This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.com.

Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

Suppose on a Monday we forgot to show up to a Philosophy Bites interview and the interviewee was kept hanging around in a furious mood for an hour.

Then suppose on Tuesday we forgot to turn up for a different interview,

but this time the interviewee, by coincidence, also forgot,

and so wasn't kept waiting at all. Are we more culpable for the former omission than the latter?

Firey Cushman of Brown University is a psychologist fascinated by philosophy and he's made a special study of what's called

moral luck. Firey Cushman, welcome to Philosophy Bines. Thank you so much I'm really

glad to be here. The topic we're going to focus on is moral luck. I wonder if you could just begin by saying what moral luck is.

Yeah, well I think it's best illustrated through a specific case. So imagine that after this podcast, you and I went out for a couple beers, and then on the way home each of us got in our cars and

on your way home you fall asleep at the wheel and you run off the road and run into a pile of

bushes and get picked up for drunk driving.

I'll be generous and assume this is your first offense.

I don't know about Britain here, but in my home state of Massachusetts,

you could expect about a $250 ticket.

On my way home, I fall asleep and I run off the road

and I hit a person and kill them.

In Massachusetts, I could expect two and a half

to 15 years in prison.

So those are radically different amounts of punishment for what amounts to

...