He is the author of Epistemic Luck; Epistemological Disjunctivism; Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing; and Scepticism: A Very Short Introduction.
Pritchard applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to Risk, Luck, and a Meaningful Life, and reported the following:
If you opened page 99 of Tempting Fate, then you would be jumping into the heart of my discussion of the nature of achievements. I’m arguing that achievements require more than merely the conjunction of skill and success. I illustrate this point by describing an archer skillfully firing at a target but the arrow being intercepted mid-flight by a friendly dog who catches it and places it in its intended destination. That the skillful archer’s arrow ends up in the target would not count as his achievement. This is because for an achievement one’s success must be primarily attributable to one’s own skill rather than to other factors, like something else intervening. The dog may have achieved something, but the archer did not.Visit Duncan Pritchard's website.
This discussion gives you a sense of one of the issues we explore in the book, which is how luck of a certain kind can undermine achievements, but it wouldn’t be particularly representative of its main themes. The overarching goal of Tempting Fate is to convince the reader that we need a completely new theory of risk. This is not just because the existing ways of thinking about risk are wrong, but because having the right theory of risk is crucial to making sense of how taking risks can confer value and meaning in our lives. Think about Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan. The risk he took was monumental, but rather than diminishing his achievement it enhances it. We need the right theory of risk in order to explain how this is possible.
Thinking about Honnold’s climb helps to explain the connection between what’s on page 99 and the book as a whole. The risk-taking that leads to a flourishing life is aimed at significant achievements, which is why it’s so important to the book that we understand not only what achievements are but also how they relate to luck and risk. Honnold’s ascent of El Capitan is a great example of this. It’s a peerless achievement, but it also essentially involves a lot of risk and a fair amount of luck too. But as the book makes clear, the value of risky achievements isn’t just relevant to extreme endeavors like free-solo climbing. This is because all of us will at some point need to make fundamental life- decisions if we are to lead authentic, and thus flourishing, lives. Getting married, switching career, starting a family, moving to another part of the world—these are all decisions that are inherently risky. No matter how skillfully one makes them, there’s always the possibility of things going awry. That’s why we all must tempt fate, and thus embrace risk, at some point if we are to flourish.
--Marshal Zeringue
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