Luck, Control, and Why They Don't Matter

Abstract

The concepts of luck and control are thought to play important roles in philosophical projects in epistemology, ethics, and theory of action. Epistemologists are concerned with assessing how luck undermines knowledge and whether a theory of knowledge can be constructed which precludes this undermining. Ethicists are concerned with determining the extent to which people's constitutions and actions are the product of luck due to how luck and lack of control seem to undermine desert, and some philosophers have proposed anti-luck conditions on achievement and creditworthiness. Action theorists are interested in how luck permeates agents' actions and characters and what effect this may have on free will and moral responsibility, and some philosophers have appealed to control to explain cases of deviant causation in intentional action.

With the increased reliance upon the concept of luck in these philosophical projects has come many different accounts of luck, although surprisingly few accounts of control. Some of the main purposes of this thesis are to produce accounts of luck and control, determine their normative significance, and apply this to the debates that involve them. I argue that luck and control do not do any important philosophical work with respect to the phenomena mentioned in the previous paragraph.

The thesis is structured as follows. Chapters II through IV are concerned with presenting and defending accounts of luck and control. Chapters V through VIII are concerned with evaluating whether luck and control are relevant with respect to various philosophical phenomena that they have been taken to impact. I argue that luck and control should be understood probabilistically and that the extent to which an event is lucky for an agent, or out of their control, can be largely determined by factors which have no actual influence on the event's occurrence. For this reason, the presence of luck or absence of control have no necessary connection to the extent to which agents act freely, morally responsibly, or intentionally. For the same reason, the presence of luck or the absence of control have no necessary connection to agents' knowledge, creditworthiness, or achievements. Show more