Epistemic Luck

Mind and body have been reunited by the "affective turn" in philosophy and (neuro-) psychology. Yet, for centuries they have been painstakingly kept apart, for a specific reason. Methodologically, to find out about the world, apply justice or follow news, independent confirmation has always been indispensable. As it turns out, it also plays an important role in our personal everyday lives, to stay away from depersonalization- or derealization disorders and mainly to become and stay happy.

Luck has become an increasingly important factor in epistemology during recent years as either a preventor of knowledge (Pritchard 2013) or even as one of the conditions of knowledge (Zagzebski 1994, Hetherington 2013), thus begging the question of its definition. Following the probabilistic and degree-minding "new paradigm psychology of reasoning" (Evans 2012, Elqayam & Over 2012, Pfeifer & Douven 2014) and renouncing the "old paradigm" of bivalence, the first main feature of this article lies in the introduction of "gradualism" according (...) to which vast parts of reality comes in degrees (=metaphysical or ontological gradualism) and, given that theoretical constructs are supposed to accurately correspond to reality, according to which gradualistic or degree-minding frameworks need to be established in all of philosophy or science (=theoretical gradualism). As the second and more central feature of this article, and building on gradualism and Riggs' (2007) pivotal idea that "luck comes in degrees", I will then develop my own gradualistic account of luck with two always necessary gradual conditions (low enough chance and high enough significance) and one sometimes necessary gradual condition (low enough control or high enough lack of control). During the presentation of this new account of luck, I will also deliver decisive arguments against prominent luck philosopher Duncan Pritchard's latest version of the modal account of luck (forthcoming) which contains major mistakes in respect to all three conditions of luck. (shrink)

David Lewis maintained that epistemological contextualism (on which the truth-conditions for utterances of “S knows p” change in different contexts depending on the salient “alternative possibilities”) could solve the problem of skepticism as well as the Gettier problem. Contextualist approaches to skepticism have become commonplace, if not orthodox, in epistemology. But not so for contextualist approaches to the Gettier problem: the standard approach to this has been to add an “anti-luck” condition to the analysis of knowledge.

In this paper, it is argued that there are (at least) two different kinds of ‘epistemic normativity’ in epistemology, which can be scrutinized and revealed by some comparison with some naturalistic studies of ethics. The first kind of epistemic normativity can be naturalized, but the other not. The doctrines of Quine’s naturalized epistemology is firstly introduced; then Kim’s critique of Quine’s proposal is examined. It is argued that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is able to save some room for the concept of (...) epistemic normativity and therefore his doctrine can be protected against Kim’s critique. But, it is the first kind of epistemic normativity that can be naturalized in epistemology. With the assistance of Goldman’s fake barn case, it is shown that the concept of epistemic normativity that is involved in the concept of knowing, which cannot be fully naturalized. The Gettier problem indicates that Quine only gets partially right idea concerning whether epistemology can (and should) be natualized. (shrink)

La falibilidad es una condición ubicua de nuestras empresas, la cual emana del hecho de que, comúnmente, las cosas que más nos interesan, como el descubrir la verdad, referirnos a cosas que de hecho existen, evitar dañar a los otros, etc., escapan nuestro alcance y, sin embargo, no dejamos de hacer grandes esfuerzos para conseguirlas. Es posible que hagamos todo lo que está en nuestras manos para actuar de manera cuidadosa y responsable y aun así nuestros actos tengan consecuencias negativas; (...) e igualmente es posible que nuestros actos tengan consecuencias positivas sin que podamos cobrar crédito por ellas como un logro. En este volumen, el autor se propone no solo explicar qué caracteriza a los casos de buena y mala suerte, sino también por qué valoramos más un logro que podemos atribuir al esfuerzo propio que el obtener lo que deseamos de manera accidental. (shrink)

The main lesson from Gettier cases is that while one cannot know a proposition by luck, one can hold a lucky true belief justifiedly. Possibly because the latter is taken for granted, the relationship between epistemic justification and epistemic luck has been less discussed. The paper investigates whether luck can undermine doxastic justification, and if so, how and to what extent. It is argued that, as in the case of knowledge, beliefs can fall short of justification due to luck. Moreover, (...) it is argued that justification-undermining luck is a problem for both internalist and externalist conceptions of justification. Accordingly, it is shown that epistemic luck is a more widespread phenomenon than many in epistemology commonly assume. (shrink)

