ABSTRACT

Steven Hales and Jennifer Johnson—building off their (2014) work as well as Hales (2015, 2016)—have recently conducted two studies in Philosophical Psychology (2018) that show that there is a relationship between optimism and folk assessments of luck. Hales and Johnson use these results to argue that there is no such thing as luck. Instead, they claim that the concept is highly subjective and a cognitive illusion and that what we are in need of is an error theory. After reviewing Hales’ and Johnson’s position, I levy four objections against their view. First, they ignore the fact that luck involves a chanciness condition. Second, their standards for what it means to be a useful philosophical theory are too high. Third, their view ignores the fact that there are various accounts of value in the literature and assumes a kind of relativism that few people would be willing to accept. Lastly, their error theory is not supported by the empirical evidence. Because of these problems, Hales and Johnson’s argument is not a serious threat to extant accounts of luck.

摘要

史蒂文·黑尔斯 (Steven Hales) 和詹妮弗·约翰逊 (Jennifer Johnson) 基于他们 (2014) 和 Hales (2015, 2016) 的工作，最近在哲学心理学 (2018) 中进行了两项研究，表明乐观主义与民间对运气的评估之间存在关联。Hales 和 Johnson 使用这些结果来论证没有运气这样的东西。相反，他们声称这个概念是高度主观的，是一种认知幻觉，我们需要的是一种错误理论。在审查了 Hales 和 Johnson 的立场后，我对他们的观点提出了四点反对意见。首先，他们忽略了运气涉及机会条件的事实。其次，他们对于什么是有用的哲学理论的标准太高了。第三，他们的观点忽略了文献中存在各种价值描述的事实，并假设了一种很少有人愿意接受的相对主义。最后，他们的错误理论没有得到经验证据的支持。由于这些问题，Hales 和 Johnson 的论点对现存的运气说法并不构成严重威胁。