Risk Morality
What role does risk play in moral calculus? I have found that many people have never even considered this question. Because this issue isn’t raised often, it is easy to make judgments of individual scenarios, but hard to form an overall paradigm for judging how risk affects the morality of an action. I use a simple and tragic hypothetical situation to illustrate the complexities that are involved in this kind of ethical reasoning.
Suppose a man hits a school bus with his car while he is intoxicated and severely injures several elementary school age children. With the benefit of retrospect, most sympathetic people would probably exclaim that this man’s decision to drive drunk was incredibly immoral. This situation invites numerous other related questions. Was it wrong for him to leave the bar drunk and get in his car to drive? Would it have been wrong for him to leave the bar to drive after having just one or two drinks? What if he had one or two drinks, waited a while, and then left? Was it wrong for him to drink at all when there was a chance he might be trying to drive while under some degree of influence by alcohol?
Here are three examples of failed attempts at a systematic approach to risk morality applied to this situation. Some might suggest that his actions can only be judged as immoral in retrospect with knowledge of the deadly consequences. Others substitute the arbitrary legal standard of driving while intoxicated beyond a .08 BAC as a bright line to delleniate between the morally acceptable and unacceptable decision. In the third attempt, some might rashly state that any decision that increases the risk of something bad happening is immoral. Each of these three attempts at categorization should be rejected. The first, the ex post facto standard would permit a great deal of dangerous and immoral activity because no moral judgments could be made until the action’s consequences had already occurred. It would also justify the risky decisions of thousands of drunk drivers who happen to not cause accidents. The second standard is far too artificial to be meaningful; there is no natural threshold of cognitive or motor skill ability between BAC readings of .079 and .080. The third is an impossibly slippery slope. Almost any action a person could do increases the risk of something bad happening. Merely walking outside your door increases the chance that you will be struck by lighting and getting in your car increases the chance that you will hit and kill a pedestrian.
There is some level of moral implication to any decision that increases the risk of causing something bad to occur. The converse is also true: there is some level of moral implication to any decision that refuses to lower the risk of something bad occurring. Bright lines are impossible to draw as universal guides for how much risk should be acceptable in what circumstances. This may be maddening to some, but these types of situations must be weighed individually based on the particular circumstances. Although the risk must be taken into consideration, increasing the risk or failing to decrease the risk does not automatically make a decision unethical.
People take risks all the time, and in popular society, those risks are rarely judged immoral if they are successful. On the contrary, risky ventures that are ultimately successful earn the risk taker accolades like “visionary,” “entrepreneur,” or “hero.” Risky ventures that result in failure cannot be viewed as fundamentally different just because of their different outcome. For each situation, there is a threshold at which point further risk becomes immoral. This threshold is modified by various factors including the severity and likelihood of damage and how it weighs against the potential benefits. This issue of risk morality contains many gray areas, and leads to far more questions than answers the farther one delves into it.
Body weight, ethnicity, and other factors also come into play when considering an individual’s threshold for alcoholic consumption.
The issue of drunk driving and legal blood alcohol levels falls under a utilitarian shade, in my opinion. Since it is nearly impossible to establish some sort of universal moral standard when considering BAC, it is perhaps better to look at society at large. Since most can agree that driving under the influence of alcohol is personally irresponsible and puts people other than the driver in danger, it is only reasonable that some sort of law is enacted to prevent such behavior and protect society. What is a fair level then? Well, that’s a bit arbitrary. Since it’s impossible to take into account every individual characteristic, a general and relatively fair standard has to be set.
Is it immoral to break this standard? Well, one could make the argument that it is. I think at this point the somewhat arbitrary and dubious nature of morality is illuminated. What should we protected: individual discretion or the general welfare of society?
The DUI incident is really only meant to serve as an illustration so that the concept of risk morality can be discussed relative to a real-life scenario. But you do raise some good points on that in particular.
I also think you are focusing too much on the legal question, but that is a separate issue, really.
Laws and morality? Sort of intertwined, no?
Related, yes. You aren’t staying in common ground when you assume that they are interchangeable, though. We have fought a long time about that one. :)
What? I’m not that obtuse. Of course what is legal is not necessarily moral. Duh. You’re definitely getting me confused with someone else. Either that, or you’re making crap up.
You boys should have a ‘Jane you ignorant slut’ type show.
Maybe you’re getting confused because you’re around the age you start to jettison the values of the society around you and your parents as the bounds of morality and start to develop your own.
What if the man were intoxicated not with alcohol, but with love? Love for his fellow man?
Then he should just follow the arrow. The arrow, man.
could please give some examples of immorality as it pertains to ““visionary,” “entrepreneur,” or “hero.””
The first thing that came to mind as an example of a hero is in a combat situation. If a squad leader or somebody makes a risky decision and they end up flanking the enemy and taking a position, that leader will get some sort of medal. Another leader may take an equally risky decision that ends up killing all of his soldiers, and he is unlikely to get a medal.
An investment manager who invests his client’s money in a risky stock that pays off is going to be praised, while the manager who invests in an equally risky stock that plummets in value is going to be fired.
Of course, these are extreme examples. I think the phenomenon of risk impacting moral calculus is present at any level of any decision that involves risk (although it is harder to see).