Clare, the titular character of The Time Traveller's Wife, reflects that "Everything seems simple until you think about it." (Niffenegger, 2003, 1) This might well be a mantra for the whole of philosophy, but a fair few terms tend to stick out. "Knowledge", "goodness" and "happiness" for example, are all pervasive everyday terms that undergo significant philosophical analysis. "Luck", I think, is another one of these terms. Wishing someone good luck in their projects, and cursing our bad luck when success seems so close to our reach or failure could have so easily been otherwise, happens so often that we rarely stop to reflect on what we really mean. Philosophical reflection on the nature of luck has a rich tradition, that is by no stretch confined to the Western philosophical canon. However, it has only very recently become one of the goals of philosophy to provide a clear account of what luck actually amounts to. This, in part, is the goal of this thesis. The thesis has two primary motivations. The first is to offer and defend a general account of luck that overcomes the problems faced by the current accounts of luck that are available in the current philosophical literature. The second is to apply this general account of luck to the areas of metaethics and epistemology where luck has been a pervasive and problematic concept, and demonstrate how this account of luck may resolve or further illuminate some of the problems that the notion has generated. The thesis is roughly split into two parts. The first half of the thesis focuses on the former objective of offering an account of luck. Chapter 1 offers a selected history of the philosophy of luck that spans from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, so that we might properly situate the current work on luck as part of the broader historical importance of the concept. Chapter 2 will set out the major rival to the theory of luck that I will offer - the lack of control account of luck (LCAL). LCAL has various iterations across the literature, but is most clearly articulated by Wayne Riggs (2009) and E.J. Coffman (2006, 2009). Both Coffman and Riggs add and adapt their own conditions to LCAL specifically so that the account may overcome several problems that have been levied against it. These further conditions are not incompatible so, to provide the strongest lack of control account possible, I have combined them to form a lack of control account I have called Combined LCAL - (c)LCAL. The latter part of the chapter pits (c)LCAL against some of the problems that have been raised against LCAL. However, despite the efforts of both Riggs and Coffman, even (c)LCAL fails to counter some of these objections. For these reasons I have rejected LCAL has a viable candidate for an account of luck. Chapter 3 sets out a modal account of luck (MAL), as argued for by Pritchard (2004, 2005, 2014), where an event is lucky only if it occurs in the actual world, but not in a relevant set of nearby possible worlds. Here I further elaborate on how we should understand the modal distances using Lewisian possible world semantics, and what worlds should be taken into consideration when fixing the relevant set of nearby possible worlds. I argue that these relevant sets of worlds should be fixed according to the domain of inquiry of which the luck is being applied - this I call the type of luck. Examples of this is the current literature are resultant luck - the type of luck concerned with the results of our actions, and veritic luck - the type of luck concerned with the modal safety of our belief formation. Due to the multitude of types of luck across disciplinary areas, a general modal account of luck requires flexibility in what factors should fix the relevant sets of possible worlds. I achieve this by providing a [TYPE] function for the general modal account of luck, which is used as a mean of inserting the relevant fixing conditions for any domain of inquiry. Chapter 3, in a similar vein to Chapter 2, pits the general modal account of luck against some of the problems that have been levied against MAL, specifically the Buried Treasure problem raised by Lackey (2008) and the agent causation problem as raised by Levy (2011). More successfully, the modal account offered stands up against these criticisms. For these reasons, the modal condition understood with the [TYPE] function and Lewisian semantics concerning modal distances, will be adopted to make up one half of the conditions for my account of luck. Chapter 4 will look at the second condition for an account of luck - the significance condition. The chapter will set out the reasons for adopting a significance condition at all, and some of the ways in which the condition has been articulated by Rescher (1995), Pritchard (2005) and Ballantyne (2011). All of these current views of the significance condition will be found wanting due to their inability to make sense of certain kinds of luck in specific normative domains. For example, Ballantyne's account of significance focuses on the interests of an agent, yet for certain types of moral luck, the interests of the agent are irrelevant. Instead, I propose a relativised significance condition, where the value of the event is relative to the value of the normative domain in which the luck is being ascribed. Epistemic luck requires a focus on the epistemic significance of the event for the agent, moral luck requires a focus on the moral or ethical significance of the event for the agent, and so on. This I call the kind of luck. Similar to the [TYPE] function for the modal condition for luck, the significance condition requires a [NORMATIVE DOMAIN] function where the relevant normative domain can be inserted depending on the kind of luck. This version of the significance condition will be conjoined with the modal condition as set out in Chapter 3 to form the correct general account of luck. Chapter 5 is the first chapter of the second half of the thesis that concerns applying the account of luck set out in part 1 to more specific domains of inquiry. Chapter 5 concerns moral luck, more specifically, resultant moral luck. Moral luck has traditionally been understood in terms of lack of control. This chapter looks at how Pritchard (2005) and Driver (2014) have attempted to understand moral luck using modal conditions. However, it is argued that these attempts would be more successful if we adopted the account of luck that I have offered in previous chapters. The chapter will go on to look at two possible problems that may be faced by this modal account of luck, and how it may resolve these problems. Chapter 6, the final chapter, looks at epistemic luck, specifically how the adoption of the modal account I have offered resolves a particular problem targeted at anti-luck epistemology by Ballantyne (2013). The problem, Ballantyne argues, is that given that luck requires a significance condition, the degree of significance affects the degree of luck and that the degree of luck involved in our belief formation affects whether we are in a position to know the target proposition, that the result is that degree of significance affects our ability to know. For at least some instances of this - such as the aesthetic significance that we assign to the target proposition - the result will be that non-epistemic factors that have no relevance at all whether an agent is in a position to know will (absurdly, in Ballantyne's view) affect that agent's position to know. The resolution to this problem can be found in a two part solution. The first part is to demonstrate that any degree of veritic epistemic luck results in the agent failing to know. The second is that through the relativisation of the significance condition, any type of value will not affect an agent's position to know, only the epistemic value. / With these two considerations in mind, the latter of which that can only be held through the adoption of the modal account of luck I have offered, the problem may be resolved.

archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Jesse Hill

Imagine that you’ve just spent the last several months reading Don Quixote—and that you’re all but fifty pages away from finishing. Unfortunately for you, the book was due back before you could finish, and so begrudgingly, you turn it back in, having not known what happens in the end. Riddled with curiosity, you make your best guess about Quixote’s eventual fate and suppose it is the most likely scenario. Entirely unbeknownst to you, it turns out that you were right; Quixote’s ultimate destiny was just what you had supposed it would be! What luck! Quite naturally, we would say that (despite how impressed we are that you rightly anticipated Cervantes), when all is said and done, knowing what happens to Don Quixote in the end is surely better than merely believing truly what happens in the end—the predicament you find yourself in having not actually finished the book. After all, it was just by dumb luck that you guessed the ending right—a point you could deny only on the pain of some embarrassing claim of clairvoyance. We might put the idea more generally by saying that from a purely cognitive standpoint, it is better to know the truth than to stumble upon it by luck. This general idea betrays two distinct insights about knowledge. The first is the insight that while true belief is valuable, knowledge is distinctively so—knowing the truth is valuable in a way that merely having a true (but not-known) belief is not. The second insight here is that you lack knowledge if it’s just by dumb luck that the belief you have is true. Call these the value insight and the anti-luck insight: Value insight: Knowledge is distinctively valuable. Luck insight: Knowledge excludes luck. In contemporary epistemology, and especially over the past five years, separate projects have arisen in correspondence with these distinct intuitions: value-driven epistemology is concerned with issues surrounding the first insight, and projects under the description of anti-luck epistemology have arisen out of the second. Now we might reasonably suppose that whatever it is that makes knowledge relevantly un-lucky would be something we could cite in accounting for what makes knowledge distinctively valuable. This natural idea reflects the thought that the insights about value and luck should not be entirely disconnected. There is a problematic tension though between this reasonable expectation and the resources epistemologists have provided for us to accommodate it. What explains the tension is the fact that value-driven and anti-luck projects in epistemology have by and large been developed apart from each other, each focused on one of our two guiding insights at the expense of the other. Consequently, value-driven epistemology’s focus on the normative but not modal properties of knowledge leaves these two aspects of knowledge disconnected much in the way that anti-luck epistemology’s focus on the modal but not the normative properties of knowledge leaves these same aspects disconnected. The lacuna here between what value driven epistemologists tell us about what makes knowledge valuable and what the anti-luck epistemologists tell us about what makes knowledge exclude luck is troubling. We may resist that there should be such a disconnect if we avoid the common flaw shared by each of these projects pursued in isolation from the other. The flaw here is essentially one of naivety: that of supposing that we can give an account of knowledge exclusively in terms of conditions that would accommodate one of the two insights, while still managing to account for the other insight—which itself we did not appeal to directly in our theory of what knowledge is—e.g. in the analysis provided of it. This is the flaw behind the value-driven approaches that think about knowledge in terms of valuable properties they can’t explain to ensure modal robustness and the anti-luck projects that think of knowledge in terms of modal properties into which we can’t well smuggle the normativity needed to explain its value. To avoid this flaw, then, we should let both of these insights dictate the conditions our analysis offers as essential to knowing. The project with which I’ll be engaging here develops substantially on this widely overlooked and promising idea.

