Gettier Problem Research Articles

Moral Luck and the Professions

This paper examines the phenomenon of moral luck and how it can effect professional practice. Using both Thomas Nagel's and Ber nard William's exposition on moral luck, this paper first demonstrates the close relationship between moral luck and epistemic luck. Then, drawing on some of the lessons one might learn from the epistemologist's treat ment of epistemic luck, particularly in the debate between internalists and externalists in epistemology, strategies are developed that profes sionals and professional organizations might use to avoid and/or mitigate the problem moral luck presents to professional practice. Examples from various professions?the military, engineering, medicine, journalism, business?are use to illustrate both the problem of moral luck and the strategies useful in avoiding it.

A Pragmatic Phenomenalist Account of Knowledge

ABSTRACTRobert Brandom argues for a “pragmatic phenomenalist account” of knowledge. On this account, we should understand our notion of justification in accordance with a Sellarsian social practice model, and there is nothing more to the phenomenon of knowledge than the proprieties of takings-as-knowing. I agree with these two claims. But Brandom's proposal is so sketchy that it is unclear how it can deal with a number of much-discussed problems in contemporary epistemology. The main purpose of this article is to develop and defend a pragmatic phenomenalist account of knowledge by resolving those problems. I argue, in particular, that this account can accommodate both the lesson of the Gettier problem and the lesson of reliabilism simultaneously.

Armchair luck: Apriority, intellection and epistemic luck

The paper argues that there is such a thing as luck in acquisition of candidate apriori beliefs and knowledge, and that the possibility of luck in this “armchair” domain shows that definitions of believing by luck thatp offered in literature are inadequate, since they mostly rely on the possibility of it being the case that not-p. Whenp is necessary, such a definition should be supplemented by one pointing to variation in belief, not in the fact believed. Thus the paper suggests a focus upon the agent and her epistemic virtue in the account of epistemic luck in general.

Review: Epistemic Luck

Review: Epistemic Luck

Epistemic luck and the generality problem

Epistemic luck has been the focus of much discussion recently. Perhaps the most general knowledge-precluding type is veritic luck, where a belief is true but might easily have been false. Veritic luck has two sources, and so eliminating it requires two distinct conditions for a theory of knowledge. I argue that, when one sets out those conditions properly, a solution to the generality problem for reliabilism emerges.

GETTIER AND FACTIVITY IN INDO-TIBETAN�EPISTEMOLOGY

The similarities between contemporary externalist theories of knowledge and classical Indian and Tibetan theories of knowledge are striking. Drawing on comparisons with Timothy Williamson's recent work, I address related topics in Indo-Tibetan epistemology and show that correct analysis of these issues requires externalist theories of mind and knowledge. The topics addressed range from a discussion of possible Gettier cases in the Tibetan philosophical tradition to an assessment of arguments for and against the existence of factive mental states/events that fail to be knowledge states/events. I conclude by explaining how these matters in Indian and Tibetan epistemology can inform us about the viability of externalist epistemologies of the sort articulated by Williamson.

