Nicholas Rescher

What would motivate a reasonable person to embark on a risky course? Basically considerations of two sorts, For one thing, the chance of gain may serve as inducement to bear the chance of loss inherent in the risk. Alternatively, accepting a given risk may provide a means of averting an even greater risk—one risk may simply prove to be “the lesser evil.” In all such cases, however, rational deliberation requires some mechanism for comparing the relative magnitudes of the risks at issue. It is always a matter of weighing the options: comparing, say, the dangers of malfunction of a nuclear reactor with the impact of mining mishaps or the accidents involved in constructing and operating power sources driven by water or by wind. All evaluations of risk are comparative: a matter of seeing whether—and by how much—this alternative is preferable to that one.

Luck has a double aspect (1) as facilitating an outcome’s realization, and (2) as consequent on the outcome realized. Thus as to (1), the burglar was lucky that the watchman was asleep thus greatly easing his work. And as to (2) he was lucky that the house he targeted unbeknownst to him happened to contain a large collection of gold coins. Thus there can be luck in production or luck in product. And the two are connected. When you are lucky in obtaining what you get, then it is lucky for you that you got it.

The common expression speaks not improperly of “dumb luck,” for what happens to people “by luck” cannot be foreseen by them. One may be fortunate through the realization of a securely predictable boon, but (by hypothesis) it is not going to be a fruit of mere luck. The role of chance in the world has been deliberated philosophers since antiquity. Thus Aristotle considered whether chance (tuchê) and accident (to automaton) are fortuitous or causally explainable—whether they have standard, causal explanations (as he understands this) or themselves constitute a causality of sorts (Physics, II, iv; 195b30ff). He concluded (1) that it is reasonable to think that whatever is said to happen by chance actually has a causal explanation but that owing to the complexity of world processuality and the role of chaos and chance the causality of chance it may well be unexplainable to the human intellect, (196b6-7), because that causality, though real, simply being unintelligible. Were this so, chance and luck would ultimately be artifacts of ignorance—of the inevitable limitations of finite intellects. This position is not far from what still deserves to be seen as plausible.

Luck—be it good or bad—enters when an uncertain, unforeseen outcome is beneficial (or detrimental) to someone. Its assessment is a matter of the extent to which unforeseeable developments impinge on people’s interests. The calculus of luck fuses the calculus of probability with value theory to provide a means for assessing the benefit (or detriment) that chancy evaluations provide for people. Any adequate account of the matter must determine not only whether and how it is that an agent is lucky or unlucky but must also enable us to tell to what extent this is so. It must, in sum, be quantitative. And the Calculus of Luck is the project of measuring extent to which the outcome of a chance eventuation represents good (or bad) luck for the individuals involved.

Risk is the prospect of an unfavorable development in chancy circumstances and exists whenever there the possibility that things might not go well. Any sort of loss-producing prospect—be its concern with money, life, health, time, or other resources—represents a risk. However to compare risks we again need to take recourse to some common measure of “utility” in order to realize cross-typological comparability. The magnitude of the risk depends on the severity or size of the negativity at issue. The threat of the risk depends on the likelihood of its realization.

Luck divides the results of uncertain-outcome situations for a given individual into two main groups, the favorable and the unfavorable, the lucky (luck-positive) and the unlucky (luck negative). But regrettably, the proper answer to the question: What can I do to improve my luck within a given stochastic situation is: Nothing. Counting on luck is here problematic because there just is no way to affect outcomes where chance is the driver’s seat. Once one is embarked in a specific chancy outcome situation the, die is cast. One simply cannot rely on the cooperation of luck. To change the bearing of luck one must change the situation. When chance is in the driver’s seat the steering wheel is out of one’s reach. But before this point is reached there are opportunities. In particular, improving one’s skill is a decidedly effective way of diminishing risk. For when you improve your skill—and thus the win-probability in a particular mode of contest—this correspondingly diminishes your reliance on luck.

But how can one discuss matters of religion without substantive commitments? How can one proceed neutrally committed here and avoid any doctrinal undertakings? The answer lies in yet another virtue that should characterize the philosophy of religion: doctrinal neutrality in regard to religious matters. Philosophy of religion, that is to say, should focus on the fundamentals of religious belief rather than its doctrinal specifics. Consideration does not require affirmation; understanding does not enjoin acceptance. And so here as elsewhere clarification sidelines unrealistic expectations.

That first issue of evaluating the importance of a scientific finding turns principally on two factors: informativeness and fruitfulness. Informativeness hinges on the extent of its alteration of the preexisting state of knowledge. Does it add but little to what is already known, or does it add a great deal? Or does it subtract by undermining ideas in which one once had confidence? Does it perhaps even have cataclysmic implications and require us to “go back to the old drawing board” and rethink the entire matter? Fruitfulness, by contrast, is a matter of what can be done with the discovery at issue. Does it open new avenues of progress leading to further insights and findings?

In explaining the actions of an agent, we have to distinguish between agent-internal and agent-external impulsions. The latter are factors such as constraint, threats, blackmail, and post-hypnotic suggestion—impulsions impressed upon the agent from without through external circumstances or the agency of others. The former are such factors as the agent’s wishes, affections, inclinations, tastes, and goals—factors that serve to form the agent as the individual he is. They are not “external” impositions upon him.