Children ages 5 and 8 dropped a marble into a box and made predictions about which of two doors the marble would exit. Participants provided explanations and certainty ratings for each of their predictions. A lucky charm was used in a second round of the game, in which half of participants experienced an increase in success and half did not. Results indicated that older children were more cognizant of the chance nature of the game, however both age groups exhibited misconceptions about the predictability of chance outcomes. When asked to explain their overall success in Round 2, only 8 year-olds who experienced an increase in success and a perfect success rate reliably endorsed the lucky charm. Results are discussed with reference to literature on children’s and adults’ understanding of chance. We also discuss developmental patterns in the use of luck as an explanatory tool. / text

My dissertation explores the promise of kindness as a response to the problem of luck which confronts both ancient and modern visions of the moral life. A rich articulation of kindness in the light of historical moral theory reveals that, far from being a trifling, merely and purely sentimental phenomenon, kindness involves many of the key ethical commitments that distinguish both Aristotelian ethics and Kantian morality. More importantly, at the level of individuals kindness has the power to mitigate the toll of bad luck on agents and to yield the types of judgments that dissolve the problem of moral luck. Where it finds expression at the institutional level kindness has tremendous ameliorative potential. I therefore contend that kindness is to be esteemed above all other modes of comportment; in a world that is not up to us, our greatest hope for flourishing lies in being kind and in remaining graciously open to the kindness of others.

In the last four decades, luck egalitarianism has emerged as a hotly debated theory of distributive justice. The tenet, in its most normative sense, calls for distribution or assistance when circumstances of disadvantage arise from bad luck that is independent of human influence. Disadvantages that can be traced back to individual choice and responsibility, on the other hand, are left for the sufferer to bear. In this paper, I argue that luck egalitarianism should be abandoned as a standard for determining whether a disadvantage should be addressed, because the assumption that there are instances of disadvantage completely attributable to individual choice is flawed. Brute luck, or luck that emerges from beyond human control, influences most human outcomes, making it difficult to confidently attribute outcomes to option luck, or luck that stems from human choice. Without option luck, luck egalitarianism becomes obsolete as the principle rests on the distinction between brute and option luck.

In this paper I raise a puzzle that I call 'the puzzle of victim-anger' that is parallel to Bernard William's puzzle of agent-regret. Suppose a truck driver is driving down the street when a child happens to walk in front of them. Through no fault of their own, the driver hits and kills the child. It is well understood that the driver will, and probably should, have some sort of guilt-like response, called agent-regret. However, it would also be unsurprising to find out that the child's parents were angry at the driver for killing their child, and this observation has been largely overlooked in the literature on agent-regret. This anger is totally intelligible—we might even feel deeply alienated by a parent who didn't feel it in the wake of their child's avoidable death. Nevertheless, it's hard to see how this anger could be rationally defensible: aren't the parents just lashing out at an innocent party? In this paper, I show how the traditional philosophical account of anger fails to yield a satisfactory solution to this puzzle. As a result, I reject the traditional account and offer my own positive account of anger in its place. According to my positive account, anger functions to shift the conversational dynamic in order to call attention to the target's obligations to repair the harm they caused. / Master of Arts / In this paper I raise a puzzle that I call 'the puzzle of victim-anger' that is parallel to Bernard William's puzzle of agent-regret. William's puzzle starts like this: suppose a truck driver is driving down the street when a child happens to walk in front of them. Through no fault of their own, the driver hits and kills the child. It is well understood that the driver will, and probably should, have some sort of guilt-like response, called agent-regret even though the accident wasn't their fault. However, it would also be unsurprising to find out that the child's parents were angry at the driver for killing their child, and this observation has been largely overlooked in the literature on agent-regret. This anger is totally intelligible—we might even feel deeply alienated by a parent who didn't feel it in the wake of their child's avoidable death. Nevertheless, it's hard to see how this anger could be rationally defensible: aren't the parents just lashing out at an innocent party? In this paper, I show how the traditional philosophical account of anger fails to yield a satisfactory solution to this puzzle. As a result, I reject the traditional account and offer my own positive account of anger in its place. According to my positive account, anger functions to shift the conversational dynamic in order to call attention to the target's obligations to repair the harm they caused.

