Turri John, Buckwalter Wesley, Blouw Peter
Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada,
Psychon Bull Rev. 2015 Apr;22(2):378-90. doi: 10.3758/s13423-014-0683-5.
Nearly all success is due to some mix of ability and luck. But some successes we attribute to the agent's ability, whereas others we attribute to luck. To better understand the criteria distinguishing credit from luck, we conducted a series of four studies on knowledge attributions. Knowledge is an achievement that involves reaching the truth. But many factors affecting the truth are beyond our control, and reaching the truth is often partly due to luck. Which sorts of luck are compatible with knowledge? We found that knowledge attributions are highly sensitive to lucky events that change the explanation for why a belief is true. By contrast, knowledge attributions are surprisingly insensitive to lucky events that threaten, but ultimately fail to change the explanation for why a belief is true. These results shed light on our concept of knowledge, help explain apparent inconsistencies in prior work on knowledge attributions, and constitute progress toward a general understanding of the relation between success and luck.
几乎所有的成功都归因于能力和运气的某种结合。但有些成功我们归因于行动者的能力，而另一些我们归因于运气。为了更好地理解区分功劳与运气的标准，我们进行了一系列四项关于知识归因的研究。知识是一项涉及获取真理的成就。但许多影响真理的因素超出了我们的控制，获取真理往往部分归因于运气。哪些运气类型与知识相容呢？我们发现，知识归因对改变信念为真原因解释的幸运事件高度敏感。相比之下，知识归因对那些威胁但最终未能改变信念为真原因解释的幸运事件出奇地不敏感。这些结果揭示了我们的知识概念，有助于解释先前关于知识归因的工作中明显的不一致之处，并朝着对成功与运气之间关系的全面理解迈出了一步。