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental. One prima facie promising way to account for this platitude is through Anscombe’s Practical Knowledge Principle (PKP), which holds that intentionally doing something requires knowing that you are doing it intentionally. While (PKP) offers strong anti-luck credentials, it has the problematic implication that intentional action becomes luminous. This chapter critiques some existing attempts to weaken (PKP) and introduces an alternative rooted in performance-theoretic virtue epistemology. The proposed framework distinguishes between two grades of intentional (...) action, each with different levels of protection against luck in action. Both involve knowledge of what we are doing, but in different ways: the first grade requires externalist knowledge secured by apt practical belief, while the second – reflective or R-intentional action – demands also second-order knowledge of one’s abilities and their reliability in the relevant performance conditions. This two-tiered, virtue theoretic approach, which gives knowledge of abilities a central role at the second order, is shown to offer several explanatory advantages in action theory. (shrink)

It is a well-worn platitude that knowledge excludes luck. According to anti-luck virtue epistemology, making good on the anti-luck platitude requires an explicit anti-luck condition along the lines of safety: S knows that p only if S’s true belief that p could not have easily been mistaken. This paper offers an independent, virtue epistemological argument against the claim that safety is a necessary condition on knowledge, one that adequately captures the anti-luck platitude. The argument proceeds by way of analogy. I (...) focus on two paradigmatic kinds of normative achievements that also exclude luck: (i) – having a doxastically justified belief, and (ii) – performing a morally worthy action. I then show that while (i) and (ii) exclude luck, they are nevertheless susceptible to what I call ‘modal luck’. I then move on to show that knowledge, or at least some instance of knowledge, is a normative achievement, which I claim provides strong reasons to expect that knowledge is also susceptible to modal luck. Since safety entails that knowledge is incompatible with modal luck, the argument provides strong reasons to reject safety as a necessary condition on knowledge. (shrink)

The modal theory of luck, according to one influential version of it, holds that an event is lucky if and only if it actually obtains but fails to obtain in some close possible worlds, holding fixed certain initial conditions for the event. There have been some notable critiques of the theory. But they are not fully satisfactory, for they succumb to two typical and compelling strategies of defending the modal theory. By invoking a special fair lottery case, adapted from the (...) well-known Frankfurt cases on free will, this article presents a novel attack on the modal theory. As to be shown, there are cases where someone wins a fair lottery as a matter of good luck, yet there are no close possible worlds where he fails to win it. I also argue that the two typical and compelling strategies of defending the modal theory do not meet our challenge. (shrink)

According to the modal account of luck it is a matter of luck that p if p is true at the actual world, but false in a wide‐range of nearby worlds. According to the modal account of risk, it is risky that p if p is true at some close world. I argue that the modal accounts of luck and risk do not mesh well together. The views entail that p can be both maximally risky and maximally lucky, but there (...) is nothing which is both maximally lucky and maximally risky. I offer a novel theory of risk that fits together with the modal account of luck and demonstrate that it is both extensionally and formally superior to extant proposals. (shrink)

A novel theory of comparative risk is developed and defended. Extant theories are criticized for failing the tests of extensional and formal adequacy. A unified diagnosis is proposed: extant theories consider risk to be a univariable function, but risk is a multivariate function. According to the theory proposed, which we call the unified theory of risk, the riskiness of a proposition is a function of both the proportion and the modal closeness of the possible worlds at which the proposition holds. (...) It is argued the theory passes the tests of extensional and formal adequacy. (shrink)

According to the laudative theory of knowledge, “knowledge” is a mere laudative term—a term, such as “athletic,” “artistic,” or “masterpiece,” that expresses merely that some entity is good relative to some domain. (I.e., the laudative theory claims that for you to know some proposition just is for you to believe some true proposition in a good way.) I defend the laudative theory by contrasting inferential knowledge and memory. A central component of what it is for an inferential belief to constitute (...) knowledge is that the subject’s belief being true is due to the subject’s competent reasoning, rather than due to luck (i.e., inferential knowledge is incompatible with veritic luck). Conversely, I argue that many instances of successful memory are accurate due to luck, and that many such instances of successful memory nonetheless constitute (or provide a basis for) knowledge. If so, then there is some feature that is a central component of what it is for an inferential belief to constitute knowledge, but that is not even necessary for a memory (or memory-based belief) to constitute knowledge; and this fact suggests that, rather than picking out a substantive, unitary phenomenon, “knowledge” is a mere laudative term. (shrink)