The norms that mediate our responses to accidents play a critical role in facilitating social cooperation. My dissertation explores these norms with an eye towards what they can tell us about the nature of moral responsibility. Drawing on Adam Smith's brief, but important discussion of moral luck, I argue that our responses to accidents reveal the extent to which the obligations we incur and the moral appraisals we make of one another are often appropriately influenced by fortune. In particular, I show how making sense of these responses requires us to embrace the idea that we can sometimes be morally responsible for things without being culpable, and I argue that doing so need not do violence to our moral intuitions.

I uppsatsen presenterar jag “luck egalitarianism” och specifikt Dworkins teori om jämlika resurser. Målet med Dworkins teori är att sammanväva de två till synes motstridiga principerna om lika hänsyn och lika respekt. Dworkin försöker föra samman principerna genom att nå en fördelning som är ambitions-känslig samtidigt som den är talang-okänslig. Han försöker uppnå detta ideal genom att kombinera en fri marknad som visar lika respekt för medborgarnas valfrihet och ansvar, med en försäkringsmarknad som visar lika hänsyn till medborgarna genom möjligheten att teckna försäkring mot oförutsägbara konsekvenser under lika möjlighet och lika risk. Elizabeth S. Anderson påstår att Dworkins teori misslyckas i att kombinera principerna om lika hänsyn och lika respekt på ett rimligt sätt och presenterar två övergripande invändningar: hårdhetsinvändningen och förnedringsinvändningen. Den första invändningen (hårdhetsinvändingen) påstår att teorins ramverk för att fastslå vilka av de utsatta som har rätt till kompensation inte visar lika hänsyn till alla som är utsatta. Den andra invändningen (förnedringsinvändingen) påstår att grunderna för kompensation är förnedrande och inte visar lika respekt för alla medborgare. Målet med uppsatsen är att analysera Dworkins teori och undersöka om den vederläggs av Andersons invändningar. Den slutsats jag skall försvara är att så inte är fallet. Forskningsfrågan är följande: Påvisar Andersons invändningar att Dworkins teori om jämlika resurser inte visar lika hänsyn och respekt för alla medborgare?

[Truncated abstract] In this thesis, I seek to determine whether luck egalitarianism is a compelling interpretation of egalitarian justice. In answering this question, I challenge existing interpretations and criticisms of luck egalitarianism, and highlight its radical consequences. I propose a revised theory of luck egalitarianism, and conclude that it does represent a compelling interpretation of egalitarian justice. In the first chapter, I trace the evolution of luck egalitarianism, highlighting the variety of theories that have been grouped under this label. In chapter 2, I defend the approach against an influential critique by Elizabeth Anderson, who argues that luck egalitarianism is inherently disrespectful, trapped in the distributive paradigm, and harsh in its approach towards the victims of bad option luck. I argue against these criticisms, pointing out that the harsh treatment problem will rarely arise because few inequalities result entirely from option luck, and that luck egalitarianism is not disrespectful to those it seeks to assist, nor trapped in the distributive paradigm. In chapter 3, I analyse the distinction between option luck and brute luck, which is crucial to luck egalitarianism. I argue that the option-brute distinction is inconsistent with the underlying impulse of luck egalitarianism because it allows morally arbitrary inequalities to go uncorrected and because it is insufficiently sensitive to the impact of background inequalities on individual choice. I propose a revised theory of luck egalitarianism that focuses on the extent to which a person's level of advantage has been genuinely chosen, rejecting the option-brute distinction. In chapter 4, I give a broader justification of this theory, analysing recent critiques by Susan Hurley and Samuel Scheffler, who have both questioned the moral foundations of luck egalitarianism. In chapter 5, I outline a conception of egalitarian advantage to work alongside the revised theory of luck egalitarianism. I support Cohen's claim that egalitarians should adopt a heterogeneous account of advantage, which includes resources, welfare, and midfare. ... In chapter 7, I highlight the counter-intuitive social policy applications of luck egalitarianism, arguing that the universal approach to social provision associated with the social democratic welfare state comes closer to achieving luck-egalitarian objectives than the residual and conditional provision of benefits and services that is associated with the liberal welfare state. I conclude that luck egalitarianism, in the revised form I outline in chapter 3, is a compelling interpretation of egalitarian justice.