Ernest Sosa's A Virtue Epistemology, Vol. I is arguably the single-most important monograph to be published in analytic epistemology in the last ten years. Sosa, the first in the field to employ the notion of intellectual virtue – in his ground-breaking ‘The Raft and the Pyramid’– is the leading proponent of reliabilist versions of virtue epistemology. In A Virtue Epistemology, he deftly defends an externalist account of animal knowledge as apt belief, argues for (...) a distinction between animal and reflective knowledge, contends that rational intuition is an intellectual virtue ; and offers responses to dream scepticism, the problem of the criterion and the value problem. Nearly all of these arguments are new, albeit consistent with Sosa's earlier work; that is, consistent with two notable exceptions. First, c ontra Sosa's ‘Replies’ in Ernest Sosa and His Critics, A Virtue Epistemology explicitly contends that safety is not required for animal knowledge. Second, unlike Sosa's Knowledge in Perspective, which arguably construes the intellectual virtues as merely instrumentally valuable, A Virtue Epistemology explicitly contends that the intellectual virtues are instrumentally and constitutively valuable. Best read in conjunction with the above monographs and Epistemic Justification, A Virtue Epistemology is mandatory reading for epistemologists and graduate students in the field. It will rightly set the standard for debates in analytic epistemology for years to come.I will summarize and raise objections to two key conclusions that are unique to A Virtue Epistemology: the ‘kaleidoscope-perceiver’ has animal knowledge but lacks reflective knowledge; unlike the k-perceiver, the ordinary perceiver has reflective knowledge. My objections …. (shrink)

Problems for Generic Reliabilism lead to a more specific account of knowledge as involving the exercise of intellectual virtues or faculties.

This is the first book to bring together Western and Chinese perspectives on both moral and intellectual virtues. Editors Chienkuo Mi, Michael Slote, and Ernest Sosa have assembled some of the world’s leading epistemologists and ethicists—located in the U.S., Europe, and Asia—to explore in a global context what they are calling, "the virtue turn." The 15 chapters have never been published previously and by covering topics that bridge epistemology and moral philosophy suggest a widespread philosophical turn away (...) from Kantian and Utilitarian issues and towards character- and agent-based concerns. A goal of this volume is to show students and researchers alike that the turn toward virtue underway in the Western tradition is being followed by a similar turn toward virtue in Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

An interesting aspect of Ernest Sosa's (2017) recent thinking is that enhanced performances (for example, the performance of an athlete under the influence of a performance‐enhancing drug) fall short of aptness, and this is because such enhanced performances do not issue from genuine competences on the part of the agent. This paper explores in some detail the implications of such thinking in Sosa's wider virtue epistemology, with a focus on cases of cognitive enhancement. A certain puzzle is (...) then highlighted, and the solution proposed draws both from the recent moral responsibility literature on guidance control (e.g., Fischer and Ravizza 1998; Fischer 2012) and from work on cognitive integration in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008; Pritchard 2010; Palermos 2014; and Carter 2017). (shrink)

Virtue Epistemology has come a long way since Ernest Sosa first mooted its possibility in ‘The Raft and the Pyramid’, a paper about the pitfalls of coherentism and foundationalism. What makes Virtue Epistemology distinctive, as opposed to other forms of reliabilist externalism, is that the epistemic agent becomes the locus for justification rather than the belief. In the midst of a small but growing literature in this focus on the agent, two clear trends are emerging that reflect (...) a difference in interest by the authors rather than any real underlying antagonism between camps. Where faculty reliabilists like Sosa and Greco are concerned about sceptical challenges, virtue responsibilists like Zazebski or Roberts and Wood prefer to write about intellectual flourishing. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is a diverse and flourishing field, one of the most exciting developments in epistemology to emerge over the last three decades. Virtue epistemology begins with the premise that epistemology is a normative discipline and, accordingly, a central task of epistemology is to explain the sort of normativity that knowledge, justified belief, and the like involve. A second premise is that a focus on the intellectual virtues is essential to carrying out this central task. This collection (...) offers some of the most influential and agenda-setting work at the heart of virtue epistemology's research program. Taken together, they will equip the reader to enter the ongoing discussion and debate in the field. The selections range from seminal contributions by Ernest Sosa, who introduced the notion of intellectual virtue into the contemporary literature, to a study of "epistemic justice" that draws on _To Kill a Mockingbird_ and The Talented Mr. Ripley. The readings include overviews of the field that also serve to advance the discussion; investigations of the nature of knowledge; reflections on the value of knowledge; examinations of credit and luck; and explorations of future directions for research. The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

