Luck and the Control Theory of Knowledge

LUCK AND THE CONTROL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Fernando BRONCANO-BERROCAL Dipòsit legal: Gi. 247-2014 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/129460 Luck and the control theory of knowledge de Fernando Broncano està subjecta a una llicència de Reconeixement 4.0 Internacional de Creative Commons ©2013, Fernando Broncano-Berrocal LUCKANDTHECONTROLTHEORYOFKNOWLEDGE doctoral thesis fernando broncano-berrocal 2013 Fernando Broncano-Berrocal Luck and the Control Theory of Knowledge Doctoral Thesis, 2013 program: Ciències Humanes i de la Cultura supervisors: Joan Pagès (Universitat de Girona) Manuel Pérez Otero (Universitat de Barcelona) departament: Departament de Filosofia faculty: Facultat de Lletres university: Universitat de Girona Memòria presentada per optar al títol de doctor per la Universitat de Girona A mis padres I approach deep problems such as I do cold baths: fast in, fast out. That this is no way to get to the depths, to get deep enough, is the su- perstition of those who fear water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. Oh, the great cold makes one fast! Nietzsche (”la gaya scienza”) ABSTRACT This thesis presents a diagnosis of the problem of luck in epistemology and an analysis of the concept of knowledge. Part I gives an account of the ordinary concept of luck. Part II gives an account of the philosophical notion of epistemic luck and develops an original account of the concept of knowledge: the control theory of knowledge. RESUM Aquesta tesi presenta un diagnòstic del problema de la sort en epis- temologia i una anàlisi del concepte de coneixement. La primera part ofereix una teoria del concepte ordinari de sort. La segona part ofereix una teoria de la noció filosòfica de sort epistèmica i desenvolupa una teoria original del concepte de coneixement: la teoria del control. RESUMEN Esta tesis presenta un diagnóstico del problema de la suerte en epis- temología y un análisis del concepto de conocimiento. La primera parte ofrece una teoría del concepto ordinario de suerte. La segunda parte ofrece una teoría de la noción filosófica de suerte epistémica y desarrolla una teoría original del concepto de conocimiento: la teoría del control. vii PUBLICATIONS Some ideas appear in: Broncano-Berrocal, F. (2013). Lies and deception: A failed reconcil- iation. Logos & Episteme. An International Journal of Epistemology, 4, 227–230. Broncano-Berrocal, F. (forthcoming). Is safety in danger? Philosophia. ix DECLARATION El Dr. Joan Pagès Martínez de la Universitat de Girona i el Dr. Manuel Pérez Otero de la Universitat de Barcelona DECLAREM: Que el treball titulat Luck and the Control Theory of Knowledge, que presenta Fernando Broncano-Berrocal per a l’obtenció del títol de doctor, ha estat realitzat sota la meva direcció i que compleix els requisits per poder optar a Menció Internacional. I, perquè així consti i tingui els efectes oportuns, signo aquest docu- ment. Joan Pagès Manuel Pérez Otero Girona, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing this dissertation has been like making an immense jigsaw puzzle, and several people have been of great help to put all the pieces together. I am very grateful to my supervisors Joan Pagès and Manuel Pérez Otero, not only because their thorough comments on a considerable number of considerable long drafts have made me avoid more than a considerable number of mistakes, but also because their help- ful and constructive criticism has contributed to my learning of how to write philosophy. When one does a M.Phil and a PhD at LOGOS, it is very difficult not to learn something new every day, and many things I have learned about many fascinating topics have helped me to give shape to the project, but from Logosians, both seniors and ju- niors, I have mainly learned to practice philosophy cultivating clarity and accuracy of thought, and I am very grateful to them. When I have been stuck with some ideas, presenting them at the Universities of Barcelona and Girona and at several other places in Europe has been of great help. I am particularly grateful to the kind members of the COGITO Research Centre in Philosophy at the Uni- versity of Bologna who gave me the opportunity to present and dis- cuss a lot of material with them in a very friendly manner. Outside philosophy, I’ve shared home in Barcelona with a snail, a tiger and a little tree. They know who they are, they are great friends and it’s been a lot of fun. I hope they will finish their PhD’s soon, or that they have already forgotten about the PhD’s that they already finished, because, in the end, things that matter most do not need a certificate. I can now understand my sister Alicia and how hard should have been to spend so many hours wondering how light is a neutrino or, in my case, what