Anti-risk epistemology and negative epistemic dependence

Duncan Pritchard

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Citations (Scopus)
34 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Support is canvassed for a new approach to epistemology called anti-risk epistemology. It is argued that this proposal is rooted in the motivations for an existing account, known as anti-luck epistemology, but is superior on a number of fronts. In particular, anti-risk epistemology is better placed than anti-luck epistemology to supply the motivation for certain theoretical moves with regard to safety-based approaches to knowledge. Moreover, anti-risk epistemology is more easily extendable to epistemological questions beyond that in play in the theory of knowledge specifically. A key advantage of the view, however, is that anti-risk epistemology fares much better than anti-luck epistemology when it comes to accounting for the phenomenon of negative epistemic dependence. In particular, anti-risk epistemology is ideally placed to explain why such epistemic dependence is incompatible with knowledge, even when the negative epistemic dependence in play is of a purely modal variety (as one finds in epistemic twin earth cases).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2879-2894
Number of pages16
JournalSynthese
Volume197
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2017. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Keywords

  • Epistemic dependence
  • Epistemic luck
  • Epistemic risk
  • Epistemic twin earth cases
  • Epistemology
  • Knowledge

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