Virtue epistemologies about knowledge have traditionally been divided into two camps: virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. Initially, what set them apart was that virtue responsibilism took intellectual character virtues and responsible agency to be necessary to knowledge acquisition, whereas virtue reliabilism took reliable cognitive faculties to be constitutive of it instead. Despite recent concessions between these camps, there are residual disagreements. Chapter 8 focuses primarily on Linda Zagzebski’s account of virtue responsibilism and John (...) Greco’s and Ernest Sosa’s defenses of virtue reliabilism. It argues that despite their misgivings about virtue responsibilism, Greco and Sosa are ultimately required to accept that intellectual character virtues involve a substantial truth-motivational component, and that knowledge requires a kind of epistemic responsibility that is far more substantive than a causal, naturalistic notion of attribution. (shrink)

According to attributor virtue epistemology (the view defended by Ernest Sosa, John Greco, and others), S knows that p only if her true belief that p is attributable to some intellectual virtue, competence, or ability that she possesses. Attributor virtue epistemology captures a wide range of our intuitions about the nature and value of knowledge, and it has many able defenders. Unfortunately, it has an unrecognized consequence that many epistemologists will think is sufficient for rejecting (...) it: namely, it makes knowledge depend on factors that aren't truth-relevant, even in the broadest sense of this term, and it also makes knowledge depend in counterintuitive ways on factors that are truth-relevant in the more common narrow sense of this term. As I show in this paper, the primary objection to interest-relative views in the pragmatic encroachment debate can be raised even more effectively against attributor virtue epistemology. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Some Major Elements in Virtue Perspectivism Virtue and Power Reflective Knowledge, Intellectual Virtue, and Skepticism.

Regulative virtue epistemology argues that intellectual virtues can adjust and guide one’s epistemic actions as well as improve on the quality of the epistemic actions. For regulative virtue epistemologists, intellectual virtues can be cultivated to a higher degree; when the quality of intellectual virtue is better, the resulting quality of epistemic action is better. The intellectual virtues that regulative epistemologists talk about are character virtues (such as intellectual courage and open-mindedness) rather than (...) faculty virtues (such as sight and hearing), since they don’t think that faculty virtues could be cultivated. This article refers to Xunzi’s philosophy, explaining how a regulative faculty-based virtue epistemology is possible. If this explanation works, on the one hand, a new branch of contemporary virtue epistemology is shown, and, on the other hand, a clear theoretical framework of Xunzi’s epistemology is constructed. (shrink)

Polyfacetic epistemology would answer the skeptic, provide how-to-think manuals, explain how we know, and more. To some it is the project of assuring oneself, of validating one's knowledge or supposed knowledge, turning it into real and assured knowledge, thus defeating the skeptic. To others it is a set of rules or instructions, a guide to the perplexed, a manual for conducting the intellect. To others yet it is a meta-discipline, but one whose purpose is not nearly so much guidance as (...) understanding, understanding of what gives us the knowledge we do have, of what factors serve to justify so many of our beliefs well enough to make them knowledge. What follows is epistemology as understanding, an attempt to understand the relation between epistemic coherence and intellectual virtue at the foundation of epistemology: between the comprehensive coherence prized in the thirst for understanding and the "reliability" that makes a faculty or procedure intellectually virtuous. (shrink)

Since Ernest Sosa's (1980) seminal paper, a variety of views on the nature of intellectual virtues and their role in one's epistemic theory have emerged. These views, including Sosa's original, largely draw from moral counterparts for their motivation, articulation, and defense. Consider two broad accounts of intellectual virtues: -/- Consequentialist Conception (CC): An intellectual virtue is a stable disposition, ability, or power to reliably acquire epistemic goods (e.g., true belief and knowledge). -/- Aristotelian Conception (...) (AC): An intellectual virtue is a character trait involving an underlying psychological and behavioral structure directed at various epistemic goods. (shrink)