is this thing called knowledge. I am thankful to her for being my older sister and for paving the way for me, with everything that implies. This thesis is dedicated to my parents because they have always been there for us. My mother is a constant source of care, love and support and she is the best mother a son could ever have. Endless conversations with my father have been the best help I could imagine during the writing process and he should take credit for many of the ideas of the dissertation. Without the support of my parents, I would not have been able to complete this project. Fede has been there with me during this long journey. She is the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. And I love her so much. xiii PREFACE In 1963, Edmund Gettier described in a three-page paper a couple of ordinary scenarios in which someone has good justification to believe something true, believes it, but does not know it. Two surpris- ingly mundane cases challenged a philosophical assumption a couple of thousand of years old: that three criteria (truth, belief and justification) are sufficient to state the nature of propositional knowledge. Needless to say, the amazing brevity of the paper was inversely pro- portional to the quantity of ink used to analyze it. Epistemologists soon agreed that the subjects described by Gettier came to believe the truth by accident, that despite having excellent justification to believe what they believed it was just a coincidence that they came to believe something true. The intuition that everyone had was that one cannot have knowledge if one comes to believe the truth by luck and the problem that everyone noticed was that no answer to the question of what is knowledge could ever be satisfactory if that intuition was overlooked. This is how the problem of luck in epistemology came to existence. We can compare the problem of luck to a disease. In 1963, the disease was exotic and its reach was barely known. When a disease ap- pears for the first time, doctors run tests on their patients, but since little is known about what causes the disease, they have no other option but to apply treatment after treatment until their patients heal. In the same way, the history of the problem of luck in epistemology has been a trial-and-error process. In the early years, epistemologists knew little about the problem so that, after some preliminary diagnoses, they attempted to heal the patient by applying epistemic condition after epistemic condition: the notion of justification was thus interpreted in very specific ways and the triad <truth, belief and justification> was supplemented with new conditions (e.g., no false lemmas solu- tions, defeasibility analyses, causal accounts or simple reliabilism). However, the pervasive problem of luck manifested in different new guises and for each new analysis of knowledge that appeared, a new counterexample emerged, and yet the underlying intuition re- mained the same: one cannot have knowledge if one comes to believe the truth by luck. So-called Gettier-style cases turned out into a sort of test that any successful analysis of knowledge should pass. As a result, the literature became populated with complex analyses of knowledge, creative counterexamples and a rich family of epistemic concepts.1 1 See Robert K. Shope’s 1983 remarkable book for an overall picture of this escalation of analyses and corresponding counterexamples in the early post-Gettier years. xv As the years went by, new treatments were developed and epistemologists thought to have found epistemic conditions immune to the disease (e.g., modal and virtue-theoretic conditions). However, those epistemic conditions led to new problems and some epistemologists, horrified by the secondary effects of these new treatments and by a recent history of disagreements and controversies, decided to try an alternative medicine: the very analyzability of the concept of knowledge was cast into doubt. Fortunately, there is no need to apply such radical treatments. As it often happens in medicine, where new research in other fields allows to understand the causes and behavior of a disease, the problem of luck in epistemology has been illuminated by recent research on the general notion of luck. And there is reason to be optimistic: we now count with several definitions of luck that help us understand under what conditions a belief is true by luck. This dissertation pursues an ambitious research project: to diag- nose the problem of luck in epistemology and to offer an analysis of the concept of knowledge. The structure of the dissertation reflects the three stages that, according to Duncan Pritchard (2009a: 33), are essential to the development of an anti-luck epistemology:2 1. Give an account of luck (chapters 1, 2 and 3).

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