I will present a novel argument that there can be epistemically vicious knowledge. In the kind of case that interests me, the subject knows not despite but rather because of her vice. It is generally agreed that some kinds of epistemic luck doesn’t undermine knowledge. For instance, being lucky not to have misleading evidence doesn’t undermine knowledge. I will argue that this doesn’t change when the avoidance of misleading evidence depends on the subject’s vice. It does not prevent her belief (...) from being both safe and sensitive, nor does it have any bearing on whether her justifying reasons are ultimately defeated. To illustrate my point, I will draw a parallel with a certain way of thinking about resultant moral luck. I will then go on to consider the ramifications for virtue-theoretic analyses of knowledge and the doctrine of normative defeat. (shrink)

In _Epistemic Explanations_, Sosa continues to defend a model of judgment he has long endorsed. On this complex model of judgment, judgment aims not only at correctness but also at aptness of a kind of alethic affirmation. He offers three arguments for the claim that we need this model of judgment instead of a simpler model, on which judgment aims only at correctness. The first argument cites the need to exclude knowledge-spoiling luck from apt judgment. The second argument uses the (...) complex model to distinguish judgment from mere guessing. The third argument involves the assessment of suspension of judgment as a performance. This paper shows why none of these arguments succeeds, and so recommends adopting the simpler model of judgment. (shrink)

I show that from common views about propositions as sets of possible worlds and knowledge requiring a sufficiently strong safety condition one can derive a condition stating that self-knowledge of belief is only possible if the content of that belief is fully understood. I show this by a reductio. If a subject S lacks full understanding of a proposition p, then S’s belief about believing that p cannot amount to knowledge. Even though my argument is based on particular views about (...) propositions and knowledge, I argue that the same kind of argument is also available for other knowledge conditions that rule out relevant luck and other accounts of propositions. However, for many of these other accounts of knowledge the requirement for understanding p will not be full understanding, but only sufficiently high understanding. These results tell us how self-knowledge, ruling out luck and understanding belief contents relate. (shrink)

One common attitude toward abstract objects is a kind of platonism: a view on which those objects are mind-independent and causally inert. But there's an epistemological problem here: given any naturalistically respectable understanding of how our minds work, we can't be in any sort of contact with mind-independent, causally inert objects. So platonists, in order to avoid skepticism, tend to endorse epistemological theories on which knowledge is easy, in the sense that it requires no such contact—appeals to Boghossian’s notion of (...) epistemic analyticity are particularly common here, as are appeals to some broadly pragmatic account of the good standing of basic beliefs. I argue, though, that these appeals are hopeless: an argument adapted from the Benacerraf–Field challenge shows that, even if some such theory can deliver the verdict that our beliefs about abstract objects have some prima facie good standing, this good standing will inevitably be defeated. (shrink)

Nozick has an account of inferential knowledge which has rarely been discussed. According to this account, in order to know q via competent inference from p, S’s belief in q should track the truth of p in the right way. In detail, S knows via competent inference from p that q iff 1*. S knows that p. 2*. q is true, and S infers q from p. 3*. If q were false, S wouldn’t believe that p. 4*. If q were (...) true, S would believe that p. In this paper, it is argued that the account is problematic. It is both too restrictive and too inclusive. It is too restrictive because condition 4* is not satisfied in some cases of inferential knowledge. It is too inclusive because condition 3*, together with other conditions, could be easily satisfied in some cases where inferential knowledge does not exist. (shrink)

According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one’s belief in p could not easily have been false. In the literature, most objections to the safety account rely on intuition of knowledge that could be easily denied by the safety theorists. In this paper, an objection to the safety account which does not make use of such intuition is raised. It is argued that either there are instances of unsafe knowledge or the safety account has (...) an implausible implication that one’s epistemic status might depend on what happens in the future. (shrink)

This chapter examines some key developments in discussions of the social dimensions of knowing-how, focusing on work on the social function of the concept of knowing-how, testimony, demonstrating one's knowledge to other people, and epistemic injustice. I show how a conception of knowing-how as a form of 'downstream knowledge' can help to unify various phenomena discussed within this literature, and I also consider how these ideas might connect with issues concerning wisdom, moral knowledge, and moral testimony.

