Taking Luck Seriously: A Critique of Enoch’s Third-Factor Pre-Established Harmony Explanation

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/jm214p52q

Abstract

In this paper I criticize David Enoch’s purported solution to what he terms the epistemic challenge to robust moral realism. The epistemic challenge is a challenge aimed at the robust moral realist to explain how there could be a close enough correlation between normative truths and normative beliefs for humans to have knowledge of the normative truths given that there cannot be a causal relation between the normative truths and the normative beliefs. Enoch suggests a third-factor pre-established harmony between normative beliefs and normative truths as an explanation of the correlation; this explanation will be examined in detail below. Enoch’s solution, I contend, is unsatisfying for two reasons. First, his explanation relies on a miraculous correlation; second, it violates the sensitivity condition for knowledge.

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