Philosophy

Events

Reason and Evaluative Luck by Eddie Cushman (Lewis & Clark College)

Date: October 15 2010, 3:30pm Location: John R. Howard Hall 202

 

In his classic paper “Moral Luck,” Nagel argues that a dilemma is embedded in our common moral thought. On the one hand, there appears to be a deep form of incoherence in the thought that moral evaluations are applicable to an individual as a result of good or bad luck—that is, by virtue of factors that lie outside her control. On the other hand, if we deny that moral evaluations can apply to an individual by virtue of factors that lie outside of her control, then morality appears to evaporate. We are never suitable objects of moral evaluation.

In this talk, I explore how these issues generalize to the epistemic domain. On the one hand, there seems to be some form of incoherence in the idea that evaluations of reasonability in belief are open to luck, though this is arguably the defining claim of a thoroughgoing externalism in epistemology. On the other hand, our concept of reasonable belief may be immune to luck only under a version of access internalism so strict as to have external world skepticism as a consequence. Thus, there is a genuine threat that Nagel’s dilemma is robust in the epistemic domain.

I close by offering an explanation for these striking affinities. The problems of moral and epistemic luck are particular manifestations of more fundamental problem—the problem of evaluative luck. Though our evaluative concepts are heterogeneous and many of them remain unproblematically applicable on the basis of good or bad fortune, our concept of reasonability—applicable to both choice and belief—remains immune to luck.