Foucault Contra Habermas

Both Habermas and Foucault are concerned about the domination of scientific knowledges in modern western societies. They critique science so as to open up space for other knowledges. Despite these similarities, the kinds of critique they carry out differ from each other in a fundamental way. This paper examines the differences of their approaches to knowledge and power. I suggest that Habermas's critique of science can be considered in terms of a juridical model which is guided by the question of how to submit science to the rules of right. ' For him, when science operates within the limits of its own domain, it is seen as lawful, as legitimate; when science transgresses the boundary and invades the domains of others, it is seen as unlawful, as illegitimate. In other words, science is unproblematic when it operates according to the rules of right. In portraying an internal relation between reason and science, Habermas's discourse model further represents science in itself as unproblematic. While science may lend itself to the formation of ideologies and fall prey to power, it is not regarded as internally linked to power, but rather to truth and reason. Foucault's analysis, I contend, can be considered in terms of a strategic model which focuses not so much on the question of right, but rather on the mechanisms through which effects are produced.2 Instead of fixing the legitimacy of science or asking what is the proper domain of a certain Foucault examines the role of certain knowledges in the production of effects of power. From this perspective, he sees that on the one hand, produces knowledges and on the other hand, these knowledges produce effects. That is, there is a mutual production between knowledge and power. Nevertheless, one may ask: what the novelty of Foucault's analysis is, for Habermas could not have overlooked this mutual production of knowledge and power. Habermas is certainly aware of the fact that in late capitalist societies, science lends support to state domination and thus produces effects. On the other hand, he would not deny that the state might encourage the development of science to serve its own domination, and hence there is power's production of knowledge. If Habermas could not be blind to the mutual production of knowledge and power, what challenges does Foucault's analysis pose to Habermas? I argue that Foucault and Habermas have very different views about the ways in which knowledge relates to power. In order to see the challenges that Foucault's work poses to Habermas's theory, one has to look more closely into Foucault's analysis of and knowledge. When Foucault says power produces knowledge, his point is not simply that power, as an external force, encourages knowledge by applying and using it for its own purpose. Instead Foucault shows that constitutes the internal condition of the possibility of certain knowledges. Similarly, when Foucault sees knowledge from a strategic model as part of the totality of means by which is exercised, he does not treat those knowledges as external to the effects produced. Instead they form the internal condition of power, without which the production of effects would not be possible. In contrast to Habermas, Foucault demonstrates that there is an internal rather than external relation between knowledge and power. If knowledge is internally linked to power, it is knowledge rather than false ideologies that produces effects. It is true or truth, that implies power. The problem is no longer falsehood or ideology, but truth. Foucault's work, therefore, not only problematizes but also truth. If truth is problematized, that is, if truth is internally linked to power, what are we going to do with truth? In this essay I shall first discuss Habermas's critique of knowledge. Then I shall examine the challenges that Foucault's analysis of power-knowledge poses to Habermas's critique. …

The underdetermination argument for brain-in-the-vat scepticism

In his recent book, Epistemic Luck, Duncan Pritchard writes: 'all parties to the dispute agree that the evidence we have in favour of our everyday beliefs does not prefer those beliefs over their sceptical alternatives.' And again: 'Everyone agrees that we lack internalist justification for believing even everyday propositions' (2005: 206, 211). The basis for this agree ment is the compatibility of all our sensory evidence with sceptical alter natives such as the hypothesis that we are all brains in vats. Compatibility appears to equate with lack of favour. Pritchard does allow an externalist kind of knowledge that we are not brains in vats. This kind of knowledge requires only true belief that meets a safety condition: belief that remains true in most or nearly all nearby possible worlds. Assuming that the world in which we are brains in vats is distant, our belief that we are not such remains true in nearby possible worlds (Pritchard 2005: 75). But Pritchard holds that we lack the more satisfying and satisfactory internalist knowl edge of the denial of radical sceptical hypotheses, and he claims that all epistemologists agree. They agree that we lack accessible evidential sup port for our belief that we are not brains in vats. Lacking evidence, we cannot claim such knowledge or argue for it (2005: 77). In short, we lack justification for this belief (2005: 104, 112, 117, 119). Does agreement among all in the present tight circle of epistemologists really indicate that we have no evidential reason to prefer belief in our physical world to the brain-in-the-vat hypothesis? Consider the following. Imagine the context of a murder trial, in which everyone agrees that the standards for knowledge of guilt are set very high. The prosecution's evidence consists of five witnesses, none with a personal interest in the outcome, who testify that they saw at close range the butler stab his employer with a kitchen knife repeatedly after a heated argument about his salary and duties, the bloody knife having been found shortly after ward among the butler's belongings with his fingerprints on it. The defence attorney points out that all this evidence is perfectly compatible with the employer's wife having hired a close look-alike to the butler, perhaps an unknown twin, to impersonate him, commit the murder, find a kitchen knife with his fingerprints on it, smear it with the victim's blood, and plant it in the butler's room so as to implicate him in the crime. He argues that since the jurors cannot rule out this possibility, since they cannot cite any

