Abstract
Duncan Pritchard has, in the years following his (2005) defence of a safety-based account of knowledge in Epistemic Luck, abjured his (2005) view that knowledge can be analysed exclusively in terms of a modal safety condition. He has since (Pritchard in Synthese 158:277–297, 2007; J Philosophic Res 34:33–45, 2009a, 2010) opted for an account according to which two distinct conditions function with equal importance and weight within an analysis of knowledge: an anti-luck condition (safety) and an ability condition-the latter being a condition aimed at preserving what Pritchard now takes to be a fundamental insight about knowledge: that it arises from cognitive ability (Greco 2010; Sosa 2007, 2009). Pritchard calls his new view anti-luck virtue epistemology (ALVE). A key premise in Pritchard’s argument for ALVE is what I call the independence thesis; the thesis that satisfying neither the anti-luck condition nor the ability condition entails that the other is satisfied. Pritchard’s argument for the independence thesis relies crucially upon the case he makes for thinking that cognitive achievements are compatible with knowledge-undermining environmental luck—that is, the sort of luck widely thought to undermine knowledge in standard barn facade cases. In the first part of this paper, I outline the key steps in Pritchard’s argument for anti-luck virtue epistemology and highlight how it is that the compatibility of cognitive achievement and knowledge- undermining environmental luck is indispensible to the argument’s success. The second part of this paper aims to show that this compatibility premise crucial to Pritchard’s argument is incorrect.
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Notes
Let’s suppose she was listening attentively and had no evidence that would defeat the professor’s testimony.
It won’t matter for the present point whether we count Stoo as positively knowing, so we can set his situation aside.
And moreover, we would be well within our rights to present our observation about the luckiness of Steff’s having believed truly as itself a salient and entirely sufficient explanation if called upon to defend why she lacks knowledge in this case. Granted, other considerations could play a part in such an explanation, and that’s just fine.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this presentation of the point, as well as for pointing out that the idea that knowledge arises from ability gains traction from, as Greco has suggested, the idea that it helps us make sense of the way knowledge attributions are suggestive of credit attributions. For more on this point, see Greco (2003).
This would be the commitment of a typical, flatfooted safety-account of knowledge, though it should be pointed out that Pritchard (2005) took himself to be arguing for safety only as a strong necessary condition on knowledge. Further, it should be noted that in recent papers, Pritchard (2007) has slightly modified his original account of safety in order to accommodate what he takes to be, for his original formulation, a tension between Sosa’s (2000) garbage-chute style cases and lottery cases. His newer formulation claims: (SP*) S’s belief is safe iff in nearly all (if not all) nearby possible worlds in which S continues to form her belief about the target proposition in the same way as in the actual world the belief continues to be true (see here Pritchard 2007: 6).
We can’t credit Temp’s having gotten the truth to any cognitive ability Temp has. Consider here that Temp lacks any sort of voluntary control over (or even awareness of) his temperature belief-forming methods. After all, when one wants to know the temperature and finds it out, this is something we could credit to their abilities only if there was something the agent was able to do to learn the truth. There is clearly nothing True Temp can intend to do to learn the truth. The truth just ‘comes’ to him involuntarily, or so the example has it.
Here see Pritchard (2010, ch. 4: 50) for a discussion of RVE and how it differs from what he calls modest virtue epistemology.
Pritchard also appeals to some other considerations, most notably, considerations about the value of knowledge and about, following Craig (1990), the etiology of the concept of knowledge, which he draws from in making a presumptive case in favour of ALVE. It is beyond my aim here to challenge Pritchard on all these points. My focus will be instead on what function as core premises in his argument for ALVE–premises that his argument for ALVE depends on. And so I’m setting aside considerations he draws attention to about how his conclusion is compatible with certain theoretical desiderata.
My articulation of Pritchard’s ALVE as consisting two necessary conditions on knowledge is consistent with how Pritchard lays out the key elements of his view (Ch. 3, pp. 38–54) though I take note that he has at places backtracked away toward something much weaker. In § 3.5 of Ch. 3, Pritchard questions whether ALVE constitutes a reductive theory of knowledge. He admits that ‘the default reading of the view is as offering a reductive account’ (59) while also conceding that it’s possible to read his account as non-reductive. He opts ultimately to take ‘a liberal view on this issue’ (59). Given that he has not given any positive arguments for reading his account as non-reductive—he only mentioned the possibility that we might find that it could be (59)—I’m electing to read him more at face value, as offering at least two strong, separate, and non-mutually entailing necessary conditions on knowledge.
It is not being suggested here that beliefs are aimed, intentionally, at particular truths. The dictum “truth is the aim of belief” captures, in the sense that is relevant here, the idea that truth is the success criterion for belief. It is with this in mind that we might say that truth is the aim of belief. For a useful discussion on this point, see Engel (2005).
Lackey (2007, 2009) has interpreted this thesis slightly differently, as one that claims that, for cognitive achievement, the agent’s getting the truth on a given matter must be creditable to the agent herself—as opposed to the agent’s cognitive abilities. Lackey represents the cognitive achievement view this way when attacking it with testimonial-based counterexamples. I take it that the articulation I use here, which expresses what is to which the cognitive success is to be primarily credited as cognitive abilities, (as Pritchard thinks) more in line with the standard way of thinking about the view—as Greco represents it in his own defence of RVE and as Sosa defends his own view in his recent books that arose from his Locke Lectures.
It is worth noting here that Greco (2003, 2010) has argued that something like the VE-S is correct, as he takes it that cognitive achievement is sufficient for knowledge and also that the right connection between an agent’s exercise of intellectual ability and getting to the truth is enough to exclude knowledge undermining luck as well as vouchsafe cognitive achievement. There are a lot of merits to Greco’s view, however, a problem–which I have discussed elsewhere in Carter 2011) is that Greco endorses a “lack of control” account of luck, which makes both the notions of “credit” and “luck” turn upon his contextualist treatment of causal explanation. For a discussion of the downfalls of a lack-of-control account of luck, see Lackey (2008).
Pritchard (2010) uses the example of ‘Jenny’, a spin off Lackey’s original (2009) rejection of the necessity condition, to make his own nuanced argument against the necessity of cognitive achievement for knowledge. The key spot where Pritchard parts ways with Lackey is that Pritchard (unlike Lackey) takes the relevant notion of credit at play to be Greco’s—that cognitive achievements require that the relevant cognitive successes be primarily creditable to the agent’s intellectual abilities. Lackey makes her case against the necessity condition by supposing that for cognitive achievement what is relevant is that the cognitive access be attributable to the agent. For Pritchard’s discussion on these points, see his (2010, Ch. 2, § 2.6) (esp. pp. 38–39).
Respectively, in both cases.
That his belief ‘the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket’ was true owed entirely to the off-chance that a different man than he thought would get the job did (himself) and that he-being that man—happened to have 10 coins in his pocket.
For instance, the error of reasoning through a false belief.
Interestingly, this is a view that is shared to some degree by Sosa (2007) per his discussion of the kaleidoscope perceiver (Sosa 2007: 100–101). Sosa’s kaleidoscope perceiver has, according to Sosa, an apt belief (correct due to a manifestation of competence) despite the fact that the belief could have easily been false. His view is that animal knowledge, which only requires apt belief, can persist in such circumstances, whilst reflective knowledge, which is apt belief aptly noted (or apt belief in one’s first-order apt belief) is undermined.
If it did, then we might casually note that it’s a matter of situational luck that we have some true belief that we do. Nothing can be inferred from this fact regarding whether we count as knowing.
Sosa holds this view regarding reflective knowledge, though not animal knowledge. See Sosa (2007).
This is because what matters about the cognitive success with respect to what knowledge requires can be framed in terms of a dependence relation that stands between cognitive success and luck in a way analogous to the relevant dependence relation at play between cognitive success and ability.
This discussion is found in Sosa’s (2007) second lecture, “A Virtue Epistemology”.
The relevant cognitive success that matters for knowledge whether it depends on luck should be the same cognitive success that would matter for knowledge whether it owes to ability. In this sense, I am suggesting there should be a symmetry.
One success answerable to the description of “believing p truly” is articulated in terms of a “that clause” which takes the agent as the clause’s subject and for which the clause’s verb (has) is an action verb. So this success consists in someone having something. Another success consists in something being a certain way–namely my belief being true. This success is articulated in terms of a “that clause” that takes my belief as the clause’s subject and for which the clause’s verb (be) is a linking verb.
My italics.
Given what we concluded in the epistemic case when it was the agent-focused reading of the success condition on display, it is not surprising that in this case, which features an analogous sort of environmental luck, the agent-focused articulation of the relevant success is one we can naturally attribute (primarily) to the archer’s abilities—generating an achievement that, as Pritchard, notes, seems entirely compatible with environmental luck that undermines the safety of the success.
That the shot he fired went in is not primarily creditable to his abilities. What is creditable to his abilities is that he hit a clean, well-struck shot, with good distance-control, in the direction of the pin.
Here, again, is the presentation of Pritchard’s Independence Thesis (which I have challenged) within the context of his master argument for ALVE.
Pritchard’s Master Argument for ALVE:
1. Ability (constraint) on knowledge (AC): S knows that p only if S’s getting to the truth about whether or not p results from the exercise of S’s cognitive ability (or abilities).
2. Anti-luck constraint (ALC): S knows that p only if S’s getting to the truth about whether or not p is not veritically lucky.
3. Independence: Satisfying either AC or ALC does not entail that the other is satisfied.
4. Therefore, anti-luck virtue epistemology: S knows that p only if: (i) AC is satisfied; (ii) ALC is satisfied.
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Acknowledgments
I am especially grateful to Emma C. Gordon and Duncan Pritchard for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also very grateful to the EPISTEME Epistemology Research group at the University of Geneva–especially Davide Fassio, Anne Meylan, Arturs Logins, Ariel Cecchi, Pascal Engel, Akiko Frischhut and Graham Peebles–for helpful comments and discussion.
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Carter, J.A. A Problem for Pritchard’s Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology. Erkenn 78, 253–275 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9315-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9315-x