Philip Percival

PaceZagzebski, there is no route from the value of knowledge to a non–reliabilist virtue–theoretic epistemology. Her discussion of the value problem is marred by an uncritical and confused employment of the notion of a “state” of knowledge, an uncritical acceptance of a “knowledge–belief” identity thesis, and an incoherent presumption that the widely held thought that knowledge is more valuable than true belief amounts to the view that knowledge is a state of true belief having an intrinsic property which a state of ‘mere” true belief lacks. Her arguments against a “machine–product” conception of knowledge are undermined by these flaws, while the alternative “agent–act” model she recommends is unattractive, at odds with the knowledge–belief identity thesis she favours, and no solution to the problem of the value of knowledge she poses. I end with the observation that her version of virtue–theoretic epistemology points in the direction of cognitive decision–theoretic norms, and I briefly discuss the bearing of this fact upon her viewpoint.

In a brief passage, David Lewis derives from quantum-theory a dilemma regarding the explanation of chance events which he tries to solve by first distinguishing plain from contrastive why-questions have answers. His brevity warrants elaboration and critique. I endorse his derivation, but I make a structural objection to his solution. Once a further distinction is drawn between different kinds of contrastive why-question, his solution can be modified and refined so as to go some way to meeting this objection. However, it cannot resist a deeper objection to the effect that chance events can be given contrastive explanations after all. The alternative solution to the dilemma that I recommend holds Lewis's conception of the 'essence of chance' to be illusory