Equality and information

Traditional outcome-orientated egalitarian principles require access to information about the size of individual holdings. Recent egalitarian political theory has sought to accommodate considerations of responsibility. Such a move may seem problematic, in that a new informational burden is thereby introduced, with no apparent decrease in the existing burden. This article uses a simple model with simulated data to examine the extent to which outcome egalitarianism and responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism (‘luck egalitarianism’) can be accurately applied where information is incomplete or erroneous. It is found that, while outcome egalitarianism tends to be more accurately applied, its advantage is not overwhelming, and in many prima facie plausible circumstances luck egalitarianism would be more accurately applied. This suggests that luck egalitarianism cannot be rejected as utopian. Furthermore, while some argue that, in practice, luck egalitarianism is best realized indirectly, by securing equality of outcome, our evidence suggests that a luck egalitarian rule of regulation offers a far more accurate implementation of the luck egalitarian ideal than does an outcome egalitarian rule of regulation

Epistemic Luck

Epistemic luck is a generic notion used to describe any of a number of ways in which it can be accidental, coincidental, or fortuitous that a person has a true belief. For example, one can form a true belief as a result of a lucky guess, as when one believes through guesswork that “C” is the right answer to a multiple-choice question and one’s belief just happens to be correct. One can form a true belief via wishful thinking; for example, an optimist’s belief that it will not rain may luckily turn out to be correct, despite forecasts for heavy rain all day. One can reason from false premises to a belief that coincidentally happens to be true. One can accidentally arrive at a true belief through invalid or fallacious reasoning. And one can fortuitously arrive at a true belief from testimony that was intended to mislead but unwittingly reported the truth. In all of these cases, it is just a matter of luck that the person has a true belief. Until the twenty-first century, there was nearly universal agreement among epistemologists that epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge. Call this view “the incompatibility thesis.” In light of the incompatibility thesis, epistemic luck presents epistemologists with three distinct but related challenges. The first is that of providing an accurate analysis of knowledge (in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for “S knows that p,” where ‘S’ represents the knower and ‘p’ represents the proposition known). An adequate analysis of knowledge must succeed in specifying conditions that rule out all instances of knowledge-destroying epistemic luck. The second challenge is to resolve the skeptical paradox that the ubiquity of epistemic luck generates: As will become clear in section 2c, epistemic luck is an all-pervasive phenomenon. Coupling this fact with the incompatibility thesis entails that we have no propositional knowledge. The non-skeptical epistemologist must somehow reconcile the strong intuition that epistemic luck is not compatible with knowledge with the equally evident observation that it must be. The third challenge concerns the special skeptical threat that epistemic luck seems to pose for more reflective forms of knowledge, such as knowing that one knows. Each of these challenges will be explored in the present article

Effects of Priming the Concept of Luck on Task Persistence

Does feeling lucky influence the way we perform? Do we try harder and persist at tasks if we think luck is involved, or are we more prone to give up? To help answer these questions, this research examines the effect of priming the concept of luck on persistence. In particular, some participants completed a word descramble task designed to prime luck; others completed a neutral word descramble task. All participants then completed a set of reasoning puzzles, one of which they were told was ‘difficult’ but in reality was unsolvable. Persistence was measured by (a) the amount of time participants invest trying to solve the reasoning puzzles, and (b) the number of novel attempts participants make to solve the unsolvable puzzle. Contrary to expectations, there were no significant differences between the luck prime and neutral prime conditions on either persistence measure. However, a significant interaction emerged between the type of prime (luck vs. neutral) and participant beliefs about luck on persistence, such that those who were primed with the concept of luck and reported strong beliefs in luck persisted longer compared to those who did not report a strong belief in luck. On the other hand, participants who were not primed with the concept of luck but reported strong beliefs in luck were less persistent compared to those who did not hold strong beliefs in luck. These results provide insight into the pervasiveness of the concept of luck in modern culture and how subtle cues in the environment may affect subsequent performance behaviors such as persistence

Understanding, defining and measuring the trait of superstition.

Superstitious beliefs influence a wide range of decisions and activities in the everyday life. Yet, superstition has received little attention in the consumer behaviour literature, which is surprising since superstitious behaviours are found in numerous related domains, such as sports (Schippers & Lange, 2006), gambling or travelling. In the psychological and sociological literature, there is no consensus regarding the definition and measure of superstition (Mowen & Carlson, 2003). For some authors, superstition includes all types of paranormal beliefs (i.e. religion, astrology…) which we think are not relevant for superstition construct. Other authors have a very narrow definition of superstition restricting it to popular beliefs such as (black cats bring bad luck; if you break a mirror, you will have bad luck; the number 13 is unlucky”). The aim of this research is threefold: (1) to better define the superstition construct (2) to develop a scale that measures superstition and (3) to discuss the interest of superstition for marketing. An exploratory qualitative study allowed us to define superstition as “beliefs and/or practices that have no religious nor scientific foundations and which lead people to think that certain facts (external events or one’s own actions), or objects can bring good or bad luck, or be signs announcing positive or negative consequences”. Three quantitative data collections helped us develop a scale that contains 27 items and 5 dimensions (good fortune popular beliefs a = 0,84 ; misfortune popular beliefs a = 0,85 ; belief in destiny a = 0,83 ; magical thinking a = 0,86 ; defensive pessimism a = 0,67). Finally, the article concludes on future research and how the superstition construct could help explain irrational decision making.Consumer behavior; Superstition; marketing; échelle de mesure;

