Chapter 10 - In defence of modest anti-luck epistemology

Summary

There are two competing ways of understanding the anti-luck condition in the contemporary literature. Call the safety principle the claim that knowledge entails safe belief, and call the sensitivity principle the claim that knowledge entails sensitive belief. Modest anti-luck epistemology merely endorses the safety principle and hence argues that safety is a key necessary condition for knowledge. A range of putative counterexamples have been put forward to the idea that knowledge entails safety, and thus to the view that we are here characterizing as modest anti-luck epistemology. This chapter argues for three main claims. First, that safety offers the best rendering of the anti-luck condition. Second, that safety is merely necessary, and not sufficient for knowledge. Third, that the main counterexamples offered to the necessity of safety and thus to modest anti-luck epistemology, do not hit their target.