Safety accounts of knowledge intend to explain why certain true and intuitively justified beliefs fail to be knowledge in terms of such beliefs falling prey to a modal veritic type of luck. In particular, they explain why true and intuitively justified beliefs in “lottery propositions” (highly likely propositions reporting that a particular statistical outcome obtains) are not knowledge. In this paper, I argue that there is a type of case involving lottery propositions that inevitably lies beyond the scope of any (...) reasonable safety account of epistemic luck. I offer counterexamples to accounts of epistemic luck in terms of safety conditions that involve both “locally” and “globally” reliable ways of forming beliefs in nearby worlds. All such counterexamples present a lottery case illustrating the next possibility: the process of selecting the lottery winner might be such that any world in which it delivers a different outcome is extremely far away from the actual world. In addition to being a case of safe ignorance, this type of lottery case shows that, ultimately, either veritic epistemic luck is not unsafe true belief or beliefs in lottery propositions are not epistemically luckily true. (shrink)

This paper presents the debate between two types of virtue reliabilists: robust reliabilists, who envision knowledge as apt belief resulting from the manifestation of the epistemic agent’s reliable cognitive competences, and modest or anti-luck reliabilists, who argue that, in addition to competence, knowledge requires an additional condition, which they identify as the safety condition. After presenting the terms of the debate, an argument is put forth to challenge modest reliabilism: the safety condition is already embedded in two fundamental aspects assumed (...) in the concept of competence inherent to robust reliabilism through its situational condition, rendering the safety condition somewhat trivial. (shrink)

According to the sensitivity account of knowledge, S knows that p only if S’s belief in p is sensitive in the sense that S would not believe that p if p were false. The sensitivity condition is usually relativized to belief-formation methods to avoid putative counterexamples. A remaining issue for the account is where methods should be mentioned in sensitivity subjunctives. In this paper, I argue that if methods are mentioned in the antecedent, then the account is too strong to (...) accommodate inductive knowledge; if methods are mentioned in the consequent, then the account is too weak to eliminate some luckily true beliefs from the realm of knowledge. Therefore, the strategy to relativize the sensitivity condition is undermined by inductive knowledge and some luckily true beliefs. (shrink)

In this note, I point out a mathematically well-defined way of non-trivially comparing the sizes of uncountable sets of equal cardinality.

The paper offers an account of luck, fate, and fortune. It begins by showing that extant accounts of luck are deficient because they do not identify the genus of which luck is a species. That genus of properties, the tychic, alert an agent to occasions on which the external world cooperates with or frustrates their goal-achievement. An agent’s sphere of competence is the set of goals that it is possible for them to reliably achieve. Luck concerns occasions on which there (...) is a mismatch between attempt and result; in bad luck the external world thwarts goal-achievement within the agent’s sphere of competence, in good luck the external world assists goal-achievement beyond the agent’s sphere of competence. Fateful events are those where, more passively, the agent finds the external world achieving or frustrating their goals. Fortune concerns the contraction and expansion of the agent’s sphere of competence. Eight reasons are given for accepting the account; its theoretical virtues and various things it explains. Lastly, three objections are answered; that the tychic properties relate to well-being rather than agency, that there are alternative theories of fortune available in the contemporary literature, that the account draws arbitrary distinctions between synonyms. (shrink)

In this article, I explore an important difference between circumstantial luck on the one side and resultant and constitutive luck on the other. In section 1, I argue that, in circumstantial luck, the object of luck and the object of moral judgment are different even though, in resultant and constitutive luck, they are the same. In section 2, I explain that this difference (1) has the potential to undermine the regress argument for moral luck; (2) makes viable the “selective moral (...) luck” argument strategy (affirming some species of moral luck but denying others); and (3) has implications for the heritability of luck. (shrink)

I argue that justification isn't just in the head. The argument is simple. We should be guided by our beliefs. We shouldn't be guided by anything to do what we shouldn't do. So, we shouldn't believe in ways that would guide us to do the things that we shouldn't. Among the various things we should do is discharge our duties (e.g., to fulfil our promissory obligations) and respect the rights of others (e.g., rights not to be harmed or killed by (...) agents acting on bad information). The grounds of our duties and obligations aren't just in the head. Thus, the conditions that bear on the justification of our beliefs cannot be contained wholly in our heads. The internalist might be right about aspects of normativity, but their theories tell us important normative truths without telling us the whole truth. In addition to norms that tell us how to process information, there are norms that tell us how we ought to live together. In information-asymmetry cases, these norms clearly come apart. Important normative questions about what we should do when agents (who, we might suppose, do what they subjectively ought to do) have interests that come into conflict can only be answered by externalist theories that recognise information-transcendent norms and normatively significant relations that don't supervene upon the information of any agent in particular. The internalist picture turns out to be disturbing precisely because it falls silent when we're faced with questions about how to resolve these conflicts. Resolving these conflicts should be a pressing concern for every normative theory. (shrink)