Truth centered epistemology puts truth at the center in more ways than one. For one thing, it makes truth a main cognitive goal of inquiry. For another, it explains other main epistemic concepts in terms of truth. Knowledge itself, for example, is explained as belief that meets certain other conditions, among them being true. And a belief is said to be rationally or epistemically justified or apt, which it must be in order to be knowledge, only if it derives from (...) a truth-conducive faculty, an intellectual virtue. What defensible theories of truth are open to such truth-centered epistemology? That is our main question. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard has, in the years following his (2005) defence of a safety-based account of knowledge in Epistemic Luck, abjured his (2005) view that knowledge can be analysed exclusively in terms of a modal safety condition. He has since (Pritchard in Synthese 158:277–297, 2007; J Philosophic Res 34:33–45, 2009a, 2010) opted for an account according to which two distinct conditions function with equal importance and weight within an analysis of knowledge: an anti-luck condition (safety) and an ability condition-the latter being (...) a condition aimed at preserving what Pritchard now takes to be a fundamental insight about knowledge: that it arises from cognitive ability (Greco 2010; Sosa 2007, 2009). Pritchard calls his new view anti-luck virtue epistemology (ALVE). A key premise in Pritchard’s argument for ALVE is what I call the independence thesis; the thesis that satisfying neither the anti-luck condition nor the ability condition entails that the other is satisfied. Pritchard’s argument for the independence thesis relies crucially upon the case he makes for thinking that cognitive achievements are compatible with knowledge-undermining environmental luck—that is, the sort of luck widely thought to undermine knowledge in standard barn facade cases. In the first part of this paper, I outline the key steps in Pritchard’s argument for anti-luck virtue epistemology and highlight how it is that the compatibility of cognitive achievement and knowledge- undermining environmental luck is indispensible to the argument’s success. The second part of this paper aims to show that this compatibility premise crucial to Pritchard’s argument is incorrect. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is a new recent approach to epistemology that gives to epistemic or intellectual virtues an important role. Having many similaritywith Externalist Reformed Epistemology, Virtue based view can be used as a new model in religious epistemology. We can define religious virtue and religious perspective that produce true apt beliefs. These presuppositions lead to a new concept of rationality that can defend the rationality of religious beliefs.Therefore we can hold the possibility of religious knowledge against (...) skepticism and its rationality against atheism. (shrink)

... With those who identify happiness [faring happily or well] with virtue or some one virtue our account is in harmony; for to virtue belongs virtuous activity. But it makes, perhaps, no small difference whether we place the chief good in possession or in use, in state of mind or in activity. For the state of mind may exist without producing any good result, as in a man who is asleep or in some other way quite inactive, (...) but the activity cannot; for one who has the activity will of necessity be acting, and acting well. And as in the Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the strongest that are crowned but those who compete, so those who act win, and rightly win, the noble and good things in life. (shrink)

One of the most important issues in contemporary epistemology is eliminating justification or replacing it by another factor in the structure of knowledge. The main problem in Virtue based epistemology that suggested by Ernes Sosa is the definition of knowledge structure. In this approach, the innovation of a new concept of the third factor in the structure of knowledge and replacing it with the justification is done in three stages. These stages are; criticizing and eliminating justification in its (...) internalist meaning, removing externalist problems and innovating apt belief instead of justified belief. Intellectual virtue and epistemic perspective are two key concepts that provide essential situation for this replacement. (shrink)

I first present a brief interpretation of Sosa’s virtue epistemology by showing how it is arguably better than Goldman’s process reliabilism, why Sosa distinguishes between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge, and how Sosa’s recent account of knowing full well can deal with pragmatic encroachment. Then, I raise two worries about Sosa’s account: (a) Sosa’s claim that one might have animal knowledge without knowing reflectively or knowing full well implies that one’s true belief might manifest (...) both competence and luck, which seems to pose a challenge to Sosa’s solution to the Gettier problem; (b) intellectual virtue or competence does not seem to be a necessary condition for knowledge: there are cases where one knows without possessing the relevant intellectual virtue or competence. Finally, I suggest a responsibilist account of knowledge and show how it can not only handle the cases that pose a problem for Sosa’s account but also explain our intuitions about different grades of knowledge. (shrink)

