Volume 17, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2014
R. Zachary Manis
Pages 59-76
The Problem of Epistemic Luck for Naturalists
According to a (once) venerable tradition, our knowledge of the external world is crucially dependent on divine favor: our ability to obtain knowledge of the world around us is made possible by God’s having so ordered things. I argue that this view, despite its unpopularity among contemporary philosophers, is supported by a certain inference to the best explanation: namely, it provides an effective way of reconciling two widely held beliefs that, on the assumption of naturalism, appear incompatible: (1) that knowledge is incompatible with the kind of luck present in Gettier scenarios and (2) that arguments for external world skepticism can be effectively rebutted by “shifting” them in the style of G. E. Moore.