Abstract

In this thesis I argue that there is no complete notion of epistemic justification that can be defined in terms of intellectual virtues. A complete notion of justification would have to capture both the idea that there are internally accessible grounds for holding a belief justified, and at the some time provide a reliable connection between our beliefs and the features of the external world. Some virtue theorists claim that a complete notion of justification can be derived from the exercise of intellectual virtues. I single out two strands of virtue-theories involved in this project. On the one hand, virtue-responsibilism construes intellectual virtues as ingrained habits necessarily connected with the desire for truth. On the other hand, virtue-reliabilism understands the intellectual virtues as faculties or cognitive mechanisms that are reliable in providing us with true beliefs. First, I argue that virtue-responsibilism cannot capture a sufficient measure of reliability, that increases the likelihood of a beliefs being true. Furthermore, I argue that virtue-reliabilism does not connect well with the notion of epistemic responsibility necessary of a complete notion of justification. Finally, I suggest that underlying the inability of virtue-responsibilism to capture reliability and virtue-reliabilism to accommodate responsibility is the old problem of specifying the connection between justification and truth