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Tallis in Wonderland

Random Thoughts on Luck

Raymond Tallis finds he’s an improbably accidental being.

A few years ago, as I was setting out on holiday, I looked at the departure board and noticed a flight flagged up for Florence. This reminded me of something I had forgotten in the rush to tidy things up before my departure; namely, to refer a patient, whose first name was Florence, for a surgical opinion. I immediately phoned my place of work to ensure that Florence was seen by the relevant expert. Later that day, she had an emergency operation that saved her life.

I have often thought about this episode as an example of what philosophers, after Bernard Williams, call ‘moral luck’ (also the subject of a superb essay by Michael Philips in Philosophy Now Issue 32, ‘Moral Luck and Moral Theory’).

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