Is knowledge a uniform kind? If not, what relation do the different kinds of knowledge bear to one another? Is there a central notion of knowledge which other kinds of knowledge must be understood in terms of? In this paper, I use Aristotle’s theory of homonyms as a framework to make progress on these questions. I argue that knowledge is not a uniform kind but rather a core-dependent homonym. To demonstrate this, I focus on knowledge by acquaintance. I argue that (...) the principles that govern propositional knowledge cannot govern knowledge by acquaintance. I then develop analogue principles for knowledge by acquaintance and show why, despite their different modal profiles, knowledge by acquaintance is nevertheless a form of knowledge. I then show that the analysis of propositional knowledge fundamentally depends on knowledge by acquaintance. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present a problem for reductive accounts of knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. By “reductive” I mean accounts that try to analyze epistemic luck in non-epistemic terms. I will begin by briefly considering Jennifer Lackey's (2006) criticism of Duncan Pritchard's (2005) safety-based account of epistemic luck. I will further develop her objection to Pritchard by drawing on the defeasible-reasoning tradition. I will then show that her objection to safety-based accounts is an instance of a more general problem with (...) reductive accounts of epistemic luck. In short, they face a dilemma: they can either fail to vindicate the intuitive verdicts about cases or they can illicitly appeal to the epistemic vocabulary they are trying to reduce. The upshot is that we can only understand epistemic luck in terms of the assessment of the subject's reasons and we can't give a reductive account of that. (shrink)

According to the sensitivity account of knowledge, S knows that p only if S's belief in p is sensitive in the sense that S would not believe that p if p were false. It is widely accepted that the sensitivity condition should be relativized to belief-formation methods to avoid putative counterexamples. A remaining issue for the account is how belief-formation methods should be individuated. In this paper, I argue that while a coarse-grained individuation is still susceptible to counterexamples, a fine-grained (...) individuation makes the target belief trivially insensitive. Therefore, there is no principled way of individuating belief-formation methods that helps the sensitivity account to accommodate different cases. (shrink)

The sensitivity account of knowledge is a modal epistemology, according to which S knows that p only if S's belief in p is sensitive in the sense that S would not believe that p if p were false. There are different ways to state the sensitivity condition by means of a possible worlds heuristic. The sensitivity account is thus rendered into different versions. This paper examines cases of knowledge and cases of luckily true beliefs (e.g., the Gettier cases) and argues (...) that no version of the sensitivity account accommodates all cases. Therefore, the account is unsuccessful as an account of knowledge. (shrink)

One interesting and potentially attractive feature of the sensitivity account of knowledge is that it not only preserves knowledge of ordinary propositions, but also concedes the skeptic's intuition that we do not know skeptical hypotheses do not obtain. This paper challenges the sensitivity‐based reply to the skeptic, advocated by Robert Nozick, among others. Sensitivity generates an implausibly bizarre result that although we do not know we are not brains in vats (because a belief to this effect is insensitive), a real (...) BIV who is in a much worse epistemic situation can sensitively believe that it is not in the good case. This result reveals a fundamental problem with the sensitivity conditional: its antecedent is not suitable for picking out possibilities that are relevant for our epistemic evaluation. I then offer a systematic explanation of why it is the safety account—the main competitor of sensitivity—that picks out a more suitable set of possibilities. A consequence of this comparison is that the safety account delivers an overall more satisfying reply to the skeptic than sensitivity does. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that knowledge is incompatible with the presence of non-neutralized defeaters. A common way of addressing this issue is to introduce a condition to the effect that there are no non-neutralized defeaters for the belief that _p_ (i.e. a “no-defeaters condition”). I argue that meeting this condition leaves open a possibility for defeaters to squander our knowledge. The no-defeaters condition can be fortuitously met, and as a result it can be met luckily. I shall argue that this (...) kind of luck is inconsistent with knowledge. In order to prevent this pernicious form of luck I introduce a “defeaters-responsiveness” condition, according to which subjects ought to be disposed to adequately address defeaters if they were to arise (even if they in fact do not arise). (shrink)

