Correction to: Against epistemic accounts of luck

Abstract

Epistemic accounts of luck define luck’s chanciness condition relative to a subject’s epistemic position. This could be put in terms of a subject’s evidence or knowledge about whether the event will occur. I argue that both versions of the epistemic account fail. In section 1, I give two types of counterexamples to the evidence-based approach. In section 2, I argue—contrary to the knowledge-based view—that an event can be a matter of good or bad luck for a subject even if she knows that it will occur. In section 3, I argue that epistemic accounts cannot explain some instances of constitutive luck. Because of these problems, luck’s chanciness condition cannot be adequately defined epistemically. Luck is typically defined in terms of two necessary and jointly significant conditions: significance and chance. One way of capturing the sense in which a lucky event is chancy is via an epistemic condition. More precisely, epistemic accounts of luck define luck’s chanciness condition relative to a subject’s epistemic position. This could be put in terms of a subject’s evidence (for example, Stoutenburg 2015, 2019, 2020) or knowledge (for example, Steglich-Petersen 2010, 2020) about whether the event will occur.