Against Epistemic Accounts of Luck

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 evidenceor knowledgeabout whether the event will occur. I argue that both versions of the epistemic account fail. In §1, I give two types of counterexamples to the evidence-based approach. In §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 §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 in epistemic terms.