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Anti-luck epistemology and the Gettier problem

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. I take it that what we are after when we seek an analysis of knowledge is one which is informative. Since circular analyses can nonetheless be informative, it follows that non-reductive analyses can potentially be adequate analyses. In principle, then, even a proponent of knowledge-first epistemology, like Williamson (2000), could offer a positive reply to this formulation of the Gettier problem. For more on the issue of what is required of an analysis of knowledge, see Zagzebski (1999), DePaul (2009), and Pritchard (2012d).

  2. I call this proposal anti-luck virtue epistemology. See, in particular, Pritchard (2009b, 2012a) and Pritchard et al. (2010, chap. 3). I further develop this proposal in Pritchard (forthcomingb).

  3. See Unger (1968) for what is probably the first account in the literature of veritic luck, though note that this nomenclature is, I believe, due to Engel’s (1992) discussion of Unger’s paper. See also Pritchard (2004, 2005).

  4. For discussion of this claim, see Pritchard (2004, 2005, 2007a, 2012a, c) and the recent exchange between Hetherington (2013) and Pritchard (2013).

  5. See Dutant (2010) for critical discussion of just how widespread a non-factive conception of the justification condition was at the time of Gettier’s article.

  6. Following McDowell (e.g., 1995)—who may well be inclined to defend the general claim that justification (qua condition on knowledge) is factive—in Pritchard (2012b) I defend the thesis that paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge are supported by reflectively accessible factive rational support.

  7. I say ‘almost’ because of some potential complications here, such as the possibility that certain types of defeaters might make even factive justification insufficient for knowledge, or the possibility that while factively justified belief suffices for knowledge, there is nonetheless a kind of knowledge which doesn’t require justification at all.

  8. Of course, it might not be a single condition but rather several conditions. For ease of expression, however, I will write as if it is a single condition that we are after (and, as we will see, in the end it is a single condition which solves this problem).

  9. See especially Pritchard (2005). See also Pritchard (2007a, 2012c).

  10. I defend the modal account of luck in a number of places. For my most recent defence of this view, see Pritchard (2014a). For my earlier defences of this proposal, see Pritchard (2004, 2005) and Pritchard and Smith (2004). For a helpful set of papers on the philosophy of luck, including some pieces which are critical of the modal account, see Pritchard and Whittington (2015).

  11. Notice that we are understanding the ordering of possible worlds in the standard way in terms of their similarity to the actual world. See especially Stalnaker (1968) and Lewis (1973).

  12. Notice that ‘not lucky’ is not the same thing as ‘unlucky’. The latter is itself a kind of luck, albeit bad luck. See also endnote 13.

  13. Note that I bracket here the further issue of when a lucky event counts as good or bad luck. Thus, when I say that an event is lucky this is not to characterize it either way on this score. My own view is that it is not part of the role of a theory of luck to pick out when lucky events constitute good or bad luck, though it would take me too far afield to argue for this claim here. See Pritchard (2014a) for more on this point. See also endnote 12.

  14. This is not to say that betting on a lottery is rational of course, only that it is not as irrational as betting on a normal event with astronomically long odds. Note that the slogan for the British National Lottery for a long time was ‘It could be you!’. This is clearly not the ‘could’ of probability, since in a probabilistic sense it couldn’t be you. It is rather the ‘could’ of modal nearness—i.e., if you play the lottery, then not much needs to change about the actual world in order for you to be a winner. This point was reinforced by the advertising campaign that used to go with this slogan, which featured various lottery ticket holders going about their daily lives with a golden finger continually hovering in the sky above them preparing to zap the lucky winner. The moral is that playing lotteries has the effect of making the possible world in which one is very rich a lot closer than it would ordinarily be. See Pritchard (2007b) for an exploration of one epistemological upshot of this point.

  15. I discuss the notion of risk in its own right, including how it relates to the notion of luck, in Pritchard (2014b). See also Pritchard (forthcominga).

  16. Note that for ease of expression I’ve put this point in terms of the acquisition of a true belief, but of course we can also talk of a belief being only luckily true in terms of what sustains that belief (i.e., where what leads to the acquisition of the true belief is very different to what at a later time sustains that true belief). This makes no material difference to the account on offer, and so I set this complication to one side in what follows. Note also that I am taking it for granted that when it comes to veritic epistemic luck we should understand a subject’s ‘not getting it right’ as equivalent to ‘getting it wrong’. While this is clearly not above dispute, it would take me too far afield to explore this issue here (but see endnote 16 for an indication of why I think this is the right way to proceed on this score).

  17. Indeed, I now think that the notion of epistemic risk is more fundamental to our thinking about knowledge than veritic epistemic luck, in that it is because we wish to avoid the former in our beliefs that we are concerned to eliminate the latter. See Pritchard (2014b) for more on this point. (I think this also explains why when we evaluate whether a true belief is subject to veritic epistemic luck we naturally consider whether there are close possible worlds where the same basis for that true belief leads to false belief, as opposed to merely non-belief. On this point, see also endnote 16).

