In defence of modest anti-luck epistemology

ANTI-LUCK EPISTEMOLOGY Most epistemologists would accept that knowledge excludes luck in the specific sense that if one knows then it is not a matter of luck that one’s belief is true. Call this the anti-luck intuition. There is a certain kind of epistemological project – which I have christened anti-luck epistemology – which takes this intuition as central to our understanding of knowledge. Essentially, the idea is that once we identify which epistemic condition can satisfy the anti-luck intuition (call this the anti-luck condition), then we will have thereby identified a key component in a theory of knowledge. Central to this enterprise, as I explain below, is to gain a proper understanding of the nature of luck itself. We can distinguish between two forms of anti-luck epistemology. According to robust anti-luck epistemology, knowledge is nothing more than true belief that satisfies the anti-luck condition. According to modest anti-luck epistemology, in contrast, the anti-luck condition is merely a key necessary condition for knowledge, but it is not sufficient (with true belief) for knowledge. In what follows I will be offering a defence of modest anti-luck epistemology. SAFETY VERSUS SENSITIVITY There are two competing ways of understanding the anti-luck condition in the contemporary literature

Epistemic luck and logical necessities: armchair luck revisited

Modal knowledge accounts like sensitivity or safety face a problem when it comes to knowing propositions that are necessarily true because the modal condition is always fulfilled no matter how random the belief forming method is. Pritchard models the anti-luck condition for knowledge in terms of the modal principle safety. Thus, his anti-luck epistemology faces the same problem when it comes to logical necessities. Any belief in a proposition that is necessarily true fulfills the anti-luck condition and, therefore, qualifies as knowledge. Miščević shares Pritchard’s take on epistemic luck and acknowledges the resulting problem. In his intriguing article “Armchair Luck: Apriority, Intellection and Epistemic Luck” Miščević suggests solving the problem by supplementing safety with a virtue theoretic condition-“agent stability”-which he also spells out in modal terms. I will argue that Miščević is on the right track when he suggests adding a virtue-theoretic component to the safety condition. However, it should not be specified modally but rather in terms of performances that manifest competences

Debunking Objective Consequentialism: The Challenge of Knowledge-Centric Anti-Luck Epistemology

I explain why, from the perspective of knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology, objective act consequentialist theories of ethics imply skepticism about the moral status of our prospective actions and also tend to be self-defeating, undermining the justification of consequentialist theories themselves. For according to knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology there are modal anti-luck demands on both knowledge and justification, and it turns out that our beliefs about the moral status of our prospective actions are almost never able to satisfy these demands if objective act consequentialism is true. This kind of applied moral skepticism introduces problematic limits on our ability to use objective act consequentialism’s explanatory power as evidence for its truth. This is, in part, a product of higher-order defeat as I explain in the final section. There is, however, a silver lining for objective act consequentialists. For there is at least one type of objective act consequentialism, prior existence consequentialism, that is poised to avoid at least some of the epistemic problems discussed in this paper

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