Crimes, Frontiers, and Stories of Extermination: Violence in Argentine Literature

Crimes, Frontiers, and Stories of ExterminationViolence in Argentine Literature Carolina Rocha (bio) The Corpus Delicti: A Manual of Argentine Fictions. By Josefina Ludmer . Translated by Glen S. Close . (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. Pp. 400. $39.95 cloth.) La Violencia del Azar: Ensayos Sobre Literatura Argentina. By Cristina Iglesia . (Buenos Aires: Fondo Cultural Económica, 2003. Pp. 200.) Sueños de Exterminio: Homosexualidad y Representación en la Literatura Argentina Contemporánea. By Gabriel Giorgi . (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo, 2004. Pp. 204.) In recent years, the study of violence has occupied scholars who specialize in Latin American literature: they have either examined works that deal with the topic of political, class, ethnic, and sexual aggression, or they have scrutinized the creation and propagation of discourses that used violence as a technique, muffling or censoring certain groups. In other words, literary critics have looked at the ways in which power is exercised within societies dividing its members, and the silencing of dissident and/or minority voices as reflected in literary works. In addition, the study of borders or lines that separate or make contact possible between opposing groups has also been addressed. For the specific case of Argentine literature, I have in mind Letrados Iletrados (1999), a collection of essays compiled by Ana María Zubieta. Parallel to this interest in violence, attention has also focused on the formation of national communities, commonly taken as political bodies. This metaphor of countries as political bodies has allowed the representation of national communities as targets where violence can be inflicted, or as perpetrators prone to generate internal and external aggression. These two ideas, violence as a physical and/or mental form of aggression inflicted on certain groups and the exclusions and omissions that take place during the process of national self-definition, are analytical concerns prevalent in the three books reviewed. [End Page 157] A common focus of these books dealing with nineteenth and twentieth-century Argentine literature is the examination of literary works that not only purport to mirror the conventional culture of the nation, but also of texts that transgress those dominant discourses. Therefore, these authors aim to shed light on the ways violence has shaped Argentine society as well as its literature. The first two books reviewed in this essay concentrate primarily on nineteenth-century literary works that intended to found both the nation and a national literary tradition. Because of the foundational role of nineteenth-century literature, twentieth-century literary works are constantly in dialogue with their precursors, and the tracing of those discussions is tackled—albeit in different degrees—in these three books. The first book examined here, The Corpus Delicti: A Manual of Argentine Fictions, is the long-awaited translation of Josefina Ludmer's El cuerpo del delito (1999). Displaying her broad knowledge of Argentine intellectual history and literary criticism, Ludmer begins her study by identifying the central place of crime as a tool to found a culture within the framework of a capitalist economy. Because crimes generate a web of relationships between victims and criminals, Ludmer holds that they articulate beliefs, words, and bodies and also allow an examination of the validity and implementation of laws. Her analysis starts with fictional novels published after 1880, when Argentina was organized by liberal authorities and entered into the world market as an import economy. In the first chapter "From Transgression to Crime," Ludmer argues that because of the passing of education and civil registry laws, fictional and autobiographical works of this period consisted predominantly of stories of education and marriage. To illustrate her argument, Ludmer examines Miguel Cané's Juvenilia (1884) and La gran aldea (1884) by Lucio V. López and concludes that "the patricians of the cultural coalition define their national identity as at once political and familial" (24). Ludmer aptly clarifies that the stories of education by Cané and López represent the two political positions of the ruling elite, namely, the porteñista and the provincial viewpoints. She reads the gesture of peaceful coexistence of these contrasting perspectives among members of the liberal elite—an original development in Argentine politics that up to that moment had been plagued by civil strife and...

