Volume 34, 2009
Mark McEvoy
Pages 7-20
The Lottery Puzzle and Pritchard’s Safety Analysis of Knowledge
The safety analysis of knowledge, due to Duncan Pritchard, has it that for all contingent propositions, p, S knows that p iff S believes that p, p is true, and (the “safety principle”) in most nearby worlds in which S forms his belief in the same way as in the actual world, S believes that p only if p is true. Among the other virtues claimed by Pritchard for this view is its supposed ability to solve a version of the lottery puzzle. In this paper, I argue that the safety analysis of knowledge in fact fails to solve the lottery puzzle. I also argue that a revised version of the safety principle recently put forward by Pritchard fares no better.