The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy Series

Luck permeates our lives, and this raises a number of pressing questions: What is luck? When we attribute luck to people, circumstances, or events, what are we attributing? Do we have any obligations to mitigate the harms done to people who are less fortunate? And to what extent is deserving praise or blame affected by good or bad luck? Although acquiring a true belief by an uneducated guess involves a kind of luck that precludes knowledge, does all luck undermine knowledge? The academic literature has seengrowing, interdisciplinary interest in luck, and this volume brings together and explains the most important areas of this research. It consists of 39 newly commissioned chapters, written by an internationally acclaimed team of philosophers and psychologists, for a readership of students and researchers. Its coverage is divided into six sections:

I: The History of Luck

II: The Nature of Luck

III: Moral Luck

IV: Epistemic Luck

V: The Psychology of Luck

VI: Future Research.

The chapters cover a wide range of topics, from the problem of moral luck, to anti-luck epistemology, to the relationship between luck attributions and cognitive biases, to meta-questions regarding the nature of luck itself, to a range of other theoretical and empirical questions. By bringing this research together, the Handbook serves as both a touchstone for understanding the relevant issues and a first port of call for future research on luck.

Section I: History of Luck

1. Nafsika Athanassoulis: Aristotle on Constitutive, Developmental, and Resultant Moral Luck





2. Sarah Broadie: Aristotle on Luck, Happiness, and Solon’s Dictum





3. René Brouwer: The Stoics on Luck





4. Jeffrey Hause: Thomas Aquinas on Moral Luck





5. Kate Moran: Immanuel Kant on Moral Luck





6. Craig Smith: Adam Smith on Moral Luck and the Invisible Hand





7. Piers Norris Turner: John Stuart Mill on Luck and Distributive Justice





8. Dani Rabinowitz: History of Luck in Epistemology





9. Andrew Latus: Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams on Moral Luck






Section II: The Nature of Luck




10. Duncan Pritchard: Modal Accounts of Luck





11. Wayne Riggs: The Lack of Control Account of Luck





12. Nicholas Rescher: The Probability Account of Luck





13. Rik Peels: The Mixed Account of Luck





14. Nathan Ballantyne & Samuel Kampa: Luck and Significance





15. Fernando Broncano-Berrocal: Luck as Risk





16. Rachel Mckinnon: Luck and Norms






Section III: Moral Luck




17. Daniel Statman: The Definition of ‘Luck’ and the Problem of Moral Luck





18. Carolina Sartorio: Kinds of Moral Luck





19. Michael J. Zimmerman: Denying Moral Luck





20. Robert J. Hartman: Accepting Moral Luck





21. Laura W. Ekstrom: Luck and Libertarianism





22. Mirja Pérez de Calleja: Luck and Compatibilism






Section IV: Epistemic Luck




23. Ian M. Church: The Gettier Problem





24. Benjamin Jarvis: The Problem of Environmental Luck





25. Tim Black: Anti-Luck Epistemology





26. Stephen Hetherington: The Luck/Knowledge Incompatibility Thesis





27. John Greco: Luck and Skepticism





28. J. Adam Carter: Epistemic Luck and the Extended Mind






Section V: The Psychology of Luck




29. Steven D. Hales & Jennifer Adrienne Johnson: Cognitive Biases and Dispositions in Luck Attributions





30. Karl Halvor Teigen: Luck and Risk





31. Sabine Roeser: Emotional Responses to Luck, Risk and Uncertainty





32. Anastasia Ejova: The Illusion of Control





33. Matthew D. Smith & Piers Worth: Positive Psychology and Luck Experiences




Section VI: Future Research




34. J. D. Trout: Luck in Science





35. Joe Milburn & Edouard Machery: The Philosophy of Luck and Experimental Philosophy





36. Ori J. Herstein: Legal Luck





37. Carolyn McLeod & Jody Tomchishen: Feminist Approaches to Moral Luck

Ian M. Church is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hillsdale College. He is the co-author (with Peter Samuelson) of Intellectual Humility: An Introduction to the Philosophy & Science (2017).

Robert J. Hartman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Lund-Gothenburg Responsibility Project at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is the author of In Defense of Moral Luck: Why Luck Often Affects Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness (2017).