From epistemic luck to chance-seeking: the role of cognitive niche construction

Authors:
Lorenzo Magnani;Emanuele Bardone
Affiliations:
Department of Philosophy & Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Italy;Department of Philosophy & Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Italy
Venue:
KES'11 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Knowledge-based and intelligent information and engineering systems - Volume Part II
Year:
2011

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Abstract

In this paper we will focus on how humans try to get lucky by smart eco-cognitive manipulations and how that has an impact on our evolution. We will present a brief account of epistemic luck, which will rely on abduction. Our main claim is that epistemic luck is cognitively relevant insofar as it contributes to affording human beings to generate or select the correct hypothesis solving a problem. We will then present the main idea of the paper: by definition luck can be neither predicted nor planned. However, it can actively be sought and domesticated by seeking those chances maximizing abducibility, which will be described as the opportunity of being afforded by lucky events - events that are out of one's control.