Mathematical apriorists usually defend their view by contending that axioms are knowable a priori, and that the rules of inference in mathematics preserve this apriority for derived statements—so that by following the proof of a statement, we can trace the apriority being inherited. The empiricist Philip Kitcher attacked this claim by arguing there is no satisfactory theory that explains how mathematical axioms could be known a priori. I propose that in analyzing Ernest Sosa’s model of intuition as an (...) class='Hi'>intellectual virtue, we can construct an “intuition–virtue” that could supply the missing explanation for the apriority of axioms. I first argue that this intuition–virtue qualifies as an a priori warrant according to Kitcher’s account, and then show that it could produce beliefs about mathematical axioms independent of experience. If my argument stands, this paper could provide insight on how virtue epistemology could help defend mathematical apriorism on a larger scale. (shrink)

In Judgment and Agency, Ernest Sosa takes “reliabilist” virtue epistemology deep into “responsibilist” territory, arguing that “a true epistemology” will assign “responsibilist-cum-reliabilist intellectual virtue the main role in addressing concerns at the center of the tradition.” However, Sosa stops short of granting this status to familiar responsibilist virtues like open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual humility. He cites three reasons for doing so: responsibilist virtues involve excessive motivational demands; they are quasi-ethical; and they are (...) best understood, not as constituting knowledge, but rather as putting one “in a position” to know. I elaborate on and respond to each of these concerns. I argue that none of them provides Sosa with a good reason for excluding responsibilist virtues from occupying a central role in his reliabilist virtue epistemology. I conclude that Sosa owes virtue responsibilism an even wider embrace. (shrink)

Ernest Sosa presents a new approach to the problems of knowledge and scepticism. He argues for two levels of knowledge, the animal and the reflective, each viewed as a distinctive human accomplishment. Sosa's virtue epistemology illuminates different varieties of scepticism, the nature and status of intuitions, and epistemic normativity.

“Rational beings pursue and value truth. Intellectual conduct is to be judged, accordingly, by how well it aids our pursuit of that ideal.” What does this mean, and is it true? Even if intelligent life had never evolved or otherwise existed, Venus would still have orbited the Sun, so it would still have been true that Venus orbited the Sun. It is not the being thus true of what is true that we value indiscriminately. Some truths are good, but (...) not all, far from it. In loving the truth, then, what we value is not the being true of the truths. What we value in pursuing truth is rather our grasping it, our having it. What does this mean? Only through believing it does one relevantly have a truth : we have the truth that snow is white by believing that snow is white. In pursuing the truth what we want is true beliefs. Suppose you enter your dentist’s waiting room and find all the magazines taken. Deprived of reading matter, you’re sure to doze off, but you need no sleep. Are you then rationally bound to reach for the telephone book in pursuit of truth? Were you not to do so, you would forfeit a chance to pluck some desired goods within easy reach. If random telephone numbers do not elicit a wide enough yawn, consider a randomly selected cubic foot of the Sahara. Here is a trove of facts, of the form grain x is so many millimeters in direction D from grain y, than which few can be of less interest. Or take some bit of trivia known to me at the moment: say, that it was sunny in Rhode Island at noon on October 21, 1999. I confess that I will not rue my loss of this information, nor do I care either that or how early it will be gone. As interpreted so far, the view that we rationally want truth as such reduces to absurdity, or is at best problematic. What then is it we want in pursuing truth? If it is not after all true beliefs indiscriminately, what then is it? A manageable number of true beliefs? Obviously not; it is not just a matter of numbers. (shrink)

Rational beings pursue and value truth . Intellectual conduct is to be judged, accordingly, by how well it aids our pursuit of that ideal. I ask whether these platitudes mean, and whether they are true.