  18. Safety-style principles have been offered by a number of authors, including Luper-Foy (1984; cf. Luper 2003), Sainsbury (1997), Sosa (1999), Williamson (2000), and Pritchard (2002, 2005, 2007a). Sensitivity-style principles have been offered by Dretske (1970, 1971), Nozick (1981), Roush (2005), Becker (2007), Black and Murphy (2007), and Black (2008). For an overview of the relative merits and demerits of these principles, see Pritchard (2008).

  19. Originally due to Chisholm (1977, p. 105).

  20. The claim that sensitivity principles struggle with inductive knowledge is originally due to Sosa (1999).

  21. See Greco (2007) for a clear statement of this dilemma.

  22. I first introduced the distinction between modest and robust anti-luck epistemology—or ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ anti-luck epistemology, as I have sometimes expressed this distinction—in Pritchard (2009b). See also Pritchard et al. (2010, chap. 3) and Pritchard (2012a).

  23. See Pritchard (2009b, 2012a) and Pritchard et al. (2010, chap. 3).

  24. For more on this point, see Pritchard (2009b, 2012a) and Pritchard et al. (2010, chap. 3).

  25. I’ve dealt with a range of other problems facing anti-luck epistemology in this regard—particularly in terms of putative counterexamples to the safety condition on knowledge—elsewhere. See especially Pritchard (2007a, 2009d, 2012c).

  26. See Goldman (1976), who credits the example to Carl Ginet.

  27. I first drew this distinction between environmental and intervening epistemic luck in Pritchard (2009b, chaps. 3–4). For further discussion of this distinction, see Pritchard (2009c, 2012a), Pritchard et al. (2010, chaps. 2–4), Kallestrup and Pritchard (2011, 2012, 2013).

  28. I think that the same diagnosis applies to Comesaña’s (2005, p. 397) ‘Halloween party’ case, in that it is also essentially a case of modalized environmental epistemic luck. My response to the WATER case is thus applicable, mutatis mutandis, to this case as well.

  29. See Widerker and McKenna (2006) for a recent helpful collection of papers on Frankfurt-style cases and their philosophical implications.

  30. For an argument in support of this general claim as it applies to cognitive agency in particular, see Kallestrup and Pritchard (2011). This offers an epistemic twin-earth case that considers two counterpart agents, one on earth and one on twin-earth, who are microphysical duplicates, and who have identical causal histories. These counterparts occupy not just identical causal environments but also environments which are identical in terms of what is normally the case. Both agents form a true belief that p on the same basis. The only difference between earth and twin earth is that on twin earth the modal environment is such that the subject could easily form a false belief on the same basis as in the actual world (this is not so on earth). We argue that there is no difference between the two subjects in terms of the extent to which their true beliefs are creditable to their cognitive agency. The moral, as in the Frankfurt-style cases, is that one’s purely modal environment has no bearing on attributions of (cognitive) agency.

  31. This is indeed just what Sosa (2007, chap. 5) does. See in particular his discussion of the ‘jokester’ case. I critically discuss Sosa’s reasons for ascribing knowledge in this case in Pritchard (2009a). See also Zagzebski (2001), who describes an epistemic Frankfurt-style case and goes on to attribute knowledge to the agent concerned. (Though note, as Comesaña (forthcoming) correctly points out, Zagzebski’s formulation of the example is unfortunate in that the subject’s basis for belief would be different in the case where external factors intervene. It is thus not a counterexample to anti-luck epistemology, since this involves a basis-relative formulation of safety). I introduce and discuss the distinction between robust and modest virtue epistemology—or, as I sometimes term the distinction, between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ virtue epistemology—in Pritchard (2009b, chaps. 3–4; 2009c, 2012a) and Pritchard et al. (2010, chaps. 2–4).

  32. As I explain in Pritchard (2012c), there is also a further diagnosis available to explain why we might have conflicting intuitions about cases like WATER, which is that read a certain way such cases involve not veritic epistemic luck but rather evidential epistemic luck, which as we noted above is compatible with knowledge.

  33. I describe the particular kind of anti-luck epistemology which holds that, roughly, knowledge is to be understood as safe cognitive success which is appropriately attributable to cognitive agency, as anti-luck virtue epistemology. See, for example, Pritchard (2009b, 2012a) and Pritchard et al. (2010, chap. 3). I think that more can said to motivate anti-luck epistemology over robust virtue epistemology. In particular, I’ve argued elsewhere that robust virtue epistemology (but not anti-luck epistemology) struggles to accommodate what I call the epistemic dependence of knowledge, which is the extent to which knowledge can be dependent upon factors outwith a subject’s cognitive agency. See especially Kallestrup and Pritchard (2013; cf. Kallestrup and Pritchard 2011, 2012).

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a conference on safety at Oxford University and at the ‘Getter at 50’ conference at the University of Edinburgh, both in 2013. Thanks to Julien Dutant, John Hawthorne, Clayton Littlejohn, Lisa Miracchi, Ernie Sosa, and Tim Williamson. Special thanks to Allan Hazlett for detailed comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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    Duncan Pritchard

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Pritchard, D. Anti-luck epistemology and the Gettier problem. Philos Stud 172, 93–111 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0374-0

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