Modal epistemologies aim to explicate the necessary link between belief and truth that constitutes knowledge. This strain of epistemological theorizing is typically externalist; hence, it does not require that the agent know or understand the nature of the knowledge-constituting link. A central concern of modal epistemology is to articulate conditions on knowing such that no merely lucky true belief counts as knowledge. In the effort to eliminate luck, epistemic principles are often cast modally, requiring that an agent’s belief is true (...) not only in the actual world but also in relevant possible worlds, indicating that the link between truth and belief is more than an actual world lucky coincidence. (Note, then, that this entry is not about the epistemology of modals—statements involving modal operators such as “necessarily,” “possibly,” and the like—but about the use of modal principles in characterizing the nature of knowledge in general. For purposes of disambiguation and in deference to the other topic, perhaps “modalized epistemologies” would be a better term, though it is not typically used here.) Modal epistemologies typically have antiskeptical consequences, but the strengths of the antiskeptical results vary significantly, especially between the two best-known modal principles, sensitivity and safety. (shrink)

Knowledge is widely regarded as being incompatible with epistemic luck, but according to several philosophers, the same does not hold for understanding. This paper examines to what extent understanding is vulnerable to epistemic luck. After discussing the weaknesses of some of the cases that have been offered to support the conclusion that understanding tolerates environmental epistemic luck, I turn to a more recent one offered in favour of the opposite conclusion. I argue that this case does not manage to establish (...) that understanding is vulnerable to environmental luck; this even if the fact that understanding comes in degrees is taken into account. Finally, I examine the vulnerability of understanding to intervening luck – the type of luck present in classical Gettier cases – and conclude that when such luck is present, one's understanding is necessarily sub-optimal; a conclusion that does not hold, according to what I argue, when it comes to environmental luck. (shrink)

This book centers on two trends in contemporary epistemology: (i) the dissatisfaction with the reductive analysis of knowledge and (ii) the popularity of virtue-theoretic epistemologies. The goal is to endorse non-reductive virtue epistemology. Given that prominent renditions of virtue epistemology assume the reductive model, however, such a move is not straightforward—work needs to be done to elucidate what is wrong with the reductive model, in general, and why reductive accounts of virtue epistemology, specifically, are lacking. The first part of the (...) book involves diagnosing the Gettier Problem (perhaps the central challenge for any reductive analysis) and defending that diagnosis against objections. The second part involves applying this diagnosis to prominent versions of (reductive) virtue epistemology. The third and final part of this book explores of what non-reductive virtue epistemology should look like, with the aim of establishing a new form of non-reductive virtue epistemology--a type of non-reductive proper functionalism--that is able draw from the strength of the aforementioned trends and contribute positively to a number of debates and discussions across the discipline and beyond. (shrink)

This essay is an accessible introduction to the proof paradox in legal epistemology. -/- In 1902 the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine filed an influential legal verdict. The judge claimed that in order to find a defendant culpable, the plaintiff “must adduce evidence other than a majority of chances”. The judge thereby claimed that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal proof. -/- In this essay I first motivate the claim that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal (...) proof. I then introduce and motivate a knowledge-centred explanation of this fact. The knowledge-centred explanation rests on two premises. The first is that legal proof requires knowledge of culpability. The second is that one cannot attain knowledge that p from bare statistical evidence that p. To motivate the second premise, I suggest that beliefs based on bare statistical evidence fail to be safe—they could easily be wrong—and bare statistical evidence cannot eliminate relevant alternatives. -/- I then cast doubt on the first premise; I argue that legal proof does not require knowledge. I thereby dispute the knowledge-centred explanation of the inadequacy of bare statistical evidence for legal proof. Instead of appealing to the nature of knowledge, I suggest we should seek a more direct explanation by appealing to those more foundational epistemic properties, such as safety or eliminating relevant alternatives. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the problem of interpretations of the Gettier problem. The author draws a distinction between counterexamples presented in Edmund Gettier’s article and Gettier-style cases, between the Gettier problem and general epistemological problem supposedly occurring in all or many Gettier-style cases. It is argued that in Gettier’s article there is a gap associated with an insufficiently defined concept of justification, which does not allow talking about Gettier problem without any explicit or implicit interpretation of his views on justification. Along (...) with this, it is indicated that the same concept of justification has strict features (deductive closure principle, non-factive justification and internalism), which do not allow arbitrary interpretations of the Gettier problem, and therefore we can say that some interpretations are closer to the text of a well-known article. (shrink)

