Hello Bartricks,

I want to comment on your original post. My apologies to everyone else who has responded in the thread, for I have not read your comments, so I might be repeating content here.

In Russell's case, a clock has stopped and is reporting a time of 3pm. Someone ignorant of the fact the clock has stopped but desirous to know the time looks at the clock and forms the belief that it is 3pm. By pure coincidence it is, in fact, 3pm. This person has a justified true belief. They belief that it is 3pm, and it is 3pm - so their belief is true. And their belief is justified because they have formed it in an epistemically responsible manner - they looked at a clock, a clock it was reasonble to assume was working. However, though they have a justified true belief that it is 3pm, it seems equally clear to our reason (the reason of most of us, anyway) that they do not 'know' that it is 3pm.

I like this Russell example. I hadn't heard of it before.

Why doesn't that person's justified true belief qualify as knowledge? It is tempting to say that it doesn't qualify becasue it was just by luck that it was true. The method adopted - looking at clockfaces - was not reliable in this kind of context .

We don't need to introduce the notion of luck into the conversation. For example, we can simply say that the person doesn't have knowledge because broken clocks do not lend epistemic justification to beliefs about the time. No one who forms beliefs about the time based on a broken clock has knowledge of the time. So, we've explained why the person doesn't have knowledge without invoking the notion of luck, which suggests that you've attached undue significance to it.

Let me try to explain the undue-ness of it. We should ask ourselves, “What is the luck attached to in this case?” The luck is attached to having looked at the broken clock at precisely the one (of two) times in the day in which the real time corresponds to the time on the clock. In other words, had he looked at the clock at any other time, he would have had a false belief that it's 3 PM. So, the luck only explains why he has a true belief, not why he has a justified belief. But the failure in the example is one of justification, not one of truth.

The epistemic justification needed for 'knowledge' is relatively strong. There are three facets we should consider, which I will make specific to the Russell example: (1) The empirical fact that clocks in general are working clocks, (2) The empirical fact that clocks in general keep the time correctly, (3) The presumption, by way of inference from experience with clocks in general, that the clock I happen to be looking at is a working clock that keeps the correct time. All of these lend to the reliability of clockfaces as sources of truth about the time. In other words, looking at clockfaces ties our beliefs reliably to reality, which is why this manner of forming beliefs about the time is epistemically justified.

However, if you lived in a town in which the clocks intermittently stopped working, then looking at a clock in this town would not be an epistemically reasonable manner by which to form a belief about the time. This is an opinion which some might disagree with and which runs counter to what you say in your "counterexample" scenario, so I will defend it later in this post.

For now, we stick to the Russell example. So, again, why doesn't the person have knowledge? As we said, it's because his presumption that he was looking at a working clock was wrong. But he was not wrong to have the presumption that the clock he was looking at was working, as clocks typically work and keep the correct time, which is why, after all, looking at clockfaces is an epistemically reasonable manner by which to form beliefs about the time. The distinction to be drawn, then, is between the presumption being correct and it being "correct" to subscribe to the presumption. It is this distinction which I think you fail to make, and which will undermine your comments about the "counterexample" scenario and about the role of luck in knowledge claims.

But there are counterexamples to this modified 'no luck' analysis as well. For example, imagine that you want to know what the time is and so you look at a clock tower and form the belief that it is 3pm. This clock is working and it really is 3pm. However, unbeknownst to you, the area you are in is one in which most public clocks are stopped. This is the one exception. Well, it still seems true to say that you know it is 3pm, even though it was just by luck that the clock you looked at was the one working one.

Recall how the epistemic presumption that 'the clock I'm looking at is working' became epistemically justified. It's because it's an empirical fact that clocks are generally working clocks, meaning that looking at clockfaces is a very reliable way to arrive at the truth (this is "the tie" to reality). The presumption is based on the history of clocks, and unless we have reason to believe things have changed with clocks, we'll continue to believe that 'the particular clock I'm looking at is working.' That is, we will continue to subscribe to the presumption. The person in the example has no reason to believe things have changed with clocks, but things have indeed changed with clocks, at least with the ones in the town at that particular time, which are the only relevant clocks in the example.

If clocks are not generally working clocks, per this second scenario, then the empirical fact that grounded the epistemic trust in clocks (as a reliable source of truth) would disappear. In time, if the clocks continued not to work, people would realize that it is no longer justified to acquire beliefs about the time based on the clocks they were looking at. And this would be true even if there was one clock (say, one in a thousand) that was a working clock that kept the correct time, because without knowing which clock in town that was, the probability would be too low that you were looking at the one working clock in town, so no clock could lend epistemic justification to beliefs about the time. The man in the example is justified in the sense that he is reasonably ignorant that things have changed. But this type of ignorance isn't epistemic justification, although it looks a lot like it. We might say that he is not wrong to still believe that clocks are working clocks, because, again, we wouldn't hold him to omniscient standards, but we can still say that he lacks epistemic justification because the tie between clocks and the correct time has been broken – he just doesn't know it has, so we forgive him his ignorance, but that is not the same as attributing to him epistemic justification.

And since I've explained the failure of justification in these examples without invoking the notion of luck, I've essentially argued why it plays no necessary role in the two knowledge claims you discussed.

Howdy, folks. I'm an old guy with opinions, some philosophical, all irrefutable.

I don't know how much I'll be contributing to the forum, as I try to confine myself to topics within my philosophical wheelhouse, by which I imply no expertise whatsoever. But between you and me, I'm pretty much an authority on every topic, so expect reams of wit and wisdom promptly.

Well, that was tiring. That's about as much thought as I'll probably put into any post, so bask in the quality that awaits you, folks. Thanks for having me.