or the actor who set the events in motion. Author first starts with laying out Smith's discussion, particularly focusing on the interesting requirement that third person sympathy is key to Smith's system (pg219).
Another discussion follows about how we have peculiar non-moral attachment to animals or objects that have been involved in a favorable endeavor: like a horse who, through remarkable swimming, saves a Turkish officer. Such a horse should have a kind-of non-moral bond with the officer and we would indeed be surprised if the officer then shot the horse (pg220). This non-moral gratitude or affection to inanimate objects or animals (taken to be non-moral agents) can also be influenced by the outcome-- by fortune. The objects that we might attach special significance to, or negative emotions to, seem to be exemplars of luck, as author discusses the "deodand" (pg221-2). For Smith (and for author), these are straightforward cases where the accidents of history should not color one's judgment. It is during this discussion, that author introduces the word Smith used "piacular", meaning involvement in a bad event and needing a kind of expiation, though not morally guilty. The distinction is that we can perhaps see the object or animal as not any worse or better qua object or animal, but our associations with it are so strong that this is an overriding concern. The moral judgment remains intact, but it may be drowned out by other sentiments (pg223-4).
Author then turns to discuss Williams and his interest in the agent's own self-assessment or attitude (agent-regret) toward her own decisions. Williams starts with the example of Gauguin abandoning his family to pursue the life of a painter-- a change in career. For Williams, this decision is justified only by success or failure criteria: if Gauguin is a poor painter he will be "unjustified with 'nothing to say'". Author disputes this because the agent might have some "quiet satisfaction" or "quiet pride" in taking a path that was heartfelt though a failure (pg226), though this response is complicated by inept or foolish decisions (pg226-7). More interestingly, author casts Williams' focus to be primarily about judging past decisions due to wanting analysis for prospective future decisions (pg227). Author argues that such a focus is unnecessarily narrow and that the first-person perspective has "got in the way" (pg227), since the question of whether your past decision is justified (whatever that means in this context) is open to public inspection and 3rd-person judgment too. Perhaps Williams accepts all this, but, author argues, the judgment heaped on poor decisions where no one suffered (e.g. a lucky positive outcome) does not deserve "reproach" (pg227).
The matter of self-understanding of a past decision is complex, since it involves going back into the state of mind the subject was in, author argues. But such a trip is "wearisome" and "futile" (pg229), if even possible at all. The trouble is that the context of such decisions might be unimaginable now that the passions that were involved in the decision have died out (pg228-9). The natural result, then, is that the external judgment of success or failure (even by the own-lights of the agent) is the "master of the field" (pg229). The conclusion is that if Williams is focused on self-assessment, then it is natural that the epistemic position of external factors will prevail on the judgment. However, using Smith's 3rd-party considerations, we could have the needed tools to separate out good decisions from good outcomes.
Author finishes up by discussing some strategies and distinctions that might be employed to deal with distinguishing cases of moral luck (pg230-1).