Hi! I'm a confused consequentialist. I was browsing the Wikipedia article on Moral Luck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_luck

There are two people driving cars, Driver A, and Driver B. They are alike in every way. Driver A is driving down a road, and, in a second of inattention, runs a red light as an old lady is crossing the street. Driver A slams the brakes, swerves, in short, does everything to try to avoid hitting the woman – alas, she hits the woman and kills her. Driver B, in the meantime, also runs a red light, but since no woman is crossing, he gets a traffic ticket, but nothing more.
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The consequentialist position argues that equal fault need not deserve equal blame, as blame should depend on the consequences. By this logic, the lucky driver certainly does not deserve as much blame as the unlucky driver, even though their faults were identical.

My question is: is it correct that consequentialism always demands more blame to Driver A?

I agree that we should treat the concepts of public reward and blame as decisions that are themselves subject to consequentialist analysis – but as a result, I'd say that the Driver A did more wrong, but both drivers deserve equal public blame, since the facts and knowledge of their behavior were identical, and people who run red lights have a significantly higher probability of killing pedestrians than people who don't. Does that make sense, and is there a term to describe the position?

(An analogy for this position: if someone drives home drunk every night, barely looking at the road, and on the 50th night they hit and kill someone, would we say that they did something much *more* deserving of blame the 50th time through?)

Are there any other common positions that consequentialists might take that don't result in assigning much more blame to Driver A?

Thanks very much!

You should assign blame by the consequences of assigning blame, not by the consequences of the actions of the person you're assigning the blame to.

If punishing people who drive without paying attention results in more net happiness than punishing people who commit vehicular manslaughter, then it would be preferable to do so. If, for some odd reason, only punishing people who didn't kill people resulted in higher net happiness, then it would be preferable to do so.

I've heard that there are variations of consequentialism that include desert. If you're a good person, than your utility is worth more. They don't have to be constructed so that you deserve what you cause in that moral system. I don't know if they tend to be, since I find the whole thing crazy.

Also, your example is a huge understatement of the amount luck factors in to your consequences. Thanks to the butterfly effect, pretty much everything that will ever happen can be traced back to what you do right now.

I imagine the above post by DanielLC should read "If punishing people who drive dangerously..." or something of the sort.

To answer your question, I sidestep the question of blame by saying that:
1) The scenario containing driver A is worse. i.e. it contains more harm. Could we prevent either of the driver's acts, we would prevent driver A's.
2) We should not make driver A feel guilty. We should not blame driver A. Blaming him isn't going to do any good because it won't improve his future behaviour. It won't improve his future behaviour because his past behaviour wouldn't reliably bring about harm. Person B's behaviour didn't bring about harm this time around; it was reckless and nasty and it could bring about harm in the future. If person B understands and responds normally to blame, then it might not be unreasonable to accord blame to him.

I don't think I differ from DanielLC here. Hope that helps!

Utilitarians don't use blame as currency, utilitarians use happiness and preferences as currency. If there's anything ethically wrong with what you described, it is because of how it would affect happiness or preferences. Pondering about the event in terms of who's more to blame is not utilitarian, neither it is pondering about the event in terms of who's more vicious or who had a higher duty.

That said, if blame is to be given, it should be in terms of the repercussions of blaming. I don't see a reason why either of the two should be more or less to blame than the other, they should both be careful while driving. However if the person who run over someone is emotionally aware and compassionate, the blame he'll put on himself will be already higher than the one who didn't run over someone.