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Pritchard, Luck, Risk, and a New Problem for Safety-Based Accounts of Knowledge

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Abstract

In this paper, I develop a serious new dilemma involving necessary truths for safety-based theories of knowledge, a dilemma that I argue safety theorists cannot resolve or avoid by relativizing safety to either the subject’s basis or method of belief formation in close worlds or to a set of related or sufficiently similar propositions. I develop this dilemma primarily in conversation with Duncan Pritchard’s well-known, oft-modeled safety-based theories of knowledge. I show that Pritchard’s well-regarded anti-luck virtue theory of knowledge and his recently proposed (allegedly superior) anti-risk virtue theory of knowledge clearly succumb to the dilemma, and so they are inadequate as they stand. If Pritchard’s safety-based theories of knowledge are shown to be inadequate by the dilemma that is developed in this paper, then a number of other safety-based theories of knowledge (e.g., Beddor and Pavese’s, Luper’s, Dutant’s, early Pritchard’s, and others) look to be in jeopardy in this connection as well.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, I am making two assumptions. First, I am assuming that knowledge is fallible. Second, I am making the methodological assumption that intuitions about cases are a reliable guide to an analysis of knowledge.

  2. Exceptions here include, among others, Christoph Kelp (2016), Peter Baumann (2012), Alvin Goldman (2009), Stephen Hetherington (2011), and Crispin Sartwell (1992).

  3. For some discussion of other notions of epistemic luck, see Mylan Engel (2011).

  4. It is worth noting that safety is not Pritchard’s original conception of safety. For his original conception of safety, see Pritchard (2004; 2005: 163). For some criticism of Pritchard’s original conception of safety, see John Greco (2007).

  5. Last theorem involves certain features that also appear in a distinct example in Guido Melchior (2021: 719).

  6. Take note that while there is a defeater present in last theorem, specifically the proposition that Fermat’s last theorem is listed as a theorem by mistake in the textbook, notice that a defeater of this sort being present in last theorem is compatible with knowledge according to ALV, since ALV does not include a no-defeaters condition on knowledge. And, at any rate, it might be that the defeater in last theorem is defeated by the fact that Fermat’s last theorem really is a theorem of mathematics. Assuming that defeated defeaters do not preclude knowledge, then, it might be that such a defeater is not going to be the reason that Eddie does not know Fermat’s last theorem in any case.

  7. Melchior (2017) raises some real worries for, inter alia, Miščević’s strategy in this connection.

  8. Thanks to Bob Beddor for bringing this point to my attention.

  9. Although there are also popular probabilistic accounts of risk, see, e.g., S.O. Hansson (2004; 2014), that is not how Pritchard understands risk in anti-risk virtue epistemology.

  10. A realistic risk is one that “could credibly occur” (Pritchard, 2015b: 438).

  11. Take note that risk is both relativized to the subject’s basis or method and to a set of related propositions.

  12. This view has been endorsed by Pritchard (2004; 2005), Dutant (2016), and others.

  13. Luper (1987: 583–4, 587) defends a view like this.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Florida, 331 Griffin-Floyd Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32606, USA

    James Simpson

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Simpson, J. Pritchard, Luck, Risk, and a New Problem for Safety-Based Accounts of Knowledge. Acta Anal (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-024-00591-6

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