Problems for virtue theories in epistemology

This paper identifies and criticizes certain fundamental commitments of virtue theories in epistemology. A basic question for virtues approaches is whether they represent a ‘third force’– a different source of normativity to internalism and externalism. Virtues approaches so-conceived are opposed. It is argued that virtues theories offer us nothing that can unify the internalist and externalist sub-components of their preferred success-state. Claims that character can unify a virtues-based axiology are overturned. Problems with the pluralism of virtues theories are identified – problems with pluralism and the nature of the self; and problems with pluralism and the goals of epistemology. Moral objections to virtue theory are identified – specifically, both the idea that there can be a radical axiological priority to character and the anti-enlightenment tendencies in virtues approaches. Finally, some strengths to virtue theory are conceded, while the role of epistemic luck is identified as an important topic for future work.

Anti-luck epistemology

In this paper, I do three things. First, I offer an overview of an anti-luck epistemology, as set out in my book, Epistemic Luck (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005). Second, I attempt to meet some of the main criticisms that one might level against the key theses that I propose in this work. And finally, third, I sketch some of the ways in which the strategy of anti-luck epistemology can be developed in new directions.

Safety and epistemic luck

There is some consensus that for S to know that p, it cannot be merely a matter of luck that S’s belief that p is true. This consideration has led Duncan Pritchard and others to propose a safety condition on knowledge. In this paper, we argue that the safety condition is not a proper formulation of the intuition that knowledge excludes luck. We suggest an alternative proposal in the same spirit as safety, and find it lacking as well.

Worries about Pritchard’s safety

I take issue with two claims that Duncan Pritchard makes in his recent book, Epistemic Luck. The first concerns his safety-based response to the lottery problem; the second his account of the relationship between safety and intellectual virtue.

Thinking about luck

Luck looms large in numerous different philosophical subfields. Unfortunately, work focused exclusively on the nature of luck is in short supply on the contemporary analytic scene. In his highly impressive recent book Epistemic Luck, Duncan Pritchard helps rectify this neglect by presenting a partial account of luck that he uses to illuminate various ways luck can figure in cognition. In this paper, I critically evaluate both Pritchard’s account of luck and another account to which Pritchard’s discussion draws our attention—viz., that due to Nicholas Rescher. I also assess some novel analyses of luck that incorporate plausible elements of Pritchard’s and Rescher’s accounts.

Epistemic Luck. By Duncan Pritchard

Epistemic Luck. By Duncan Pritchard

RELIABILISM AND SAFETY

Abstract:Duncan Pritchard has recently highlighted the problem of veritic epistemic luck and claimed that a safety‐based account of knowledge succeeds in eliminating veritic luck where virtue‐based accounts and process reliabilism fail. He then claims that if one accepts a safety‐based account, there is no longer a motivation for retaining a commitment to reliabilism. In this article, I delineate several distinct safety principles, and I argue that those that eliminate veritic luck do so only if at least implicitly committed to reliabilism.

Epistemic Luck ‐ By Duncan Pritchard

Epistemic Luck ‐ By Duncan Pritchard

Gettier Cases without False Lemmas?

Examples cited by Feldman, Lehrer and others of true beliefs that are justified, but not by false lemmas, turn out under scrutiny to involve false lemmas after all. In each case there is an EG inference whose conclusion is unwarranted unless its base instance is false. A shift to non-deductive justification does not avert the difficulty. The relation of this result to non-inferential Gettier cases is suggested.

Greco on Reliabilism and Epistemic Luck

I outline Greco’s response to the Pyrrhonian challenge to epistemic externalist theories of knowledge and offer two points of criticism. I also argue, however, that there is an account of epistemic luck available which can cast some light on the dispute that Greco is concerned with, and which could, in principle at least, be regarded as being in the spirit of the proposal that Greco sets out.

Prospects for Epistemic Compatibilism

This paper argues that Sosa's virtue perspectivism fails to combine satisfactorily internalist and externalist features in a single theory. Internalism and externalism are reconciled at the price of creating a Gettier problem at the level of "reflective" or second-order knowledge. The general lesson to be learned from the critique of virtue perspectivism is that internalism and externalism cannot be combined by bifurcating justification and knowledge into an object-level and a meta-level and assigning externalism and internalism to different levels.