Anti-luck (too Weak) Virtue Epistemology

Duncan Pritchard (et al. 2010, 2012a, 2012b) has recently shifted his view from an account that primarily understands knowledge in terms of the safety principle (a view mainly developed in his 2005 monograph on epistemic luck) to an ‘impure’ variety of virtue epistemology, which combines the safety principle with a weakened virtue-theoretic condition, a view that he calls anti-luck virtue epistemology. This paper argues that anti-luck virtue epistemology is not sufficient for knowledge. Section 1 explains why Pritchard thinks that safety is not sufficient for knowledge. Section 2 explains why he adopts a weakened virtue-theoretic condition. Section 3 interprets anti-luck virtue epistemology as the conjunction of safety and the virtue-theoretic condition, and presents some counterexamples. Section 4 interprets anti-luck virtue epistemology as a mixed condition of safety and the virtue-theoretic condition, and presents some counterexamples. Section 5 raises a problem for any virtue-theoretic account of knowledge: the direction of fit problem.