KNOWLEDGE, LUCK AND VIRTUE: RESOLVING THE GETTIER PROBLEM (original) (raw)

Anti-Luck Epistemology and the Gettier Problem

A certain construal of the Gettier problem is offered, according to which this problem concerns the task of identifying the anti-luck condition on knowledge. A methodology for approaching this construal of the Gettier problem⎯anti-luck epistemology⎯is set out, and the utility of such a methodology is demonstrated. It is argued that a range of superficially distinct cases which are meant to pose problems for anti-luck epistemology are in fact related in significant ways. It is claimed that with these cases properly understood, anti-luck epistemology is able to offer a suitable diagnosis of them which doesn’t threaten the necessity of the anti- luck condition for knowledge.

THE GETTIER PROBLEM AND EPISTEMIC LUCK

The Gettier Problem, 2018

We begin with two (distinct) disambiguations of the 'Gettier problem'. The first is concerned with identifying the anti-luck condition on knowledge; the second is concerned with offering a complete (Gettier-proof) analysis of knowledge. Our primary focus is on the first problem, and in showing how post-Gettier epistemology became interested in the modal conditions on knowledge that might plausibly play the role of anti-luck epistemic conditions. A briefer discussion is also offered of the second rendering of the Gettier problem. In particular, we will explore why discovering the anti-luck condition on knowledge is not thereby a route to resolving the problem of the appropriate analysis of knowledge, although it does point us in a fruitful direction.

Virtue Epistemology and Epistemic Luck

Metaphilosophy, 2003

The recent movement towards virtue-theoretic treatments of epistemological concepts can be understood in terms of the desire to eliminate epistemic luck. Significantly, however, it is argued that the two main varieties of virtue epistemology are responding to different types of epistemic luck. In particular, whilst proponents of reliabilism-based virtue theories have been focusing on the problem of what I call "veritic" epistemic luck, non-reliabilism-based virtue theories have instead been concerned with a very different type of epistemic luck, what I call "reflective" epistemic luck. It is argued that, prima facie at least, both forms of epistemic luck need to be responded to by any adequate epistemological theory. The problem, however, is that one can best eliminate veritic epistemic luck by adducing a so-called safety-based epistemological theory that need not be allied to a virtue-based account, and there is no fully adequate way of eliminating reflective epistemic luck. I thus conclude that this raises a fundamental difficulty for virtuebased epistemological theories, on either construal.

Knowledge, Abilities, and Epistemic Luck: What Is Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology and What Can It do?

Duncan Pritchard set forth and defended a theory of knowledge in a series of articles that connect ability intuitions with an anti-luck condition. He calls this theory: anti-luck virtue epistemology. I attempt to show that we do not need this theory. To put it more precisely: a robust ability-based epistemology explains our intuitions on knowledge quite thoroughly. I shall also develop an understanding of epistemic abilities that is disjunctivist and social-externalist. Both aspects together allow for the exclusion of intervening luck and environmental luck. With reference to the second epistemic kind of luck, my thesis is: in his drive through the fake barn landscape, Barney does not manifest the epistemic ability in question. At best, he tries to do so. Epistemic abilities are, with reference to their normal conditions, not necessarily safe, but with reference to their sense-logical presuppositions, they are. If the fake world were a near-by possible world, then we would not know what it means to distinguish barns from fake barns by means of perception.

Anti-Luck (Too Weak) Virtue Epistemology

2014

(published in Erkenntnis) I argue that Duncan Pritchard’s anti-luck virtue epistemology is insufficient for knowledge. I show that Pritchard fails to achieve the aim that motivates his adoption of a virtue-theoretic condition in the first place: to guarantee the appropriate direction of fit that known beliefs have. Finally, I examine whether other virtue-theoretic accounts are able to explain what I call the direction of fit problem.