The Curse of Fortune; Responding to Luck Objections in an Uncooperative World

The consensus scientific view holds that our world is indeterministic at the micro level, but practically deterministic at all other levels. In an indeterministic world, live alternative possibilities at the moment of decision render it impossible for agents to guarantee what they will choose; regardless of their personality and deliberative processes. Critics of indeterminist free will argue that this lack of a necessary connection between mental state and choice makes the ultimate decision fundamentally a matter of luck. As such, indeterminism opens free will up to potential problems of present luck. Additionally, large-scale determinism opens up free will to a separate “luck pincer”. Our initial set of beliefs, desires and deliberative patterns (endowment) are settled by luck. Since our initial endowment forms our initial character, only (lucky) factors outside ourselves can modify it. Our decisions and characters are practically determined by either luck in our initial endowment or in the outside circumstances that modify it. In order to defuse these objections, free will defenders must develop an answer to both the problem of present luck and the determinist “luck pincer” presented by Neil Levy. I will argue that the problem of present luck is resolvable by applying a modified version of Frankfurt cases to the actual sequence of decisions. In the majority of these cases, I argue indeterminism plays no significant freedom-endangering role. Additionally, I will argue that the luck pincer is not lethal to free will since our endowments constitute our characters, desires and beliefs. I will argue that decisions that decisions originating from our endowments constitute a direct outpouring of our identities, and such decisions are free. The aim of my paper is to present responses to contemporary luck objections relevant to all views, particularly those aiming to defend free will in the world agents most likely inhabit

A Look into Moral Luck

The term “moral luck” is used to describe any instance of where a moral agent is appropriately praised or blamed for an event or its outcomes despite having no control over the preceding causes of either the event or its consequences. The possibility of moral luck would be rejected by thinkers such as Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, to be a good person all that is required is that one have a “good will.” Per the Kantian moral framework, “The good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes or because of its adequacy to achieve some proposed end; it is good only because of its willing, i.e., it is good of itself” (Kant 1785, pg. 11). Simply put, regardless of the consequence of any action, if a moral agent acts in a way that comes from a good intention, they will be morally vindicated. There is no such thing as moral luck because one’s blameworthiness or praiseworthiness will always be in one’s control. Influential political philosopher and author of the 1979 publication titled “Moral Luck,” Thomas Nagel pushes back against the idea that moral luck cannot exist. His reason for believing this comes from our complicated reactions to what is known as the “control principle,” which posits that moral agents cannot be held accountable for events whose antecedent factors are outside of their control. Nagel believes that when we apply the control principle to our understanding of how ethics works on a human level, we will always see a paradox arise. Per Nagel it seems to be the case that everything arises from factors, both “antecedent and posterior,” human beings can just simply never have control over. This lack of control allows us to make our moral reactions to people’s actions only mere “aesthetic” claims, not deeper claims of moral blameworthiness or praise. Philosopher and author of Justice, Luck, and Knowledge Susan Hurley delves deeper into the question of moral luck by connecting to debates on determinism. She identifies the role responsibility must play in identifying and explaining moral luck and explains why Nagel’s defense of moral luck is accurate, but not entirely so, due to what she calls conceptions of thick luck and thin luck. The topic of moral luck forces us to ask several questions, with the most pertinent being whether the actions we perform that turn out to be morally permissible or morally wrong are truly in our control. In this paper I aim to argue against skepticism about moral luck by putting together the conversation on moral luck from the beginning, starting with Thomas Nagel and finishing with Susan Hurley. I will show how Hurley’s account of moral luck aims to make significant improvements to how Nagel originally presents the topic

One Desire Too Many

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that their argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness

In Defense of the Control Principle

The problem of moral luck arises out of a tension between our intuitions and our everyday practices. Many of us share the intuition that morality is immune to luck. However, there are many cases in which we seem to rightly blame one person more than another even though the only relevant difference between the two is due to factors beyond their control. Most philosophers who have written about moral luck fall into one of two categories: those who affirm moral luck and those who affirm the control principle. Those who affirm the existence of moral luck generally believe that an agent can deserve moral praise or blame for things which depend in large part on factors beyond her control. Their opposition, those who affirm the control principle, generally believe that agents are only morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for what is under their control. Many of the articles written on moral luck aim to demonstrate the incoherence of one of the two views. The aim of this paper is to defend the control principle against some of the strongest attacks levied against it. It is my hope that by defending the control principle against the strongest opposition it will become clear that despite appearances, there is no such thing as moral luck

Staying the hand of fortune : a pluralist approach to the regulatory strategies of luck egalitarian distributive justice

How can we pursue egalitarian distributive justice? Starting from the assumption that an egalitarian distribution of advantage is one in which no one is worse off than anyone else as a matter of luck, this thesis examines how such a distribution might be brought about. It begins with an investigation of how the luck egalitarian ideal should be interpreted, advancing a critique of the ‘attributivist’ approach to conceptualizing luck developed by Andrew Mason and a (limited) defence of the ‘metaphysical’ approach favoured by G. A. Cohen and others. It then turns to the question of what can be done about the inegalitarian influence of luck on people’s levels of advantage, proposing a pluralist approach to the regulatory strategies of luck egalitarian distributive justice. It argues that, in addition to ‘redistributive compensation’, strategies of ‘levelling’ and ‘direct structural regulation’ should be included in the luck egalitarian armoury. The thesis then applies these arguments to a case study of contemporary internships in the UK. While internships have become a crucial route into employment within many professional sectors, they have yet to receive any sustained critical attention from egalitarian political philosophers. The thesis demonstrates how the distribution of internships contributes to distributive injustice and then examines the various regulatory actions luck egalitarians might endorse in response to that injustice. The ways in which contemporary injustice is produced are many and varied: the pluralist approach to luck egalitarian regulatory strategies provides a useful and clear framework within which to identify and evaluate the many and varied ways in which we might respond

Modern Luck: Narratives of fortune in the long twentieth century

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