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Safety and Necessity

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Abstract

Can epistemic luck be captured by modal conditions such as safety from error? This paper answers ‘no’. First, an old problem is cast in a new light: it is argued that the trivial satisfaction associated with necessary truths and accidentally robust propositions is a symptom of a more general disease. Namely, epistemic luck but not safety from error is hyperintensional. Second, it is argued that as a consequence the standard solution to deal with this worry, namely the invocation of content variation, fails. Third, it is considered whether the condition can serve some restricted theoretical role; the hypothesis is rejected. Finally, it is tentatively suggested that epistemic luck’s hyperintensionality derives from its being an explanatory notion, and an analogy is drawn with failures of probabilstic conceptions of explanation in the philosophy of science.

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Notes

  1. See Quine (1969), Lewis (1979), and Williamson (2000, 2009). See also Vetter (2014).

  2. For various formulations, see Sainsbury (1997), Sosa (1999, 2007, 2009), Williamson (2000, 2009), Luper (2003, 2006), Pritchard (2005, 2012), Manley (2007), Lasonen-Aarnio (2010), Hirvelä (2017), and Wedgwood (2018).

  3. See Neta & Rohrbaugh (2004), Comesaña (2005), Vogel (2007), Bogardus (2014), Baumann (2014, 2015), and Kelp (2019).

  4. Of late, Pritchard (2016, 2017) has argued that we should move to an anti-risk epistemology. On this view, we should be concerned not with whether it is lucky that S truly believes p, but rather whether S is at risk of falsely believing that p. The counterexamples that follow will hold mutatis mutandis for anti-risk epistemology. Thus anti-risk epistemologists should feel free to substitute talk of luck with risk, making the relevant modifications as we move forwards.

  5. For arguments for the compatibility of knowledge and luck, see Hetherington (1998, 2001, 2013). See also Baumann (2014).

  6. For discussion on the problem of necessary truths for modal requirements on knowing, see Roland & Cogburn (2011), Hales (2016), Hirvelä (2017), and Collin (2018).

  7. For interesting discussion, see Hirvelä (2017).

  8. They are parasitic on Lewis’ (2004, p. 13) definition of hyperintensional operators.

  9. See Jago (2014) and Nolan (2014).

  10. See Lackey (2008).

  11. See also Williamson (1994, 2009) and Manley (2007). A more precise formulation would allow variation in the methods also; since the arguments that follow are unaffected by appeal to similar methods, for purposes of simplicity I will proceed with content variation alone.

  12. Compare Hetherington (1998), Millikan (1984), Lycan (2006), and DeRose (1996).

  13. See Pritchard (2012).

  14. See Vaesen (2011), Greco (2010), Hirvelä (2018) and Gardiner (forthcoming).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Maria Lasonen-Aarnio, Jaakko Hirvelä, Geoff Keeling, Leia Hopf, Giada Frantantonio, Jason Konek, and Sanna Matilla for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 758539.

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    Niall J. Paterson

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Paterson, N.J. Safety and Necessity. Erkenn 87, 1081–1097 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00231-6

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