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. (shrink)

According to the modal account of luck it is a matter of luck that p if p is true at the actual world, but false in a wide‐range of nearby worlds. According to the modal account of risk, it is risky that p if p is true at some close world. I argue that the modal accounts of luck and risk do not mesh well together. The views entail that p can be both maximally risky and maximally lucky, but there (...) is nothing which is both maximally lucky and maximally risky. I offer a novel theory of risk that fits together with the modal account of luck and demonstrate that it is both extensionally and formally superior to extant proposals. (shrink)

Three philosophical accounts of risk dominate the contemporary literature. On the probabilistic account, risk has to do with the probability of a disvaluable event obtaining; on the modal account, it has to do with the modal closeness of that event obtaining; on the normic account, it has to do with the normalcy of that event obtaining. The debate between these accounts has proceeded via counterexample-trading, with each account having some cases it explains better than others, and some cases that it (...) cannot explain at all. In this article, we attempt to break the impasse between the three accounts of risk through a shift in methodology. We investigate the concept of risk via the method of conceptual reverse-engineering, whereby a theorist reconstructs the need that a concept serves for a group of agents in order to illuminate the shape of the concept: its intension and extension. We suggest that risk functions to meet our need to make decisions that reduce disvalue under conditions of uncertainty. Our project makes plausible that risk is a pluralist concept: meeting this need requires that risk takes different forms in different contexts. But our pluralism is principled: each of these different forms are part of one and the same concept, that has a ‘core-to-periphery’ structure, where the form the concept takes in typical cases (at its ‘core’) explains the form it takes in less typical cases (at its ‘periphery’). We then apply our findings to epistemic risk, to resolve an ambiguity in how ‘epistemic risk’ is standardly understood. (shrink)

We are witnessing a certain tendency in epistemology to account for the anti-luck intuition in terms of risk. I.e., instead of the traditional anti-luck diagnosis of Gettier cases and fake barn cases, a new anti-risk diagnosis seems to be preferable by many. My goal in this paper is twofold: first, I contribute to motivate that drift; and second, I defend that we ought to partially resist it. An anti-risk diagnosis is valid and preferable for fake barn cases, but we still (...) need an anti-luck diagnosis for classic Gettier cases. The paper thus defends the Solomon-like result that we need both concepts—epistemic luck and epistemic risk—to deal with all the cases where knowledge is undermined. (shrink)

My interest is in how shifting from an anti-luck epistemology to an anti-risk epistemology can enable us to make sense of some important epistemic phenomena. After rehearsing the more general arguments for preferring anti-risk epistemology over its anti-luck cousin, I argue that a further advantage of this transition lies in how it puts us in a better position to understand certain trade-offs with regard to epistemic risk. In particular, there can be ways of forming beliefs that are epistemically low risk (...) along one axis of evaluation while being epistemically high risk along another axis of evaluation. I further show how this idea plays out in terms of collaborative inquiries, where the framework provided by anti-risk epistemology enables us to understand how epistemic risk can be distributed across such a collective enterprise and thereby effectively managed. (shrink)

Epistemic risk is of central importance to epistemology nowadays: one common way in which a belief can fail to be knowledge is by being formed in an epistemically risky way, that is, a way that makes it true by luck. Recently, epistemologists have been expanding this rather narrow conception of risk in every direction, except arguably the most obvious one—to enable it to accommodate the increasingly commonplace thought that knowledge has an irreducibly social dimension. This paper fills this lacuna by (...) bringing issues of epistemic injustice to bear on epistemic risk. In particular, it draws on the phenomenon of white ignorance, to sketch a more social notion of epistemic risk, on which the interests of one's epistemic community partly determine whether a belief‐forming procedure is epistemically risky. (shrink)