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214 Pages·2015·1.484 MB·English
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Luck: Its Nature and Significance for Human Knowledge and Agency Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy Series Editors: Vincent F. Hendricks, University of Copenhagen and Columbia University in New York and Duncan Pritchard, University of Edinburgh. Titles include: 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 Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–36085–3 (hardback) ( outside North America only ) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Luck: Its Nature and Significance for Human Knowledge and Agency E.J. Coffman Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee, USA palgrave macmillan © E.J. Coffman 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-32609-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 – 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-45965-0 ISBN 978-1-137-32610-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137326102 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. 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 978-1-349-45965-0 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.

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