A long-standing post-Gettier problem in epistemology asks whether propositional knowledge is incompatible with veritic luck — luck in the way a true belief happens to be true. The standard anti-luck program (safety-style modal conditions, virtue-theoretic conditions) insists on full incompatibility but faces persistent counterexamples and defect arguments. Chernyak (2020) critically surveyed the main anti-luck modifications of the justified-true-belief analysis and proposed instead a compensatory criterion: some veritic luck is compatible with knowledge when good luck compensates antecedent bad epistemic luck — so broken-clock and fake-barn beliefs can be knowledge while Gettier beliefs, lucky guesses, and wishful thinking cannot. The open problem is to turn this and rival partial proposals into a systematic, principled demarcation: a positive theory of knowledge that states exactly which forms of veritic luck knowledge tolerates and delivers defensible verdicts on the canonical case canon. The incompatibility question remains actively contested and the compensatory program undeveloped and unrefuted.

Background

Propositional knowledge — knowledge that some proposition p is true, as opposed to know-how or acquaintance — was traditionally analyzed by the tripartite account: a subject knows that p if and only if she believes that p, p is true, and her belief is justified (supported by her evidence or reasons). Gettier (1963) showed by short counterexamples that a justified true belief can be true merely by accident, and hence fail to be knowledge. A belief is veritically lucky when it is true not because of its epistemic foundations (the subject's reasons or evidence) but by coincidence; Gettier cases are the paradigm of luck infecting the truth-connection itself. Goldman (1976) sharpened the issue with the fake-barn case: a traveler in barn-façade country sees the one real barn and forms a true, perceptually impeccable belief that is nevertheless intuitively not knowledge, because in nearby alternative situations (close-in possible worlds that could easily have obtained) he would have been fooled by a façade. This observation motivated the anti-luck program, systematized by Pritchard (2007) as 'anti-luck epistemology': knowledge requires a modal condition such as safety — the belief could not easily have been false — which quantifies over nearby possible worlds. A parallel virtue-theoretic route (believing competently through intellectual virtues) was meant to exclude luck by excluding accidentality of ability. Two decades of criticism have chipped at both: the notion of luck itself is contested (Lackey 2008 argues the prominent lack-of-control account of luck fails), safety-style conditions keep generating counterexamples (most recently Ochoa 2026 on lottery propositions), and Chernyak (2020, 2021) argues that neither the main modal modifications of the tripartite analysis nor virtue epistemology can actually justify the thesis that knowledge excludes veritic luck. Meanwhile the case canon pulls in opposite directions: broken-clock beliefs (reading a stopped clock at the one right moment) and fake-barn beliefs look lucky in exactly the same general way as Gettier beliefs, yet many theorists and lay ascriptions treat them differently. Chernyak (2020) embraces partial compatibility: good veritic luck is compatible with knowledge precisely when it compensates for antecedent bad epistemic luck (e.g., the misfortune of encountering fake-barn country), which preserves knowledge in the broken-clock and fake-barn cases while excluding Gettier beliefs, wishful thinking (believing from desire rather than evidence), and lucky guesses. His compensatory criterion, however, is offered only as a sketch ('the author supposes'): the paper neither systematizes it nor defends it against mature rivals, and its §§3–4 argue that the existing modal and virtue-theoretic modifications of the tripartite analysis cannot solve the problem. On adjacent questions the paper takes positions rather than declaring open tasks: it tentatively answers in the affirmative that a subject who is stably lucky, knows of this luckiness, and guesses accordingly can thereby know (p. 76), and it argues for a non-modal reading of accidental truth and against letting nearby-world failures dictate actual-world epistemic status (pp. 67, 73). The systematic demarcation of which kinds of veritic luck are compatible with knowledge therefore remains to be constructed. A separate recent literature on guessing (Carter 2020 on Sosa's account; Holguín 2022 on thinking as guessing; Fang 2026 on the limits of question-sensitive 'Guessing' theses about belief) has begun to clarify what guessing is, but has not engaged the luck-laden knowing-by-guessing scenario that Chernyak (2020) tentatively answers in the affirmative.

Problem Statement

Construct a positive theory of propositional knowledge that delivers a principled, systematic demarcation of which forms of veritic luck are compatible with knowledge — and defend it against the known alternatives. The theory must: (1) state explicit conditions under which veritic luck (a belief's being true by accident rather than through its epistemic foundations) does and does not destroy knowledge's claim to be knowledge, elaborating or replacing Chernyak's (2020) compensatory criterion under which good veritic luck is compatible with knowledge only when it compensates antecedent bad epistemic luck; and (2) yield and justify verdicts on the canonical case canon — original Gettier cases, broken clocks, fake barns, lottery propositions (highly probable propositions reporting a statistical outcome, such as that one's lottery ticket has lost), wishful thinking, lucky guesses, and the stably-lucky-guessing scenario, a subject who is stably lucky, aware of this luckiness, and guesses accordingly (Chernyak 2020, p. 76, tentatively treats that scenario as yielding knowledge) — defending those verdicts in comparison with rival anti-luck (safety-style) and virtue-theoretic accounts.

References

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