Robust Virtue Epistemology as Anti-Luck Epistemology: A New Solution

Robust Virtue Epistemology (RVE) maintains that knowledge is achieved just when an agent gets to the truth through, or because of, the manifestation of intellectual virtue or ability. A notorious objection to the view is that the satisfaction of the virtue condition will be insufficient to ensure the safety of the target belief; that is, RVE is no anti-luck epistemology. Some of the most promising recent attempts to get around this problem are considered and shown to ultimately fail. Finally, a new proposal for defending RVE as a kind of anti-luck epistemology is defended. The view developed here turns importantly on the idea that knowledge depends on ability and luck in a way that is gradient, not rigid, and that we know just when our cognitive success depends on ability not rather, but more so, than luck.

ANTI-LUCK VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGY AND EPISTEMIC DEFEAT

This paper explores how a certain theory of knowledge—known as anti-luck virtue epistemology—can account for, and in the process shed light on, the notion of an epistemic defeater. To this end, an overview of the motivations for anti-luck virtue epistemology is offered, along with a taxonomy of different kinds of epistemic defeater. It is then shown how anti-luck virtue epistemology can explain: (i) why certain kinds of putative epistemic defeater are not bona fide; (ii) how certain kinds of epistemic defeater are genuine in virtue of exposing the subject to significant levels of epistemic risk; and (iii) how certain kinds of epistemic defeater are genuine in virtue of highlighting how the subject's safe cognitive success does not stand in the appropriate explanatory relationship to her manifestation of relevant cognitive ability. 0. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS It is incumbent upon any theory of knowledge to explain how it handles cases involving epistemic defeaters. To this end, I will be offering an account of how my preferred theory of knowledge— anti-luck virtue epistemology—can incorporate this epistemic notion. In particular, I will be arguing that this proposal is well-placed to account for the various different types of epistemic defeater (and can also explain why some related phenomena do not qualify as genuine cases of epistemic defeat). Although my claim is not the ambitious one that anti-luck virtue epistemology is uniquely placed to account for epistemic defeaters, neither is it the completely unambitious claim that anti-luck virtue epistemology is merely able to account for epistemic defeaters. Instead, I hope to show that this theory of knowledge is able to cast a lot of light on why epistemic defeaters of different kinds function as they do. In this sense, then, anti-luck virtue epistemology does not offer merely

The Genealogy of Knowledge and Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology

In his seminal book, Knowledge and the State of Nature: An Essay in Conceptual Synthesis, Edward Craig offers a highly influential story which accounts for the nature of our concept of knowledge, a story which can be broadly cast as ‘genealogical’. I argue that while, on the face of it, this story seems to favour those robust virtue-theoretic theories of knowledge which completely analyse knowledge in terms of cognitive success that is due to reliable cognitive ability, on closer inspection this genealogical account of the concept of knowledge in fact favours a different kind of theory of knowledgewhat I call anti-luck virtue epistemologywhich analyses knowledge in terms of both cognitive ability and an anti-luck condition.

Virtue Epistemology and Epistemic Luck, Revisited

In this paper I return to an argument that I presented in earlier work to the effect that virtue epistemology is at worse false and at best unmotivated. In the light of recent responses to this argument from such figures as John Greco, Guy Axtell, and Kelly Becker, I here re-state and re- evaluate this argument. In the process the original argument is refined and supplemented in key respects and some of the main charges against it are shown to be unfounded. Nevertheless, I also argue that at least one of the objections to the original argumentdue to Beckermay well be on the right lines, and draw some conclusions in this regard.

Virtue and Luck, Epistemic and Otherwise

Metaphilosophy, 2003

This essay defends virtue reliabilism against a line of argument put forward by Duncan Pritchard. In the process, it discusses (1) the motivations for virtue reliabilism, (2) some analogies between epistemic virtue and moral virtue, and (3) the relation between virtue (epistemic and otherwise) and luck (epistemic and otherwise). It argues that considerations about virtue and luck suggest a solution to Gettier problems from the perspective of a virtue theory.