Virtue Reliabilism and Virtue Responsibilism are two theories within the enterprise of Virtue Epistemology. The former considers virtues to be those competences whose reliability is what confers justification on its product beliefs. The latter considers virtues as being those deep-seated intellectual traits that are part of a person's very character, and so when such virtues are possessed and exercised by an agent, they achieve beliefs that are justified via being the products of virtue. Both theories (...) face difficult objections, however. Virtue reliabilism is challenged by the generality problem which claims that since justification is determined by how reliable the belief-forming process is, what we have to do to figure out just how reliable a process is will be by coming up with a proper description of the relevant process. However, there is no principled way to come up with such descriptions in order to determine the correct level of generality regarding the description of a belief-forming process. Virtue responsibilism is challenged by the situationist critique which claims that virtues do not do the kind of work we think they do. Rather, when agents morally and intellectually act in praiseworthy ways, their success is due to situational features of their experience and not to anything like what we think of as virtue. What both problems have in common is that they require their respective target theories to come up with explanations that accurately describe what's going on when people get things right epistemically. As such, virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism both face the same sort of problem. In this dissertation, I attempt to provide a contextual response to the generality problem that doesn't solve that problem per se, but suggests that the problem itself is problematic. In requiring the reliabilist to come up with a universal principle(s) that allows the epistemic practitioner to determine the relevant description for reliable belief-forming processes, the proponent of the generality problem assumes that processes are relevantly alike in all instances of belief formation. But our epistemic practices show otherwise. Indeed, standards for belief justification vary between different situations and contexts. Some contexts have quite stringent standards regarding how reliable a process must be in order to be considered reliable enough while other contexts are not so stringent. As such, that there could be some universal standard or principle for process description is impossible. This dissertation argues for a contextual resolution to the generality problem. Furthermore, it argues that the Virtue Reliabilism of Ernest Sosa seems to have embedded in it a very congenial affinity to attributor contextualism. In light of (i) those arguments, (ii) the similar contextual nature of neo-Aristotelian aretaic thought, (iii) as well as the similarity of the situationist critique to the generality problem, a similar contextual response to that critique is then offered. (shrink)

This chapter explores the possibilities for rapprochement between reliabilism and evidentialism. It argues that the prospects for any such rapprochement between reliabilism and evidentialism are dim, and that the appearance to the contrary is mostly an illusion. The chapter draws on a paper by Jack Lyons, “Perception and virtue reliabilism”, so as to focus on the prospects for rapprochement through virtue reliabilism more specifically. Goldman's paper stops short of a full bipartisan theory of epistemic justification. The chapter includes (...) a subtle and detailed critique of evidentialism. The positive contribution of the chapter is divided into two parts. First it offers a way to think of “inferential” justification, and next it offers a way to understand “experiential” justification. According to process reliabilism, the epistemic justification of a belief derives from the reliability of the causal process that produces it. An attractive bipartisan avenue opens with a bi‐level epistemology. (shrink)

This paper applies a virtue epistemology approach to using the Internet, as to improve our information-seeking behaviours. Virtue epistemology focusses on the cognitive character of agents and is less concerned with the nature of truth and epistemic justification as compared to traditional analytic epistemology. Due to this focus on cognitive character and agency, it is a fruitful but underexplored approach to using the Internet in an epistemically desirable way. Thus, the central question in this paper is: How to (...) use the Internet in an epistemically virtuous way? Using the work of Jason Baehr, it starts by outlining nine intellectual or epistemic virtues: curiosity, intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, open-mindedness, intellectual courage and intellectual tenacity. It then explores how we should deploy these virtues and avoid the corresponding vices when interacting with the Internet, particularly search engines. Whilst an epistemically virtuous use of the Internet will not guarantee that one will acquire true beliefs, understanding or even knowledge, it will strongly improve one’s information-seeking behaviours. The paper ends with arguing that teaching and assessing online intellectual virtues should be part of school and university curricula, perhaps embedded in critical thinking courses, or even better, as individual units. (shrink)

This is a summary of "A Virtue Epistemology", the book that is the subject of this book symposium.

