In Defence of Virtue Epistemology (original) (raw)

A (Different) Virtue Epistemology

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2012

Section 1 articulates a genus-species claim: that knowledge is a kind of success from ability. Equivalently: In cases of knowledge, S's success in believing the truth is attributable to S's ability. That idea is then applied to questions about the nature and value of knowledge. Section 2 asks what it would take to turn the genus-species claim into a proper theory of knowledge; that is, into informative, necessary and sufficient conditions. That question is raised in the context of an important line of objection against even the genus-species claim; namely, that there is no way to understand the attribution relation so that it does all the work that it is supposed to do. Section 3 reviews several extant proposals for understanding the attribution relation, and argues that none of them are adequate for answering the objection. Section 4 proposes a different way of understanding the relation, and shows how the resulting view does resolve the objection. Section 5 completes the new account by proposing a way to understand intellectual abilities. Section 6 briefly addresses Barn Fac¸ade cases and lottery propositions. Section 7 briefly addresses a question about the scope of knowledge; in particular, it shows how the new view allows a neo-Moorean response to skepticism. 1 These same authors also use the phrases ''creditable to S's ability'' and ''creditable to S.'' But ''creditable'' is ambiguous between ''praiseworthy'' and ''attributable.'' To avoid that confusion, I will use the latter term.

Virtue-Based Epistemology and the Centrality of Truth (Towards a Strong Virtue-Epistemology)

A strong, strictly virtue-based, and at the same time truth-centered framework for virtue epistemology (VE) is proposed that bases VE upon a clearly motivating epistemic virtue, inquisitiveness or curiosity in a very wide sense, characterizes the purely executive capacities-virtues as a means for the truth-goal set by the former, and, finally, situates the remaining, partly motivating and partly executive virtues in relation to this central stock of virtues. Character-trait epistemic virtues are presented as hybrids, partly moral, partly purely epistemic. In order to make the approach virtue-based, it is argued that the central virtue (inquisitiveness or curiosity) is responsible for the value of truth: truth is valuable to cognizers because they are inquisitive, and most other virtues are a means for satisfying inquisitiveness. On can usefully combine this virtue-based account of the motivation for acquiring knowledge with a Sosa-style analysis of the concept “knowledge”, which brings to the forefront virtues-capacities, in order to obtain a full-blooded, “strong” VE.

The Power, and Limitations, of Virtue Epistemology

Virtue epistemologists argue for the centrality of our cognitive virtues⎯our epistemic powers⎯to epistemological theorising. As we explain, this approach has tremendous potential for casting light on a number of important questions within epistemology. It is also argued, however, that there is an essential limitation to such an approach⎯one that we suggest virtue epistemologists should be willing to embrace⎯in that virtue epistemology cannot by itself offer a compelling account of knowledge.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILL AND VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGY

Routledge Handbook of Skill and Expertise, 2020

According to virtue epistemology, one should primarily understand knowledge in terms of the relationship between cognitive success and cognitive agency. There are various ways of understanding this thesis. Along one axis, there is the debate about whether we should focus on the agent's reliable cognitive skills in general, or whether we should instead treat knowledge as primarily concerned with the manifestation of more elevated epistemic standings, like intellectual virtues. Along another axis, there is the debate about whether we should understand knowledge as being exclusively defined in terms of the subject's cognitive skills (where this category includes the intellectual virtues), or whether there needs to be supplementary conditions in one's theory of knowledge to deal with the problem posed by knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. This paper will explore these topics, and in the process offer an overview of the contemporary debate regarding issues at the nexus of knowledge, skill and virtue epistemology.

Epistemic Virtue and Epistemic Responsibility

Dialectica, 2005

Virtue epistemology construes intellectual virtue as a reliable ability to form true beliefs. Responsibilist versions seek to substitute for the passive, reliabilist model of the knower, that of an active subject who deliberately and purposefully exercises traits of character which tend to result in true beliefs. On these views, the disposition to exercise these epistemic virtues gives rise to notions of epistemic duty. In this paper, I propose a principle of doxastic rationality based on Bernard Wi l l i a m s ' a rgument against doxastic voluntarism. This principle, I go on to show, undermines a number of notions of epistemic duty which have been put forth within the framework of virtue t h e o r y. I then suggest an alternative formulation which remains within the bounds of rationality allowed for by my principle. In the end, I suggest that the failure of the earlier formulations and the adoption of the latter tend to vindicate the initial grounding of virtue epistemology in reliabilist intuitions.

Making a difference in virtue epistemology

Synthese, 2021

Virtue Reliabilism holds that knowledge is a cognitive achievement-an epistemic success that is creditable to the cognitive abilities of the knowing subject. Beyond this consensus, there is much disagreement amongst proponents of virtue reliabilism about the conditions under which the credit-relation between an epistemic success and a person's cognitive abilities holds. This paper aims to establish a new and attractive view of this crucial relation in terms of difference-making. We will argue that the resulting theory, Difference-Making Virtue Epistemology, can deal with cases of epistemic luck and testimonial knowledge while revealing the common core of knowledge and other achievements.

A Robust Enough Virtue Epistemology

(published in Synthese) What is the nature of knowledge? A popular answer to that long-standing question comes from robust virtue epistemology, whose key idea is that knowing is just a matter of succeeding cognitively—i.e., coming to believe a proposition truly— due to an exercise of cognitive ability. Versions of robust virtue epistemology further developing and systematizing this idea offer different accounts of the relation that must hold between an agent's cognitive success and the exercise of her cognitive abilities as well as of the very nature of those abilities. This paper aims to give a new robust virtue epistemological account of knowledge based on a different understanding of the nature and structure of the kind of abilities that give rise to knowledge. What is the nature of knowledge? A popular answer to that long-standing question comes from robust virtue epistemology, whose key idea is that knowing is just a matter of succeeding cognitively—i.e., coming to believe a proposition truly—due to an exercise of cognitive ability. Versions of robust virtue episte-mology further developing and systematizing this idea offer different accounts of the relation that must hold between an agent's cognitive success and the exercise of her cognitive abilities as well as accounts of the very nature of those abilities. This paper aims to give a new robust virtue epistemological account of knowledge based on a different understanding of the nature and structure of the kind of abilities that give rise to knowledge. To motivate these alternative accounts —of ability and knowledge— and to compare them with current views of the notion of cognitive ability as well as with the theories of knowledge that result from them, I will find it useful to introduce

Problems for virtue theories in epistemology

Philosophical Studies, 2008

This paper identifies and criticizes certain fundamental commitments of virtue theories in epistemology. A basic question for virtues approaches is whether they represent a 'third force'--a different source of normativity to internalism and externalism. Virtues approaches so-conceived are opposed. It is argued that virtues theories offer us nothing that can unify the internalist and externalist sub-components of their preferred success-state. Claims that character can unify a virtues-based axiology are overturned. Problems with the pluralism of virtues theories are identified--problems with pluralism and the nature of the self; and problems with pluralism and the goals of epistemology. Moral objections to virtue theory are identified--specifically, both the idea that there can be a radical axiological priority to character and the anti-enlightenment tendencies in virtues approaches. Finally, some strengths to virtue theory are conceded, while the role of epistemic luck is identified as an important topic for future work.

Virtues and vices of virtue epistemology

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

In recent years, virtue epistemology has won the attention of a wide range of philosophers. A developed form of the position has been expounded forcefully by Ernest Sosa and represents the most plausible version of reliabilism to date. Through the person of Alvin Plantinga, ...