Recent develops in AI technology have led to increasingly sophisticated forms of video manipulation. One such form has been the advent of deepfakes. Deepfakes are AI-generated videos that typically depict people doing and saying things they never did. In this paper, I demonstrate that there is a close structural relationship between deepfakes and more traditional fake barn cases in epistemology. Specifically, I argue that deepfakes generate an analogous degree of epistemic risk to that which is found in traditional cases. Given (...) that barn cases have posed a long-standing challenge for virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge, I consider whether a similar challenge extends to deepfakes. In doing so, I consider how Duncan Pritchard’s recent anti-risk virtue epistemology meets the challenge. While Pritchard’s account avoids problems in traditional barn cases, I claim that it leads to local scepticism about knowledge from online videos in the case of deepfakes. I end by considering how two alternative virtue-theoretic approaches might vindicate our epistemic dependence on videos in an increasingly digital world. (shrink)

The problem of epistemic luck arises when a person has a true belief that is only true by luck. Before Gettier, it was believed that the element of justification would be sufficient for knowledge; but he showed that it is possible to have a justified true belief that is not an example of knowledge because of the intrusion of luck. Duncan Pritchard has examined epistemic luck in an extensive and detailed manner. He offers a modal account of luck based on (...) two elements: a possible-worlds analysis of counterfactual conditions and a significance condition for the factors that make the truth of the belief lucky. Pritchard argues for the superiority of this account to those that focus on whether the truth of the belief is “accidental” and on whether the believer has sufficient control over the belief. Epistemic luck may be “reflective” or “veritic”. Both undermine knowledge claims, although Pritchard gives the central role to veritic luck in his anti-luck epistemology, which is based on two elements: a safety principle and a condition to ensure that the cognitive faculties of the agent are not impaired. In this article, we will describe, analyze, and subsequently, evaluate the viewpoint of Pritchard. In addition to the critiques offered by others, ambiguities in his counterfactual account of luck and other components of his theory detract from his theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop and motivate a novel formulation of the safety condition in terms of etiological proper function. After testing this condition against the most pressing objections to safety-theoretic accounts of knowledge in the literature, my conclusion will be the following: once safety is suitably understood in terms of etiological proper function, it stands a better chance as the right anti-Gettier condition on knowledge.

I will discuss a variety of cases such that the subject's believing truly is somewhat of an accident, but less so than in a Gettier case. In each case, this is because her reasons are not ultimately undefeated full stop, but they are ultimately undefeated with certain qualifications. For example, the subject's reasons might be ultimately defeated considered in themselves but ultimately undefeated considered as a proper part of an inference to the best explanation that is undefeated without qualification. In (...) each section of the paper, I consider different qualifications and show how in each case we get an epistemic standing I call “coach-class knowledge”. First-class knowledge requires justifying reasons that are undefeated without qualification. Coach-class knowledge only requires qualified lack of defeat. I will use this distinction to bring debates over knowledge from falsehood and fake barns to an ecumenical resolution. In both cases, the subject enjoys coach-class rather than first-class knowledge. I will also show that the defeasible reasoning tradition can better account for graded accidental truth than safety theories. (shrink)

Both sensitivity and safety theorists concur that their accounts should be relativized to the same method that one employs in the actual world. However, properly individuating methods has proven to be a tricky matter. In this regard, Nozick (Philosophical Explanations, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1981) proposes a Same-Experience-Same-Method Principle: if the experiences associated with two method tokens are the same, they are of the same type of method. This principle, however, has been widely rejected by recent safety and sensitivity theorists. (...) In this paper, I raise an argument in favor of Nozick: not endorsing the principle leads to some rather implausible consequences when certain skeptical scenarios are considered—i.e., scenarios in which skeptical possibilities are ‘close’. Additionally, this argument reveals some important lessons about skepticism in general and the place of modal accounts of knowledge in the internalism/externalism debate. (shrink)

According to the safety principle, if one knows that p, one's belief that p could not easily have been false. One problem besetting this principle is the lottery problem – that of explaining why one does not seem to know that one will lose the lottery purely based on probabilistic considerations, prior to the announcement of the lottery result. As Greco points out, it is difficult for a safety theorist to solve this problem, without paying a heavy price. In this (...) paper, I first reject three existing safety-based solutions to the lottery problem, due to Pritchard, Sosa, and Broncano-Berrocal. Failure of these accounts reveals that there is something crucial missing in the safety principle. By way of remedying this, I propose to integrate a safety principle with a condition regarding one's own awareness of (nearby) error-possibilities. The resulting account, as I argue, enjoys a number of theoretical advantages, including its capacity to handle the lottery problem. (shrink)

