Knowledge, Luck, and Virtue

Abstract

The Gettier Problem is conceived in a specific fashion as the problem of offering an informative (but not necessarily reductive) Gettier-proof analysis of knowledge. A solution is offered to this problem via anti-luck virtue epistemology. This is an account of knowledge which incorporates both an anti-luck condition and a virtue condition, and which is thereby able to avoid problems that face some of the main competing accounts of knowledge, particularly those offered by proponents of robust virtue epistemology. In particular, it is able to accommodate the epistemic dependence of knowledge on external factors, where this has both a positive and a negative aspect. Relatedly, it can also avoid the problem posed by epistemic twin earth cases. Anti-luck virtue epistemology is then motivated and defended in light of a range of objections, in order to demonstrate its potential as a resolution to the Gettier Problem, so conceived.