Luck and Significance

Abstract

The condition leaves open several questions about how events are significant. For an event to be significant for someone, must she consciously take an interest in it? Must she know the event’s likelihood? Does she need to think of the event as being good or bad for her? Recent debates over significance take up these questions. Luck theorists have bracketed the correctness of Significance-generic in order to examine the kind of significance operative in that condition (see Rescher 1997: chapter 1; Prichard 2005: chapter 5; Coffman 2007; Ballantyne 2012; and Whittington 2016). In this chapter, we describe and evaluate four potential specifications of Significancegeneric. We then consider the possibility that debates over significance are fundamentally misguided—a position defended by Duncan Pritchard (2014). In his early work on luck, Pritchard defended a significance condition for luck (2005: 132–3). More recently, he has changed his tune, insisting that “the very idea of adding a significance condition to the modal account of luck is wrongheaded” (2014: 604). If Pritchard is correct, Significance-generic is false and debates over the best account of significance are for naught. We examine Pritchard’s challenge and ask whether it can be met.