Table Of ContentLuck: Its Nature and Significance for Human
Knowledge and Agency
Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy
Series Editors: Vincent F. Hendricks, University of Copenhagen and Columbia
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Mikkel Gerken
EPISTEMIC REASONING AND THE MENTAL
Kevin Meeker
HUME’S RADICAL SCEPTICISM AND THE FATE OF NATURALIZED
EPISTEMOLOGY
Ted Poston
REASON AND EXPLANATION: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism
Aidan McGlynn
KNOWLEDGE FIRST?
Forthcoming titles:
J. Adam Carter
THE PROSPECTS FOR RELATIVISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY
Annalisa Coliva
THE VARIETIES OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Julian Kiverstein
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PHENOMENOLOGY
Jonathan Matheson
THE EPISTEMIC SIGNIFICANCE OF DISAGREEMENT
David Pedersen
POLITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY: Epistemic Theories and Knowledge Institutions
Christopher Pincock and Sandra Lapointe (editors)
INNOVATIONS IN THE HISTORY OF ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY
Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy
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Luck: Its Nature and
Significance for Human
Knowledge and Agency
E.J. Coffman
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee, USA
© E.J. Coffman 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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First published 2015 by
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ISBN: 978 – 1 – 137 – 32609 – 6
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
E.J. Coffman 1976–
Luck : its nature and significance for human knowledge and agency /
E.J. Coffman, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee, USA.
pages cm. — (Palgrave innovations in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–32609–6
1. Chance. 2. Fortune. 3. Knowledge, Theory of. 4. Agent (Philosophy)
5. Act (Philosophy) I. Title.
BD595.C64 2015
1239.3—dc23 2014036783
Contents
Preface v iii
Acknowledgments x
1 Lucky Events: The Current Debate and
a New Proposal 1
1.1 Three leading theories of luck 3
1.2 Counterexamples to the leading theories of luck 5
1.3 Lucky events and strokes of luck 13
1.4 The Strokes Account: further support and defense 19
2 What Is a Stroke of Luck? Enriching
the Strokes Account 25
2.1 I nitial statement of the Analysis and
some important implications 2 5
2.2 The Analysis: revisions and defense 32
2.3 P utting it all together: the Enriched Strokes
Account of lucky events 3 7
2.4 H ow the Enriched Strokes Account handles
the counterexamples to the literature’s leading
theories of luck 4 4
3 Knowledge and Luck I: Gettiered Belief and
the Ease of Mistake Approach 49
3.1 An initial catalog of kinds of epistemic luck 51
3.2 Pritchard on Evidence Luck and Belief Luck 53
3.3 The scope of gettiered belief 5 7
3.4 T he Ease of Mistake Approach to gettiered
belief: explanation and support 6 0
3.5 Counterexamples to the Ease of Mistake Approach 64
4 Knowledge and Luck II: Three More Approaches
to Gettiered Belief 68
4.1 From Ease of Mistake to Lack of Credit 68
4.2 Creditability as explanatory salience 70
v
vi Contents
4.3 Creditability as power manifestation 73
4.4 Two riskier approaches to gettiered belief 77
4.5 T he Risk of Misleading D ispositions Approach
to gettiered belief 7 9
4.6 T he Risk of Misleading J ustification Approach to
gettiered belief 8 1
4 .6.1 Objection 1: Kelp’s Demonic Clock 8 6
4 .6.2 Objection 2: Bogardus’s Atomic Clock 9 0
5 Freedom, Responsibility, and Luck I:
The Possibility of Moral Responsibility and
Literal Arguments for the Proximal Determination
Requirement 97
5.1 D efending the possibility of morally
responsible action 1 01
5.2 F our different kinds of luck-involving arguments
for the Proximal Determination Requirement 115
5.3 L iteral versions of the arguments for the Proximal
Determination Requirement 1 17
5 .3.1 A n intriguing attempted counterexample
to (IA-2) 118
5 .3.2 A gainst the ‘at least partly a matter of
luck’ readings of (DA-2) and (IA-2) 120
5 .3.3 Against (DA/IA-1) 124
6 Freedom, Responsibility, and Luck II:
Stipulative Arguments for the Proximal Determination
Requirement and Three Arguments against It 129
6.1 S tipulative versions of the Direct Argument for
the Proximal Determination Requirement 1 30
6.2 S tipulative versions of the Indirect Argument
for the Proximal Determination Requirement 134
6.2.1 Five arguments for (MI-2) 1 36
6.3 T hree arguments against the Proximal
Determination Requirement 1 47
6 .3.1 Objections to the Melean Argument 1 50
6 .3.2 Objections to Fischer’s Argument 1 53
6 .3.3 Defending the Possibility Argument 1 58
Contents vii
Coda 1 64
Notes 1 67
References 1 88
Index 1 95
Preface
This book develops a comprehensive new theory of luck in light of a
critical appraisal of the literature’s leading accounts (Chapters 1 and
2), then brings this new theory of luck to bear on some central issues
in contemporary epistemology (Chapters 3 and 4) and philosophy of
action (Chapters 5 and 6). For the benefit of any reader who may want
to read only some parts of the book, here is a brief summary of its main
results (I provide a more detailed summary in the Coda).
Chapters 1 and 2: Contrary to what recent theorists of luck have
assumed, their main target of analysis – the concept of an event’s being
lucky for a subject – is in fact a disjunctive concept that is parasitic on
the more fundamental notion of an event’s being a s troke of luck for a
subject. Roughly, a significant event is lucky for you just in case that
event is either itself a stroke of luck for you or due primarily to something
that was a stroke of luck for you, where a significant event is a stroke of
luck for you just in case the event (a) is modally fragile – in the sense
that the event (metaphysically) could well have failed to happen – and
(b) is not something that you did intentionally.
Chapters 3 and 4: On the epistemological front, the most charitable
reading of the platitude that ‘knowledge excludes luck’ is both too
strong and too weak to capture the widespread intuition that knowl-
edge excludes gettiered belief (that is, belief that’s relevantly like the
ones held by the subjects in those highly influential cases described
by Gettier [1963]). The best extant account of gettiered belief – which
differs importantly from each of the literature’s two leading approaches
to gettiered belief – employs only one of the three conditions involved
in the best extant analysis of the most basic or fundamental concept of
luck.
Chapters 5 and 6: On the action-theoretical front, the relatively weak
and plausible thesis that morally responsible action is at least p ossible
can help us see not only that all the main luck-involving threats to the
scope of free and responsible action among finite, temporal agents such
as us ultimately fizzle, but also that luck itself as well as various other
luck-related phenomena – including, perhaps most prominently on the
contemporary action-theoretical scene, the property of being p roximally
undetermined (that is, not entailed by the immediate past and laws of
viii
Preface ix
nature) – are a good deal more congenial to free and responsible action
than is typically thought.
As this brief summary indicates, the overall view of luck’s significance
for human knowledge and agency that emerges over the course of this
book is at once both optimistic and pessimistic. The view is optimistic
in that it sees knowledge and free, responsible agency as compatible
with a surprisingly wide range of luck-related phenomena. The view is
pessimistic in that it sees reflection on the concept of luck as unlikely (in
and of itself) to shed much light on the nature of knowledge and free,
responsible agency or to reveal surprising limits on the scope of these
phenomena among people such as us.
