Felix Culpa: Luck In Ethics And Epistemology

Abstract

Luck threatens in similar ways our conceptions of both moral and epistemic evaluation. This essay examines the problem of luck as a metaphilosophical problem spanning the division between subfields in philosophy. I first explore the analogies between ethical and epistemic luck by comparing influential attempts to expunge luck from our conceptions of agency in these two subfields. I then focus upon Duncan Pritchard's challenge to the motivations underlying virtue epistemology, based specifically on its handling of the problem of epistemic luck. I argue that (1) consideration of the multifold nature of the problem of epistemic luck to an adequate account of human knowledge drives us to a mixed externalist epistemology; and (2) the virtue-theoretical approach presents a particularly advantageous way of framing and developing a mixed externalist epistemology.Keywords: virtue epistemology, virtue theory, moral and epistemic luck, internalism and externalism, metaphilosophy. Felix Culpa! [Oh, most fortunate fault!]-St. Augustine

Two for the show: Anti-luck and virtue epistemologies in consonance

“…SeeAxtell (2003) for the first response, which was toPritchard (2003). See alsoPritchard (2002) for more about recent work on radical scepticism.…”

Epistemic Luck

“…16 16 For a more general defense of how virtue epistemology can address the problems of epistemic luck see Axtel (2003) and Greco (2003). …”

Anti-luck epistemology

“…For more on this issue, see the symposium on virtue epistemology and epistemic luck which featuresAxtell (2003),Greco (2003) andPritchard (2003b). See alsoAxtell (2007, DOI: 10.1007/s11229-006-9045-9) and Becker (forthcoming).…”