Luck: Its Nature and Significance for Human Knowledge and Agency


Book Description

As thinkers in the market for knowledge and agents aspiring to morally responsible action, we are inevitably subject to luck. This book presents a comprehensive new theory of luck in light of a critical appraisal of the literature's leading accounts, then brings this new theory to bear on issues in the theory of knowledge and philosophy of action.




Modern Luck


Book Description

Beliefs, superstitions and tales about luck are present across all human cultures, according to anthropologists. We are perennially fascinated by luck and by its association with happiness and danger, uncertainty and aspiration. Yet it remains an elusive, ungraspable idea, one that slips and slides over time: all cultures reimagine what luck is and how to tame it at different stages in their history, and the modernity of the ‘long twentieth century’ is no exception to the rule. Apparently overshadowed by more conceptually tight, scientific and characteristically modern notions such as chance, contingency, probability or randomness, luck nevertheless persists in all its messiness and vitality, used in our everyday language and the subject of studies by everyone from philosophers to psychologists, economists to self-help gurus. Modern Luck sets out to explore the enigma of luck’s presence in modernity, examining the hybrid forms it has taken on in the modern imagination, and in particular in the field of modern stories. Indeed, it argues that modern luck is constituted through narrative, through modern luck stories. Analysing a rich and unusually eclectic range of narrative taken from literature, film, music, television and theatre – from Dostoevsky to Philip K. Dick, from Pinocchio to Cimino, from Curtiz to Kieślowski – it lays out first the usages and meanings of the language of luck, and then the key figures, patterns and motifs that govern the stories told about it, from the late nineteenth century to the present day.




In Defense of Moral Luck


Book Description

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introducing the Problem of Moral Luck -- 2 The Concept of Moral Luck -- 3 Against the Skeptical Denial of Moral Luck -- 4 Against the Non-skeptical Denial of Moral Luck -- 5 In Defense of Moral Luck -- 6 Error Theory for the Luck-Free Intuition -- Index




Virtue-Theoretic Epistemology


Book Description

This volume brings together new essays on virtue epistemology, one of the leading approaches in the theory of knowledge.




Explaining Knowledge


Book Description

The Gettier Problem has shaped most of the fundamental debates in epistemology for more than fifty years. Before Edmund Gettier published his famous 1963 paper, it was generally presumed that knowledge was equivalent to true belief supported by adequate evidence. Gettier presented a powerful challenge to that presumption. This led to the development and refinement of many prominent epistemological theories, for example, defeasibility theories, causal theories, conclusive-reasons theories, tracking theories, epistemic virtue theories, and knowledge-first theories. The debate about the appropriate use of intuition to provide evidence in all areas of philosophy began as a debate about the epistemic status of the 'Gettier intuition'. The differing accounts of epistemic luck are all rooted in responses to the Gettier Problem. The discussions about the role of false beliefs in the production of knowledge are directly traceable to Gettier's paper, as are the debates between fallibilists and infallibilists. Indeed, it is fair to say that providing a satisfactory response to the Gettier Problem has become a litmus test of any adequate account of knowledge even those accounts that hold that the Gettier Problem rests on mistakes of various sorts. This volume presents a collection of essays by twenty-six experts, including some of the most influential philosophers of our time, on the various issues that arise from Gettier's challenge to the analysis of knowledge. Explaining Knowledge sets the agenda for future work on the central problem of epistemology.




Stephen Hetherington on Epistemology


Book Description

Philosophy has long embraced epistemology as one of its central elements. What is knowledge? How do we gain it? Can we gain it? Or do we always deceive ourselves when thinking that we have knowledge? Are we too deeply fallible ever to know something? For centuries, these questions have helped to define and motivate epistemological research. This volume engages strikingly with them, offering some unusual answers. Stephen Hetherington's prominent career within epistemology has been a series of bold, varied and provocative arguments and ideas. Bringing together some elements of his unique body of writing for the first time, this collection features previously published as well as new material displaying and extending some of his highly original approaches to key issues including knowledge, justification, fallibility, scepticism and the Gettier Problem. Advancing our understanding of the systemic nature of Hetherington's thinking, Stephen Hetherington on Epistemology presents his distinctive perspective on some of philosophy's central questions about knowledge – an inviting blend of forensic detail and 'big picture' proposals.




Contemporary Debates in Epistemology


Book Description

The perfect introduction to contemporary epistemology, completely overhauled for its third edition In Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, pairs of specially commissioned essays defend opposing views on some of today’s most compelling epistemological issues and problems. Offering a unique blend of accessibility and originality, this timely volume brings together fresh debates on hotly contested issues to provide readers with the opportunity to engage in comparative analysis of constantly changing and developing epistemological concepts. Now in its third edition, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology features up-to-date coverage of the latest developments in the field. Entirely new essays examine questions of epistemic normativity and knowledge, the relationship between belief and credence, the possibility of internalist epistemology, epistemic instrumentalism, norms of assertion, the use of thought experiments in epistemology, and more. Presents a rigorous yet accessible introduction to the major topics in contemporary epistemology Contains head-to-head chapters offering forceful advocacy of opposing philosophical stances Focuses on core areas of epistemology Uses a lively debate format that sharply defines the issues and encourages further discussion All-new chapters provide fully updated coverage of new and emerging topics in epistemology Part of the Wiley-Blackwell Contemporary Debates in Philosophy series, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Third Edition, remains an essential resource for advanced undergraduate philosophy majors, graduate students in philosophy, and epistemologists who want to keep current with contemporary epistemological debates.




Problems of Religious Luck


Book Description

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong tendency among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize.




The Complex Tapestry of Free Will


Book Description

Robert Kane is one of the most prominent contributors to debates on free will over the last 50 years. Here he discusses the evolution of his views since his 1996 volume The Significance of Free Will, and provides responses to some of the latest critical literature on them. He explains significant changes to his views on free will and related notions of moral responsibility, agency, and other related topics. He connects his ideas on free will to ethical thought, and to key ideas in the philosophy of religion. The volume is accessible to those not already familiar with the free will literature, while also developing novel and complex ideas on difficult subjects.




Reasons, Justification, and Defeat


Book Description

Traditionally, the notion of defeat has been central to epistemology, practical reasoning, and ethics. Within epistemology, it is standardly assumed that a subject who knows that p, or justifiably believes that p, can lose this knowledge or justified belief by acquiring a so-called 'defeater', whether that is evidence that not-p, evidence that the process that produced her belief is unreliable, or evidence that she has likely misevaluated her own evidence. Within ethics and practical reasoning, it is widely accepted that a subject may initially have a reason to do something although this reason is later defeated by her acquisition of further information. However, the traditional conception of defeat has recently come under attack. Some have argued that the notion of defeat is problematically motivated; others that defeat is hard to accommodate within externalist or naturalistic accounts of knowledge or justification; and still others that the intuitions that support defeat can be explained in other ways. This volume presents new work re-examining the very notion of defeat, and its place in epistemology and in normativity theory at large.