Lucky Achievement: Virtue Epistemology on the Value of Knowledge

Ratio 31 (3):303-311 (2018)
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Abstract

Virtue epistemology argues that knowledge is more valuable than Gettierized belief because knowledge is an achievement, but Gettierized belief is not. The key premise in the achievement argument is that achievement is apt (successful because competent) and Gettierized belief is inapt (successful because lucky). I first argue that the intuition behind the achievement argument is based wrongly on the fact that ‘being successful because lucky’ implicates ‘being not competent enough’. I then offer an argument from moral luck to argue that virtue epistemologists should maintain that knowledge is no more valuable than Gettierized belief.

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Tsung-Hsing Ho (何宗興)
National Chung Cheng University

Citations of this work

Doubts about Duty as a Secondary Motive.Jessica Isserow - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (2):276-298.

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References found in this work

Epistemic Luck.Duncan Pritchard - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Knowing Full Well.Ernest Sosa - 2010 - Princeton University Press.
The nature and value of knowledge: three investigations.Duncan Pritchard - 2010 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Alan Millar & Adrian Haddock.

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