According to the sensitivity account of knowledge, if one knows that p, then (roughly) were p false, one would not believe that p. One important issue regarding sensitivity is whether or not it preserves inductive knowledge. Critics including Jonathan Vogel, Ernest Sosa, and Duncan Pritchard argue that it does not. Proponents including Kevin Wallbridge insist that it does. In this paper, I first draw attention to an often-neglected distinction between two different versions of sensitivity—a distinction that has important implications for (...) the debate regarding inductive knowledge. In particular, I distinguish between the sensitivity principle originally defended by Robert Nozick and another version that has been the focus of many recent discussions. With the distinction in place, it is shown that a sensitivity theorist cannot preserve inductive knowledge while being unscathed. For neither account can simultaneously preserve inductive knowledge while properly handling the Gettier problem. Overall, sensitivity theorists are in trouble. (shrink)

This paper argues for a view described as risk-limited indulgent permissivism. This term may be new to the epistemology of disagreement literature, but the general position denoted has many examples. The paper argues for the need for an epistemology for domains of controversial views, and for the advantages of endorsing a risk-limited indulgent permissivism across these domains. It takes a double-edge approach in articulating for the advantages of interpersonal belief permissivism that is yet risk-limited: Advantages are apparent both in comparison (...) with impermissivist epistemologies of disagreement, which make little allowance for the many distinct features of these domains, as well as in comparison with defenses of permissivism which confuse it with dogmatism, potentially making a virtue of the latter. In an appropriately critical form of interpersonal belief permissivism, the close connections between epistemic risk-taking and our doxastic responsibilities become focal concerns. (shrink)

Does ‘remembering that p’ entail ‘knowing that p’? The widely-accepted epistemic theory of memory answers affirmatively. This paper purports to reveal the tension between ETM and the prevailing anti-luck epistemology. Central to my argument is the fact that we often ‘vaguely remember’ a fact, of which one plausible interpretation is that our true memory-based beliefs formed in this way could easily have been false. Drawing on prominent theories of misremembering in philosophy of psychology, I will construct cases where the subject (...) vaguely remembers that p while fails to meet the safety condition, which imply either that ETM is false or that safety is unnecessary for knowledge. The conclusion reached in this paper will be a conditional: if veritic epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge, then ‘remembering that p’ does not entail ‘knowing that p’. (shrink)

The notion of individualised evidence holds the key to solve the puzzle of statistical evidence, but there’s still no consensus on how exactly to define it. To make progress on the problem, epistemologists have proposed various accounts of individualised evidence in terms of causal or modal anti-luck conditions on knowledge like appropriate causation, sensitivity and safety. In this paper, I show that each of these fails as satisfactory anti-luck condition, and that such failure lends abductive support to the following conclusion: (...) once the familiar anti-luck intuition on knowledge is extended to individualised evidence, no single causal or modal anti-luck condition on knowledge can succeed as the right anti-luck condition on individualised evidence. This conclusion casts serious doubts on the fruitfulness of the move from anti-luck conditions on knowledge to anti-luck conditions on individualised evidence. I expand on these doubts and point out further aspects where epistemology and the law come apart: epistemic anti- luck conditions on knowledge do not adequately characterise the legal notion of individualised evidence. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has witnessed a substantial opposition between two competing approaches to capturing the notion of non-accidentality in the analysis of knowledge: the explanationist and the modalist. According to the latest advocates of the former, S knows that p if and only if S believes that p because p is true. According to champions of the latter, S knows that p if and only if S's belief that p is true in a relevant set of possible worlds. Because Bogardus and (...) Perrin's explanationism promises to deliver a plausible analysis of knowledge without any need for modal notions, it is an elegant proposal with prima facie appeal. However, such version of explanationism ultimately does not live up to its promises: in this paper, I raise some objections to their explanationist analysis of knowledge while showing that modalism is in much better shape than they think. In particular, I argue that their explanationist condition generates the wrong results in Gettier cases and fake-barn cases. I also offer and defend a novel version of modalism: I introduce a refined safety condition which is shown to successfully handle the same Gettier cases that beset Bogardus and Perrin's version of explanationism. The paper concludes with a reassessment of the explanationist's initial ambition to provide an analysis of knowledge without modal notions. The upshot will be that even if the prospects for such analysis remain dim, our money should be on the modalist, not the explanationist. (shrink)