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Anti-luck epistemology and pragmatic encroachment

  • The epistemic significance of non-epistemic factors
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Abstract

A distinctive approach to the theory of knowledge is described, known as anti-luck epistemology. The goal of the paper is to consider whether there are specific features of this proposal that entails that it is committed to pragmatic encroachment, such that whether one counts as having knowledge significantly depends on non-epistemic factors. In particular, the plausibility of the following idea is explored: that since pragmatic factors play an essential role when it comes to the notion of luck, then according to anti-luck epistemology they must likewise play an essential role in our understanding of knowledge as well. It is argued that once anti-luck epistemology is properly understood—where this means, in turn, having the right account of luck in play—then this putative entailment to pragmatic encroachment does not go through.

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Notes

  1. Pritchard (2004, 2005, 2007, 2012a, b, 2015a, b), and Pritchard et al. (2010, chs. 1–4). Note that these days I express the view in terms of the closely related notion of risk, and hence argue for an anti-risk epistemology—see Pritchard (2015c, 2016, 2017a, 2020). Since nothing turns on the differences between luck and risk for our purposes, in what follows I will focus on the former. Relatedly, the defence of anti-luck epistemology offered here with regard to pragmatic encroachment will apply, mutatis mutandis, to anti-risk epistemology. For further discussion of how the notions of luck and risk are related to one another, see Pritchard (2015c). See also endnote 2.

  2. See especially Pritchard et al. (2010, chs. 1–4) and Pritchard (2012a, 2017b). As noted in endnote 1, these days I focus on the notion of risk rather than luck, and hence defend a closely related view I call anti-risk virtue epistemology.

  3. I will be explaining the motivations for this claim below. For a recent defence of the thesis that anti-luck epistemology is committed to pragmatic encroachment, see Ballantyne (2011).

  4. For some key defences of the pragmatic encroachment of knowledge, see Fantl and McGrath (2002, 2007, 2009), Hawthorne (2004), and Stanley (2005). For a recent survey of the literature on pragmatic encroachment in epistemology, see Fantl and McGrath (2011).

  5. For a recent critical exchange regarding the general idea that knowledge excludes luck, see Hetherington (2013) and Pritchard (2013).

  6. For more on the modal account of luck, see Pritchard (2005, ch. 6, 2014, 2019). See also Pritchard and Smith (2004). For further discussion of the notion of luck, including both defences of other proposals and critiques of the modal account, see Rescher (1990, 1995), Coffman (2007, 2009, 2015), Lackey (2008), Steglich-Peterson (2010), Levy (2011), McKinnon (2014), and Hales (2016).

  7. The modal account of luck follows the standard line of ordering possible worlds in terms of their similarity to the actual world (i.e., roughly, how much needs to change about the actual world to take one to the target possible world). See Stalnaker (1968) and Lewis (1973, 1987). For further defence of this account of possible worlds in the context of the modal account of luck—including such issues as the world order and border problems, and the relevance of determinism and indeterminism—see Pritchard (2005, ch. 6, 2014).

  8. Interestingly, Riggs (2007, 2009) argues that it can be a matter of luck that the sun rose this morning, even though there are no close possible worlds where it fails to rise. See Pritchard (2015c, §5) for a critical discussion of Riggs’ proposal in this regard.

  9. Note that Unger (1968) was in fact talking about the closely related notion of accidentality rather than luck in this regard. For a discussion of why the notions of luck and accident come apart, see Pritchard (2005, ch. 6).

  10. This example is, of course, from Chisholm (1977, p. 105).

  11. There are some complications in this regard—see Pritchard (2016)—though they aren’t relevant to our current discussion.

  12. For some key defences of safety, see Sainsbury (1997), Sosa (1999), and Williamson (2000). See also Pritchard (2002). For a comparative account of how anti-luck epistemology favours safety over sensitivity, see Pritchard (2008) and Black (2011).

  13. See, for example, Pritchard (2012b).

  14. This kind of proposal has been defended, in different guises, by Fantl and McGrath (2002, 2007, 2009), Hawthorne (2004), and Stanley (2005).

  15. The bank case is originally due to DeRose (1992), though it wasn’t employed in support of a pragmatic encroachment thesis about knowledge (but rather in support of a contextualist thesis regarding knowledge ascriptions).

  16. Henceforth I will drop the qualifier ‘about knowledge’, and take it as given that the pragmatic encroachment thesis specifically concerns knowledge (i.e., rather than another epistemic standing).

  17. For example, suppose one defends a reliability condition on knowledge. Is there a fact of the matter as to what the exact threshold of reliability is for this condition to be satisfied? That seems somewhat implausible, but it is hard to see how one could reject the idea of a precise threshold of reliability without thereby introducing some degree of vagueness into one’s epistemic condition on knowledge.

  18. See Ballantyne (2011) for a defence of the claim that pragmatic encroachment is a desirable consequence of anti-luck epistemology.

  19. See Pritchard (2004, 2005, ch. 6, 2006).

  20. For some prominent accounts of luck that follow me in incorporating a significance condition, see Coffman (2007, 2009, 2015), Riggs (2007, 2009), and Levy (2011).

  21. See Pritchard (2005, ch. 6).

  22. See Pritchard (2005, ch. 6) for my original defence of this point.

  23. It might matter in this regard whether one is using the notion of belief in a broad everyday sense or in a more specific fashion that is of particular relevance to epistemology. Very roughly, according to the latter usage belief is that propositional attitude that is a constituent part of propositional knowledge (especially rationally grounded propositional knowledge). The idea that believers must have some standing desire for their beliefs to be true—that their believing in some sense is aimed at the truth—looks far more plausible on the narrower conception of belief than when cast in terms of the everyday notion of belief (which might have no such implication). In any case, it is obviously the latter notion that is salient to our current concern with epistemic luck. For further discussion of this narrower notion of belief, and some of its epistemological ramifications, see Pritchard (2015b, part two, 2018). For more general discussion of the different notions of belief in play in the philosophical literature, see Stevenson (2002).

  24. See Ballantyne (2012) for further discussion of how he understands the relationship between luck and interests.

  25. For critical discussion of the idea that luck should be an agent-relative notion, see Pritchard (2014, §5). For some key agent-relative accounts of luck, see Coffman (2007, 2009, 2015), Riggs (2007, 2009), and Levy (2011). For a general discussion of agent-relativity and luck, see Milburn (2014).

  26. See especially Pritchard (2014). See also my discussion of the closely related notion of risk in this regard in Pritchard (2015c), which I also argue should not be partially cast in terms of a corresponding significance condition. For two distinct treatments of the relationship between luck and risk, see Broncano-Berrocal (2015) and Navarro (2019).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for Synthese for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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  1. University of California, Irvine, Irvine, USA

    Duncan Pritchard

  2. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Duncan Pritchard

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Pritchard, D. Anti-luck epistemology and pragmatic encroachment. Synthese 199, 715–729 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02703-2

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