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Chapter 9 - Anti-risk Virtue Epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2020

By
Duncan Pritchard
Edited by
Christoph Kelp  and
John Greco
Christoph Kelp
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
John Greco
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Support is canvassed for a new way of approaching some core epistemic issues: anti-risk epistemology. It is explained how anti-risk epistemology differs from anti-luck epistemology by examining some of the subtle (but epistemologically significant) differences between the notions of luck and risk. It is argued that anti-risk epistemology, while essentially an adaption of anti-luck epistemology, can nonetheless resolve some motivational issues that face the latter proposal. In the process, it can provide other important benefits, such as enabling a broader range of epistemic assessments, including capturing the complexity of some important epistemic assessments involving collaborative inquiry. Our ultimate concern, however, is to examine how anti-risk epistemology fits into a wider virtue-theoretic account of knowledge, one that replaces anti-luck virtue epistemology with anti-risk virtue epistemology. As we will see, the latter proposal inherits all the strengths of the former but none of its flaws. It is also better placed to explain why knowledge is never compatible with unsafe belief, and to provide us with a diagnostic handle on the path taken by post-Gettier epistemology.

Keywords

anti-luck epistemologyanti-risk epistemologyepistemologyluckknowledgerisksafetyvirtue epistemology
Type
Chapter
Information
Virtue Theoretic Epistemology
New Methods and Approaches
 , pp. 203 - 224
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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