The Philosophy of Luck

This is the first volume of its kind to provide a curated collection of cutting–edge scholarship on the philosophy of luck. Including work from the leading philosophers writing on luck today, it features discussions of luck from a range of perspectives, including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, and cognitive science. Although luck has long been thought to play a significant role in many areas of philosophy, luck itself and how it figures in certain core philosophical problems, such as free will, has often been overlooked. This anthology aims to provide a synthesis of existing scholarship on luck that will serve to illuminate, reposition, or even solve existing philosophical problems.

The Philosophy of Luck will be an essential resource for scholars of contemporary philosophy and will shed new light on what luck is and how it works.

Notes on Contributors

Introductory Note
DUNCAN PRITCHARD AND LEE JOHN WHITTINGTON

1  Luck as Risk and the Lack of Control Account of Luck
FERNANDO BRONCANO–BERROCAL

2  Strokes of Luck
E. J. COFFMAN

3. Luck Attributions and Cognitive Bias
STEVEN D. HALES AND JENNIFER ADRIENNE JOHNSON

4  Frankfurt in Fake Barn Country
NEIL LEVY

5  Luck and Free Will
ALFRED R. MELE

6  You Make Your Own Luck
RACHEL MCKINNON

7  Subject–Involving Luck
JOE MILBURN

8  The Modal Account of Luck
DUNCAN PRITCHARD

9  The Machinations of Luck
NICHOLAS RESCHER

10 Luck, Knowledge, and Mere Coincidence
WAYNE D. RIGGS

11 The Unbearable Uncertainty Paradox
SABINE ROESER

12 Getting Moral Luck Right
LEE JOHN WHITTINGTON

Index 

Duncan Pritchard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He works mainly in epistemology and he has written several books in this field, including Epistemological Disjunctivism (2012), The Nature and Value of Knowledge (2010), and Epistemic Luck (2005).

Lee John Whittington is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His research is focused on the metaphysics of luck and its relation to moral and epistemic luck.