Conclusive Reasons and Epistemic Luck

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (2):378-395 (2016)
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Abstract

What is it to have conclusive reasons to believe a proposition P? According to a view famously defended by Dretske, a reason R is conclusive for P just in case [R would not be the case unless P were the case]. I argue that, while knowing that P is plausibly related to having conclusive reasons to believe that P, having such reasons cannot be understood in terms of the truth of this counterfactual condition. Simple examples show that it is possible to believe P on the basis of reasons that satisfy the counterfactual, and still get things right about P only as a matter of luck. Seeing where this account of conclusive reasons goes wrong points to an important distinction between having conclusive reasons and relying on reasons that are in point of fact conclusive. It also has wider consequences for whether modal principles like sensitivity and safety can rule out the pernicious kind of epistemic luck, or the kind of luck that interferes with knowledge

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Tamar Lando
Columbia University

Citations of this work

Epistemology.Matthias Steup - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Epistemic Luck.Duncan Pritchard - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.

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