Oscar A. Piedrahita

Modal views of luck, influential in epistemology, hold that luck is characterized by modal fragility. They face a well-known challenge: Lackey's Buried Treasure cases, which suggest that an event can be both lucky and modally stable. I argue that this challenge assumes that if two events are each modally stable, their conjunction is also modally stable. This assumption fails for conjunctions of independent, contingent events. When component events arise from independent, uncoordinated causal chains, their convergence can be modally fragile even though each component is modally stable. This handles Buried Treasure and rees-tablishes the plausibility of modal views of luck

Pointless and unknowable facts suggest that ignorance is more than a mere lack of knowledge or true belief, because ascribing ignorance seems to involve an implicit negative assessment that doesn’t carry over to our ascriptions of agents simply lacking knowledge or true belief. But what exactly is ignorance, aside from a lack of knowledge or true belief? It is tempting to answer by adding a normative condition to ignorance. Accordingly, some authors (Pritchard, 2021ab; Meylan, 2020, 2024) have recently argued that someone is ignorant of a fact only if her not knowing or not truly believing that fact manifests some failure of inquiry. It is shown here that incorporating a normative condition like this into a theory of ignorance leads to problematic generalizations, is at odds with ignorance in cases of faultless suspension, and blurs the widely accepted distinction between blameless and blameworthy ignorance. It is further argued that any non-normative view that conceives ascriptions of ignorance as a form of epistemic evaluation that tracks an explanatory connection between a subject’s epistemic state and a fact avoids these problems. The paper provides a more nuanced picture of how non-normative views of ignorance can capture ignorance’s evaluative aspects.

I motivate and defend a new account of ignorance for which ignorance is the lack of a suitable explanatory connection between (i) one’s exercise of epistemic abilities and (ii) believing the truth. This view carves out a previously unexplored option space in the ongoing conceptual debate about ignorance in analytic epistemology and is shown to yield better results than competing views of ignorance, including those that define ignorance as a lack of knowledge, a lack of true belief, or as characterized by a failure of inquiry. Unlike these other views, the account defended here places an agent’s exercise of her epistemic abilities at its core, enabling it to provide a more nuanced explanation for various instances of ignorance and non ignorance, as well as for the evaluative character of ignorance.

A common thesis about ignorance is the Knowledge View, which holds that S is ignorant that p if and only if S doesn’t know that p (cf. Le Morvan 2011a,b, 2012, 2013; Blome-Tillmann 2016; Bondy 2018; De Nicola 2018; Goldman & Olsson 2009; Williamson 2000; Zimmerman 2008). We present a new argument against the Knowledge View. According to the argument, which draws from recent insights about epistemic autonomy (e.g., Carter 2022; Gaultier 2021; McCain 2023; Sylvan 2023; cf. eds. Matheson and Lougheed 2021), knowledge undermining infringements on a belief’s autonomy don’t necessarily lead to ignorance, and on this basis, the Knowledge View should be rejected. We conclude by showing some implications of our view—that a thinker can nonautonomously escape ignorance without possessing knowledge—for epistemic axiology and for the epistemology of learning.

I argue against the Standard View of ignorance, according to which ignorance is defined as equivalent to lack of knowledge, that cases of environmental epistemic luck, though entailing lack of knowledge, do not necessarily entail ignorance. In support of my argument, I contend that in cases of environmental luck an agent retains what I call epistemic access to the relevant fact by successfully exercising her epistemic agency and that ignorance and non-ignorance, contrary to what the Standard View predicts, are not modal in the sense that knowledge is. After responding to objections, I conclude by sketching an alternative account of ignorance centered on the notions of epistemic access and epistemic agency.

I argue that a standard formulation of hinge epistemology is host to epistemic relativism and show that two leading hinge approaches (Coliva’s acceptance account and Pritchard’s nondoxastic account) are vulnerable to a form of incommensurability that leads to relativism. Building on both accounts, I introduce a new, minimally epistemic conception of hinges that avoids epistemic relativism and rationally resolves hinge disagreements. According to my proposed account, putative cases of epistemic incommensurability are rationally resolvable: hinges are propositions that are the objects of our belief-like attitudes and are rationally revisable in virtue of our overarching commitment to avoid systematic deception in our epistemic practices.

Se propone un examen crítico de la última obra de J.-L. Marion titulada, dedicada a la unión de alma y cuerpo, y cuya tesis principal es: los problemas que esta unión suscita confunden dos términos, cuerpo y mi cuerpo. Esta confusión lleva a que se apliquen al primero categorías propias del segundo. Se examinan las "paradojas ónticas" que mi cuerpo (la carne) inaugura (a); se despeja la tesis de dos interpretaciones de las meditaciones primera y sexta (b); se discute la "excepción a la metafísica" instaurada por el conocimiento de mi cuerpo (c); se arriesga, siguiendo una indicación del autor, la apertura a una dimensión ética que exige examinar ya no la unión de cuerpo y alma, sino la unión por el amor a un semejante y a la comunidad de semejantes (d). The article carries out a critical examination of J.-L. Marion's latest work, "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", whose main thesis is that the problems posed by the union of body and soul confuse two terms: body and my body. This confusion leads to the application to the former of categories inherent to the latter. The paper examines the "ontic paradoxes" that my body (the flesh) gives rise to (a); it clarifies the thesis of two interpretations of the First and Sixth Meditations (b); it discusses the "exception to metaphysics" established by the knowledge of my body (c); and, following an indication by the author, it proposes an opening to the ethical dimension, which demands an examination of the union, through love, with a fellow human being and with the community of human beings, rather than of the union of body and soul (d). Neste artigo, propõe-se um exame crítico da última obra de J.-L. Marion, intitulada "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", dedicada à união de alma e corpo, e cuja tese principal é: os problemas que essa união suscita confundem dois termos, corpo e meu corpo. Essa confusão leva a que se apliquem ao primeiro categorias próprias do segundo. Examinam-se os "paradoxos ônticos" que meu corpo (a carne) inaugura; a tese de duas interpretações das medita ccedil;ões primeira e sexta é esclarecida; arrisca-se, seguindo uma indicação do autor, a abertura a uma dimensão ética que exige examinar já não a união de corpo e alma, mas sim a união pelo amor a um semelhante e à comunidade de semelhantes