Luck and Reasons

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, I will present a problem for reductive accounts of knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. By “reductive” I mean accounts that try to analyze epistemic luck in non-epistemic terms. I will begin by briefly considering Jennifer Lackey's (2006) criticism of Duncan Pritchard's (2005) safety-based account of epistemic luck. I will further develop her objection to Pritchard by drawing on the defeasible-reasoning tradition. I will then show that her objection to safety-based accounts is an instance of a more general problem with reductive accounts of epistemic luck. In short, they face a dilemma: they can either fail to vindicate the intuitive verdicts about cases or they can illicitly appeal to the epistemic vocabulary they are trying to reduce. The upshot is that we can only understand epistemic luck in terms of the assessment of the subject's reasons and we can't give a reductive account of that.