E.J. Coffman 
Luck: Its Nature and Significance for Human Knowledge and Agency 

As thinkers in the market for knowledge and agents aspiring to morally responsible action, we are inevitably subject to luck. This book presents a comprehensive new theory of luck in light of a critical appraisal of the literature’s leading accounts, then brings this new theory to bear on issues in the theory of knowledge and philosophy of action.

Table of Content

Contents 1 Lucky Events: The Current Debate and a New Proposal 1.1 Three Leading Theories of Luck 1.2 Counterexamples to the Leading Theories of Luck 1.3 Lucky Events and Strokes of Luck 1.4 The Strokes Account: Further Support and Defense 2 What is a Stroke of Luck?: Enriching the Strokes Account 2.1 Initial Statement of the Analysis and Some Important Implications 2.2 The Analysis: Revisions and Defense 2.3 Putting it All Together: the Enriched Strokes Account of Lucky Events 2.4 How the Enriched Strokes Account Handles the Counterexamples to the Literature’s Leading Theories of Luck 3 Knowledge and Luck I: Gettiered Belief and the Ease of Mistake Approach 3.1 An Initial Catalog of Kinds of Epistemic Luck 3.2 Pritchard on Evidence Luck and Belief Luck 3.3 The Scope of Gettiered Belief 3.4 The Ease of Mistake Approach to Gettiered Belief: Explanation and Support 3.5 Counterexamples to the Ease of Mistake Approach 4 Knowledge and Luck II: Three More Approaches to Gettiered Belief 4.1 From Ease of Mistake to Lack of Credit 4.2 Creditability as Explanatory Salience 4.3 Creditability as Power Manifestation 4.4 Two Riskier Approaches to Gettiered Belief 4.5 The Risk of Misleading Dispositions Approach to Gettiered Belief 4.6 The Risk of Misleading Justification Approach to Gettiered Belief 4.6.1 Objection 1: Kelp’s Demonic Clock 4.6.2 Objection 2: Bogardus’s Atomic Clock 5 Freedom, Responsibility, and Luck I: The Possibility of Moral Responsibility and Literal Arguments for the Proximal Determination Requirement 5.1 Defending the Possibility of Morally Responsible Action 5.2 Four Different Kinds of Luck-Involving Arguments for the Proximal Determination Requirement 5.3 Literal Versions of the Arguments for the Proximal Determination Requirement 5.3.1 An Intriguing Attempted Counterexample to (IA-2) 5.3.2 Against the ‘at least partly a matter of luck’ Readings of (DA-2) and (IA-2) 5.3.3 Against (DA/IA-1) 6 Freedom, Responsibility, and Luck II: Stipulative Arguments for the Proximal Determination Requirement and Three Arguments against It 6.1 Stipulative Versions of the Direct Argument for the Proximal Determination Requirement 6.2 Stipulative Versions of the Indirect Argument for the Proximal Determination Requirement 6.2.1 Five Arguments for (MI-2) 6.3 Three Arguments against the Proximal Determination Requirement 6.3.1 Objections to the Melean Argument 6.3.2 Objections to Fischer’s Argument 6.3.3 Defending the Possibility Argument Coda

About the author

E.J. Coffman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, USA. He works primarily in epistemology and philosophy of action. He has recently published papers in these areas in Philosophical Issues, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophers’ Imprint, Philosophical Studies, Synthese, Philosophical Explorations, and Journal of Philosophical Research.