Reactive Luck

In this talk, I discuss what I call "reactive luck": luck that befalls us as bearers of reactive attitudes (such as shame, resentment, pride, or gratitude). Our reactive attitudes play significant roles for our constitution, relationships, and lives overall. Likewise, their weight on us can be significant. Yet we are often lucky with respect to bearing them, in that the objects and circumstances warranting them, and with these our reactive attitudes themselves, are often outside our control.

I here discuss the nature and philosophical significance of reactive luck, its relationship to moral luck, and consider ways of addressing problematic forms of reactive luck.

Nathan Hauthaler
https://scholars.duke.edu/person/Nathan.Hauthaler
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Duke Kunshan University

About the Speaker:

I work on fundamental issues in agency and action. I am especially interested in the nature of intentional action; of practical knowledge involved in it; and in forms of practical capacity and cognition (and related practical-cognitive habitus) funding both. I approach these issues from a variety of systematic and historical vantage points: systematic ones including the philosophy of action, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; historical ones including the history of analytic philosophy, classical Greek as well as Chinese philosophy.

I also work on various normative and applied questions concerning human agency, from questions concerning the nature & demands of friendship to applied & normative questions about the design of things we engage with. In subsequent work I will focus notably on social-structural determinant of agency & practical capacity: on how our social communities and milieus shape the contours of our agential outlook and constitution; how attending to them can in turn help understand the contours of our practical thinking & actions. In public international law I remain particularly interested in issues about the use of force (ius ad bellum; in bello) & anti-discrimination law.

My publications include essays in the philosophy of mind & action (on issues of practical error and ignorance; the relation of intention to belief); the history of philosophy (on Wittgenstein on reasons vs. causes of action); and on public international law (on the doctrine of the "responsibility to protect"). I obtained a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University (2020); an MPhilStud in Philosophy from the University of London (Birkbeck); and a Mag. iur. in Law as well as a Mag. phil. in Philosophy from Graz University (in 2009 and 2010, respectively).

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided at the event. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here.

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai