Filozofija i drustvo 2011 Volume 22, Issue 1, Pages: 89-102
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1101089L
Full text ( 356 KB)
Externalism, skepticism and epistemic luck
Lazović Živan (Odeljenje za filozofiju, Filozofski fakultet, Beograd)
This paper deals with the concept of epistemic luck and its place within
wider philosophical debates on knowledge and skepticism. Philosophers
involved in these debates share an intuition that knowledge excludes luck.
Starting from Prichard’s modal definition of luck and his distinction between
two varieties of epistemic luck, namely veridic and reflective, the paper
explores the internalist and externalist prospects for avoiding epistemic
luck and skepticism. Externalism seems to be capable of both coping with the
Gettier-type cases and eliminating at least veridic epistemic luck by
introducing the so-called safety condition for knowledge. As such, it also
responds to some versions of skepticism as the safety condition explains how
it is possible to acquire knowledge without proving that the well known
skeptical alternatives (e.g. a brain-in-a-vat) are false. Thus, even though
it does not eliminate the reflective epistemic luck or meta-epistemological
skeptical challenge, the externalist approach to knowledge looks more
plausible than the internalist, especially because it may allow an
internalist justification to play its due role in acquiring knowledge.
Keywords: knowledge, skepticism, veridic epistemic luck, reflective epistemic luck, internalism, externalism