Moore’s paradox supports the principle of “metacoherence”, i.e., that if one categorically believes that P, one is committed to accepting that one knows that P. The principle raises puzzles about how, when one has justification for P, one also has justification for the claim that one knows P. I reject a skeptical answer as well as a bootstrapping answer, and I suggest that we typically have independent justification for the claim that we know P.

Descartes’s Evil Demon argument has been the subject of many reconstructions in recent analytic debates. Some have proposed a reconstruction with a principle of Infallibility, others with a principle of Closure of Knowledge, others with more original principles. In this paper, I propose a new reconstruction, which relies on the combination of two principles, namely the Meta-Coherence principle and the principle of Closure of Justification. I argue that the argument construed in this way is the best interpretation of what is (...) really at play in the Evil Demon intuition, and also that this argument is dialectically much stronger than previous reconstructions. If this is right, then the “Closure plus Meta-Coherence” argument is what anti-sceptics should really be attacking. (shrink)

One of the key supposed 'platitudes' of contemporary epistemology is the claim that knowledge excludes luck. One can see the attraction of such a claim, in that knowledge is something that one can take credit for - it is an achievement of sorts - and yet luck undermines genuine achievement. The problem, however, is that luck seems to be an all-pervasive feature of our epistemic enterprises, which tempts us to think that either scepticism is true and that we don't know (...) very much, or else that luck is compatible with knowledge after all. In this book, Duncan Pritchard argues that we do not need to choose between these two austere alternatives, since a closer examination of what is involved in the notion of epistemic luck reveals varieties of luck that are compatible with knowledge possession and varieties that aren't. Moreover, Pritchard shows that a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between luck and knowledge can cast light on many of the most central topics in contemporary epistemology. These topics include: the externalism/internalism distinction; virtue epistemology; the problem of scepticism; metaepistemological scepticism; modal epistemology; and the problem of moral luck. All epistemologists will need to come to terms with Pritchard's original and incisive contribution. (shrink)