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Succeeding competently: towards an anti-luck condition for achievement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Hasko von Kriegstein Open the ORCID record for Hasko von Kriegstein [Opens in a new window]
Hasko von Kriegstein*
Affiliation:
Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
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Abstract

Achievements are among the things that make a life good. Assessing the plausibility of this intuitive claim requires an account of the nature of achievements. One necessary condition for achievement appears to be that the achieving agent acted competently, i.e. was not just lucky. I begin by critically assessing existing accounts of anti-luck conditions for achievements in both the ethics and epistemology literature. My own proposal is that a goal is reached competently (and thus an achievement), only if the actions of the would-be-achiever make success likely, and that this is the reason why she acts that way.

Keywords

Achievementcompetenceluckvalue of achievementvalue theorywell-being
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , May 2019 , pp. 394 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2018

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