Virtue epistemology and epistemic luck

Robust virtue epistemology contrasts with modest virtue epistemology, which aims to offer, at most, a necessary condition on knowledge along virtue-theoretic lines. In outline, the guiding idea behind robust virtue epistemology is that there is more to knowledge than the conjunction of cognitive success and the exercise of cognitive agency (i.e., of a kind that might generate justification). In effect, what robust virtue epistemology is proposing is a particularly full-blooded way of thinking about the ability platitude. Robust virtue epistemology is a very attractive proposal, and not just because of the elegant way that it deals with the Gettier problem. The first horn concerns whether robust virtue epistemology offers an account of knowledge that is strong enough to exclude cases of knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. The challenge just presented to robust virtue epistemology alleges that the view is not strong enough, in that some cases involving knowledge-undermining epistemic luck get treated as genuine instances of knowledge.