Since the publication of Edmund Gettier's challenge to the traditional epistemological doctrine of knowledge as justified true belief, Roberts and Wood claim that epistemologists lapsed into despondency and are currently open to novel approaches. One such approach is virtue epistemology, which can be divided into virtues as proper functions or epistemic character traits. The authors propose a notion of regulative epistemology, as opposed to a strict analytic epistemology, based on intellectual virtues that function not as rules or even (...) as skills but as habits of the heart. To that end, they divide the task of clarifying and expounding their notion in the book's two parts.In the first part, Roberts and Wood examine various components that constitute their notion of regulative epistemology. The first are the epistemic goods or goals that drive the epistemic process. What is needed, claim Roberts and Wood, is an enriched notion of these goods rather than the restricted notion of justified true belief. Epistemic agents are more than calculating devices in that …. (shrink)

An intellectual virtue is a quality bound to help maximize one’s surplus of truth over error; or so let us assume for now, though a more just conception may include as desiderata also generality, coherence, and explanatory power, unless the value of these is itself explained as derivative from the character of their contribution precisely to one’s surplus of truth over error. This last is an issue I mention in order to lay it aside. Here we assume only (...) a teleological conception of intellectual virtue, the relevant end being a proper relation to the truth, exact requirements of such propriety not here fully specified. (shrink)

From the ferment of recent debates about the intellectual virtues, Roberts and Wood develop an approach they call 'regulative epistemology', exploring the connection between knowledge and intellectual virtue. In the course of their argument they analyse particular virtues of intellectual life - such as courage, generosity, and humility - in detail.

With its focus on intellectual virtues and their role in the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and related epistemic goods, virtue epistemology provides a rich set of tools for educational theory and practice. In particular, characteristics under the rubric of "responsibilist" virtue epistemology, like curiosity, open-mindedness, attentiveness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity, can help educators and students define and attain certain worthy but nebulous educational goals like a love of learning, lifelong learning, and critical thinking. (...) This volume is devoted to exploring the intersection between virtue epistemology and education. It assembles leading virtue epistemologists and philosophers of education to address such questions as: Which virtues are most essential to education? How exactly should these virtues be understood? How is the goal of intellectual character growth related to other educational goals, for example, to critical thinking and knowledge-acquisition? What are the "best practices" for achieving this goal? Can growth in intellectual virtues be measured? The chapters are a prime example of "applied epistemology" and promise to be a seminal contribution to an area of research that is rapidly gaining attention within epistemology and beyond. (shrink)

An overview is presented of what I take to be the role of the intellectual virtues within the epistemological enterprise. Traditionally, the theory of knowledge has been thought to be central to the epistemological project, but since, as I explain, the intellectual virtues aren’t required for knowledge, this might suggest that they have only a marginal role to play in epistemological debates. I argue against this suggestion by showing how the intellectual virtues are in fact crucial to (...) several core epistemological topics, including the nature of inquiry, epistemic axiology and our understanding of ignorance. (shrink)

The idea of a virtue has traditionally been important in ethics, but only recently has gained attention as an idea that can explain how we ought to form beliefs as well as how we ought to act. Moral philosophers and epistemologists have different approaches to the idea of intellectual virtue; here, Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski bring work from both fields together for the first time to address all of the important issues. It will be required reading (...) for anyone working on either side of the debate. (shrink)

Virtue Epistemology is a new movement receiving the bulk of recent attention from top epistemologists and ethicists; this volume reflects the best work in that vein. Included are unpublished articles by such eminent philosophers as Robert Audi, Simon Blackburn, Alvin Goldman, Christopher Hookway, Keith Lehrer, and Ernest Sosa.

This book is the first systematic treatment of 'responsibilist' or character-based virtue epistemology, an approach to epistemology that focuses on intellectual ...

Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. -/- This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research (...) program. These include novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. -/- It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

This paper argues that a wise person is an intellectually virtuous person. The intellectual virtue requirement is explained as a necessary condition for wisdom, intuitively the highest epistemic good. This provides an answer to Duncan Pritchard’s question as to the significance of the intellectual virtues for the epistemological project. In other words, the requirement explains why the intellectual virtues are central to the concerns of epistemology. The paper starts by providing an overview of intellectual (...) class='Hi'>virtue. An overview of recent analytic philosophical literature on wisdom is set out. This discussion leads to the claim that the wise person understands how to live well. The claim that intellectual virtues are required for understanding how to live well is then examined. The case is made that understanding how to live well in a modally robust way requires possession of the intellectual virtues. (shrink)

In recent years, what is commonly referred to as “virtue epistemology” has gained momentum. One of the first to champion this approach with much force and sophistication was Ernest Sosa. James Montmarquet has contributed to the ascendancy of virtue epistemology with a fine monograph, and Alvin Goldman has, at least indirectly, confirmed the attraction of this approach by rephrasing his latest version of reliabilism in terms of epistemic virtues and vices. In Virtues of the Mind, Linda Zagzebski (...) has set forth what is probably, to date, the most systematic account and defence of virtue epistemology. The book has three parts. In the first, Zagzebski explains why she thinks the current state of epistemology provides us with ample reasons to turn to a virtue-based approach. In the second, she develops the theoretical framework of ethical and intellectual virtues. In the third, she applies this framework to the analysis of knowledge. (shrink)

Several contemporary virtue scholars trace the origin of the concept of intellectual virtues back to Aristotle. In contrast, my aim in this paper is to highlight the strong indications showing that Plato had already conceived of and had begun developing the concept of intellectual virtues in his discussion of the ideal city-state in the Republic. I argue that the Platonic conception of rational desires satisfies the motivational component of intellectual virtues while his dialectical method satisfies the (...) success component. In addition, I show that Plato considers episteme as the primary intellectual virtue. Episteme, which is quite similar to Pritchard’s The nature and value of knowledge: three investigations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) conception of understanding, is a cognitive achievement that cannot be attained by luck or testimony. The realization that Plato was the first to conceive of and develop the concept of intellectual excellences is not merely of historic significance. I illustrate, through the example of Zagzebski’s virtue theory, how the Platonic conception of intellectual virtues could prove promising in contemporary debates on virtue epistemology theories. (shrink)

The domain of modal epistemology tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (i.e., possibility and necessity), and what justifies our beliefs about modalities. Virtue epistemology, on the other hand, aims at explaining epistemological concepts like knowledge and justification in terms of properties of the epistemic subject, i.e., cognitive capacities and character traits. While there is extensive literature on both domains, almost all attempts to analyze modal knowledge elude the importance of the agent’s intellectual character traits (...) in justifying beliefs about what is possible or necessary. My aim in this paper is to argue that intellectual traits of character, like thoroughness, autonomy, epistemic courage and open-mindedness, are relevant to modal epistemology. (shrink)

Intellectual virtues are an integral part of adequate environmental virtue ethics; these virtues are distinct from moral virtues. Including intellectual virtues in environmental virtue ethics produces a more fine-grained account of the forces involved in environmental exploration, appreciation, and decision making than has been given to date. Intellectual virtues are character traits that regulate cognitive activity in support of the acquisition and application of knowledge. They are virtues because they further the human quest for knowledge (...) and true belief; possessing these traits improves us epistemically. Five intellectual virtues illustrate the nature and relevance of intellectual virtues to environmental ethics: thoroughness, temporal/structural sensitivity, flexibility, intellectual trust, and humility. While these virtues share many features of the moral virtues, there are differences between them that have practical implications and give sound reasons for considering these two types as distinct kinds. Intellectual virtues bear a structural relation to knowledge that moral virtues do not, and it is this epistemological stamp that sets them apart. Additionally, the two types of virtue can be possessed independently of one another. Ideally, intellectual virtues will combine with moral virtues such as respect, compassion, and humility to facilitate environmentally respectful behavior. The moral and intellectual virtues are thus importantly distinct and mutually reinforcing. Both should be present in a truly excellent human being, and both have a role to play in fully developed environmental virtue ethics. (shrink)

The idea that truth is the fundamental epistemic good is explained and defended. It is argued that this proposal has been prematurely rejected on grounds that are both independently problematic and which also turn on an implausible way of understanding the proposal. A more compelling account of what it means for truth to be the fundamental epistemic good is then developed, one that treats the intellectual virtues, and thereby virtuous inquiry, as the primary theoretical notion.