Abstract
Some epistemologists hold that exploration and elaboration of the nature of luck will allow us to better understand knowledge. I argue this is a mistake.
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Notes
See Black (2011), for instance.
Milburn (manuscript) writes: “I am aware of no contemporary philosopher who gives an account of luck who is not motivated directly or indirectly by issues involving epistemic or moral luck.”
In a previous essay of mine (2011), I tried to challenge interventionists by arguing that one necessary condition on luck brings trouble for anti-luck epistemology. The basic idea was that once we think through the impact of a robust account of luck on anti-luck epistemology, we should think either that it’s not really luck that precludes knowledge or that knowledge is sensitive to “non-epistemic” factors and thus that “pragmatic encroachment” is true. I figured that anti-luck epistemologists would for the most part want to resist pragmatic encroachment, so I hoped the arguments might encourage them to rethink the place of luck in their theories. That was my first effort on behalf of non-interventionism. Here I try something different.
Riggs notes that “luck comes in degrees—it is not an all-or-nothing concept” (2007, p. 334). Pritchard observes that “[i]t is certainly the case that sometimes events occur which are so fortuitous that they appear to constitute a greater degree of luck than is usual” (2005, p. 142, note 11). See also Rescher (1995, pp. 211–212), Pritchard and Smith (2004, pp. 19–20), Levy (2011, p. 16), Ballantyne (2012, p. 320), and Church (2013: section 1).
See Riggs (2009).
It’s worth noting that Levy only defends the Mixed Account for what he calls “chancy luck.” He suggests that there is another type of luck—“non-chancy” luck—and it calls for a different analysis.
Levy writes: “...the proportion of nearby worlds in which an event which occurred in the actual world failed to occur gives us a metric by which to measure the degree of chanciness, and thereby of luckiness, of the event. The larger the proportion of nearby worlds in which the event did not occur, the chancier its occurrence in the actual world, and—other things equal—the luckier its occurrence” (2011, p. 16). See Church (2013: Section 1) for some complications for such a proposal for how the Modal Condition brings in degrees of luck. Since Church’s discussion focuses solely on the Modal Condition, even if his proposal for how the Modal Condition admits degrees of luck is correct, more remains to be said about how luck comes in degrees on the Modal and Mixed accounts. That’s because, on those accounts, the Significance Condition also helps fix degree of luck (see Pritchard and Smith (2004, pp. 19–20), for example).
Rescher (1995, pp. 211–212) gives a formula for computing the degree of luck. Degree of luck is a function of the event’s improbability and its significance. Rescher’s formula implies that a slightly improbable event that is rather significant could be equally lucky to a rather improbable event that is only slightly significant.
This case is borrowed from Coffman (forthcoming).
I am grateful to E.J. Coffman here.
There are of course different kinds of luck—moral, epistemic, distributive, and so on. We can assume that any kind of luck is a species member of the genus luck. But why think that my partial characterization of the “metaphysics” of luck—ideas concerning degrees of luck, how significance contributes to degrees of luck, and so on—accurately reflects each species in the genus? What if I have not identified traits of luck (the genus) but instead traits of a specific kind or kinds of luck? (Thanks to an anonymous referee for these questions.) I’ll make two brief points. First, merely raising these sensible questions doesn’t imply that the traits I’ve noted do not describe the genus. So far, I see no reason to deny the traits are genus-level traits. Second, even if I am wrong and the noted traits only describe some or other species of luck, those traits seem hold for the species of luck we’re interested in here: the luck some epistemologists claim to find in Gettier cases (“veritic” luck).
Church (2013) defends anti-luck infallibilism. Church says that “a sufficient standard of analysis of knowledge cannot allow for knowledge that is even marginally lucky.”
Thanks to Duncan Pritchard for suggesting an objection like this and to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to explore it in more detail.
Pritchard and Smith write: “A further advantage of employing [the Significance Condition] as a condition on luck is that it can account for a second sense in which luck comes in degrees which is different from that accommodated by [the Modal Condition]. In the case of [the Modal Condition], we capture degrees of luck in terms of how many near-by worlds the event in question obtains. A second sense in which luck admits of degrees, however, concerns the significance involved” (2004, p. 19). They illustrate their point: if a pair of equally modally fragile events could harm someone, but the second event would do more harm than the first, then the second would be greater (bad) luck than the first (2004, p. 20).
Ballantyne (2011) discusses the relationship between anti-luck epistemology and pragmatic encroachment.
Thanks to Ian Evans for suggesting this objection.
See Objection 3 and Reply 3 above for an important caveat on the basic idea. In brief: supposing that pragmatic encroachment is true, some changes in significance can eliminate knowledge—namely, changes that introduce high enough stakes. But I’ve proposed that we think of the change in significance in the arguments as not being great enough to create high stakes. So, even given pragmatic encroachment, not every change in significance can eliminate knowledge.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this question.
An anonymous referee suggested this objection.
Steven Hales suggested that if the arguments against inventionism in Sect. 2 succeed, then there is a successful intervention of luck in epistemology—those very arguments. By exploring luck’s nature, we have come to see that particular theories about knowledge fail. Clever enough! But interventionism, as I’ve used the term, is a view about how we can make progress on long-standing, luck-involving philosophical questions. If the arguments here sweep aside some recent attempts to understand knowledge, luck hasn’t intervened in any long-standing discussion. So, the non-inventionist arguments are not self-defeating.
Thanks to an anonymous referee here.
For comments and correspondence, I am grateful to E.J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, William Dyer, Ian Evans, Nathan King, Joshua Rasmussen, Lee Whittington, and two anonymous referees for this journal. I presented an earlier version of this essay at workshop at the University of Edinburgh in June 2013. Thanks to Lee Whittington for organizing the workshop and to those in attendance—especially Peter Graham, Steven Hales, Joe Milburn, Lisa Miracchi, Duncan Pritchard, Wayne Riggs, and Sabine Roeser—for helpful discussion.
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Ballantyne, N. Does luck have a place in epistemology?. Synthese 191, 1391–1407 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0334-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0334-9